James Low comes by songwriting honestly enough. His grandfather wrote show tunes and his father wrote folk songs in John Day, Oregon, a scenic but struggling timber town in remote Eastern Oregon where Low was raised. Now living in Portland, […]
Pete Kennedy was a guitarist in Nanci Griffith’s Blue Moon Orchestra when Griffith pulled into Austin for the next-to-last gig on a 1993 tour that would end ten days later at the Telluride Festival. Maura Boudreau, who played with Austin […]
Laura Minor is a very new to singing — at least in public. The 28-year-old Florida native hooked up with her first band just over a year ago, and had only performed with them three times when HighTone Records offered […]
Even in bluegrass, where one eye is always fixed on the past, August 1973 was a long time ago. Sure, Ralph Stanley, Jim & Jesse, the Osborne Brothers, Del McCoury, Larry Sparks, J.D. Crowe, Ricky Skaggs and more are still […]
One of Murphy’s lesser-known laws states that the best stories always come after the recorder is shut off. This time out, there was the one about Chris Smith, frontguy and lyricist for Patty Hurst Shifter, camping in line for two […]
Born in Del Rio, Texas, in 1959, as his first solo album title pointed out, Radney Foster been deep inside and well outside Nashville’s country music mainstream since moving up there to write songs in the 1980s. From 1987-90, he […]
The Reeltime Travelers are transporting a timeless old-time sound and story to 21st-century audiences of all generations. “I like that our music appeals across all walks of life,” says banjo player Roy Andrade. “It’s a joy to feel comfortable playing […]
For a guy who has been making music for more than a decade, this seems like an odd time for Rhett Miller to be putting together his first backing band. Miller is best known as the frontman of the Old […]
Roger Wallace has the kind of smoke-filled voice that comes rumbling out of the crawl space between love and loss. You hear it from the opening breath of The Lowdown, the title track to his third album. “First of all,” […]
The steep ridges and narrow valleys of the Cumberland Plateau separate the coal country of eastern Kentucky from the rolling hills of the Appalachians to the south. Strip mining has leveled many of the ridges and washed rock and gravel […]
