Forget country, alternative, hot, young or old. Set aside generation, class or education. For that matter, forget music. Johnny Cash was a seminal figure of 20th-century American culture. Like Hemingway or Sandburg, Bogart or Warhol, he was one of those […]
“Joan Baez could have been in this song,” Steve Earle says as he picks the gentle arpeggios of “Christmas In Washington” on his new live double-disc release. He goes on to explain that she is a hero to him because […]
Perhaps the only thing as bad as being underappreciated is being appreciated for the wrong reasons. Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot may well have the unique distinction of being both at once. Despite an enviable degree of commercial success and a […]
“It’s the little things,” Robert Earl Keen once sang with switchblade humor, “that piss me off.” Here, it’s the little things that elevate a typically solid selection of material from the veteran troubadour into the most musically compelling album of […]
This year marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of the blues, or at least of the epiphany typically associated with it: W.C. Handy’s chance hearing, at a railroad crossing in Tutwiler, Mississippi, of an itinerant singer moaning a line, […]
During “No Show Jones”, a staple of his 1980s concerts, George Jones would gleefully throw himself into the line, “And Dolly’s got two big reasons that she’s well-known.” Though not the reasons Jones meant, the chief causes of Dolly Parton’s […]
Every roadhouse musician knows that a groove is better than a rut. This two-disc set by Texas veteran Delbert McClinton offers ample opportunity to distinguish between the two. Against numbing expectation, McClinton and his six-man band of road warriors tear […]
Ten minutes into this live album, a voice rises from the audience to make a tentative request: “‘Cobwebs?’” “‘Cobwebs?!’” Wainwright hollers back in mock horror. “That’s impossible!” And then he goes ahead and plays it anyway, even though he can’t […]
Tommy Womack and his band probably don’t often take the stage in snazzy, color-coordinated outfits. They likely don’t smash many drum kits or bash many guitars. It’s doubtful they spend a lot of time trying to cultivate a buzz in […]
This is the kind of Uncle Tupelo fan I am: Their four records still reliably break my heart and hang the moon at the same time, and I’ve never been too proud to admit it. So it was with as […]
