As the keyboardist for Nick Lowe’s Impossible Birds and as the opening act on Lowe’s recent swing through the United States, Geraint Watkins has made a strong musical impression. Yet the Welsh native recognizes his name is easy to forget, […]
The front porch has always been an idealized place to make music. But in Minnesota, front porch season is considerably short. For Ben Weaver, it’s all about the living room. Six years ago, Weaver — still in his teens at […]
Singers celebrate the human voice. Their lyrics are words. But animated by voice those words are subsumed into sounds….In most songs the drama or tension results from the fact that the singer moves between word (sense) and note (song). At […]
As my boyhood hero Ernie Banks liked to say, “Let’s play two today!” With co-headliners Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson offering the musical equivalent of a doubleheader, and a warmup set by Hot Club Of Cowtown serving as batting practice, […]
1 Wilco, A Ghost Is Born (Nonesuch) 2 Los Lonely Boys, self-titled (Or) 3 Various Artists, Por Vida: A Tribute To The Songs Of Alejandro Escovedo (Or) 4 Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose (Interscope) 5 Modest Mouse, Good News For […]
As astronomers will tell you, stars often come in pairs, one obvious to the eye, the other unseen. Telltale evidence of interactions between the two is often spotted first in photos — the obscure binary companion detected in changes in […]
Sometimes being confronted with a limited number of resources when making an album can be a good thing. Amy Correia is a case in point. Unlike her 2000 full-length debut Carnival Love, which was made with an extravagant budget and […]
Politics and music: Readers’ responses You have previously published both demographic and anecdotal information about how educated and intelligent your readership is. Don’t you think we’re capable of making up our own minds on presidential question? How many of us […]
The seemingly endless stretches of highway in the northwest have long proven a haven for isolation-craving individuals — serial killers, for example, cruising, brooding and hatching their violent fantasies. In the case of Portland’s Al James, who has a full-time […]
It’s so succinct and sweet that it goes by in the blink of an eye, the title track of Hem’s new disc, Eveningland. Clocking in at 1 minute and 1 second, it begins with the lonesome drone of a clarinet, […]
