“I think about music a lot,” Mike Seeger says, and there’s a lifetime’s worth of recordings, articles, liner notes, films, concerts, awards and more to prove it. In presenting Seeger with the Ralph J. Gleason Award for “outstanding contributions to […]
In the winter of 1987-88, Lyle Lovett faced some tricky decisions. His first two albums had yielded five top-25 country singles (and would yield two more in the year to come). True, none of those singles had risen above #10, […]
The Spanish-speaking Southwest is replete with dichos — proverbs — that touch on all aspects of the human condition. One popular dicho, which has many similar iterations, states: “La oracion del padre el hijo la reza.” Or, for the espanol-impaired: […]
Joan Baez’s clear soprano served as a clarion in the 1960s wars on injustice. Her music provided inspiration, succor and validation to the legions battling racial and gender inequity, not to mention the seemingly endless carnage in Southeast Asia. A […]
Imagine spending your life as an author, publishing well-received but obscure murder mysteries. Then one day, you do some comic books as a lark. It turns out you’re really good at comic books, but it’s just a fun and not-too-serious […]
The Delta is too obstinate to care that it’s an alluvial plain, too poor to take its students off the critical needs list, too steeped in fabled funk to leave alone; even if, like Muddy Waters, come departure time one’s […]
Having lost a year of his life there, Jamie Perry will argue that no place on earth is as hellishly strange as Nashville, Tennessee. Convinced he’d have no trouble making it as a songwriter, the Canadian artist moved to the […]
Two different songs, two different artists, two different sports, two different seasons. Yet somehow they spark a remarkably similar sensation deep within my soul. When I hear Fountains Of Wayne’s “All Kinds Of Time”, I think of Major Applewhite. It’s […]
POR VIDA: Musicians across the country reacted to the news of Alejandro Escovedo’s recent hospitalization from complications of Hepatitis C by organizing efforts to raise funds for the Texas singer-songwriter, who has no health insurance. The Continental Club in Escovedo’s […]
1 Lucinda Williams, World Without Tears (Lost Highway) 2 Gillian Welch, Soul Journey (Acony) 3 Norah Jones, Come Away With Me (Blue Note) 4 Jayhawks, Rainy Day Music (American/Lost Highway) 5 Johnny Cash, American IV: The Man Comes Around (American/Lost […]
