Take I-23 north from Kingsport, Tennessee, or south from Wise, Virginia, and you’ll find more or less the same mix of old and new Appalachia: roadside flea markets within sight of Wal-Mart Supercenters, generations-old strip mining operations alongside latter-day pulp […]
Picture this. The heart of the Texas panhandle, late 1940s. We are driving up a dirt road. The heat is suffocating, moving in dusty waves through the car windows to settle against our mouths. But the humidity is slowly lifting, […]
This issue, in many ways, felt like a landmark for us. First and foremost is our cover subject, something that’s been in the works for a good while. It’s rather obvious that Johnny Cash is a natural for our magazine’s […]
Maybe all Kim Richey wants to do is have some fun. She’s contended that her 1995 self-titled debut, produced by Steve Earle collaborator Richard Bennett, was considered a country album only because she was signed to a country label — […]
When Catherine Ann Irwin — best-known as half of the creative nucleus of Freakwater — was a just a tot, she learned that her financial security for life had been provided for. Or so she thought. It was the early […]
It’s a cheerful, sunny afternoon in a quiet residential neighborhood in Antwerp, a Belgian city known for its old, cobbled streets and its flourishing diamond trade. Antwerp isn’t the first place that comes to mind when thinking about country music. […]
During his first trip to England, Muddy Waters, ruminating about his humble beginnings and how far the blues had taken him in the world, told a reporter from Melody Maker, “There’s no way in the world I can feel the […]
You know Nashville as Music City USA? Not us. We think of our Tennessee home as Hot Chicken Epicenter of the Known Universe. Most any chain or mom and pop joint will give you the option of take-out chicken in […]
The title of Johnny Gimble’s newest CD, Just For Fun, goes a long way toward explaining the man and his music. It would be naive to say that the money hasn’t been important to him; Gimble, after all, has been […]
If you build it, they will come: Delbert McClinton, Tift Merritt, Jerry Douglas, Donna the Buffalo, Los Lobos, Buddy & Julie Miller. And that list barely scratches the surface of the fifty acts who gathered at Louisville’s Slugger Field and […]
