Minnesotans rarely say “when hell freezes over,” as freezing over is our way of life. When things start to thaw, that’s when we begin to worry. So perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise: While the Gear Daddies kicked off […]
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Like nearly all significant events that contributed to making and defining Austin’s music community, the Resentments were unintended. The original idea was just a cool deal on Sunday nights, a casual little musical get-together on the one night nobody was […]
“As an old-time musician, I hope to take old-time music to a much broader audience,” Riley Baugus says. “If you notice, everyone who ever hears a banjo or fiddle stops and listens, usually tapping their foot and smiling. Most people […]
Sometimes a great roots band takes many twists and turns before it finds its voice. Growing up in the working-class Massachusetts mill town that supplied his band’s name, Matt Hebert heard the rumblings of early heavy metal courtesy of his […]
Renowned fiddler Johnny Cunningham died December 15 of a heart attack. Cunningham co-founded the Celtic folk band Silly Wizard while a teenager. After moving to America, he was involved in many projects, including the roots-rock band the Raindogs. He was […]
Jake Hess may have been the greatest little-known singer in the history of American popular music. He was inarguably among its most influential, serving as Elvis Presley’s primary and most enduring vocal model. A one-time lead singer for southern gospel […]
For 40 years, Dave Dudley was the accidental voice of truck-driving music. After an injury to his pitching arm forced Dudley to sideline his dreams of a professional baseball career, he financed the 1962 recording session that produced “Six Days […]
Anyone who’s ever met Dick Waterman knows he deplores hyperbole. So he’d probably reject the notion that he’s the most important non-musician in blues history. Yet there’s substantial evidence indicating this is precisely the case. Waterman’s accomplishments include his involvement […]
In Boogaloo: The Quintessence of American Popular Music, Arthur Kempton attempts an ambitious and stylish history of what he terms “Aframerican” music — from gospel to soul and rap, from Thomas Dorsey to Curtis Mayfield and Tupac Shakur. The results […]
The subtitle to Mark Coleman’s Playback accurately outlines the tale told within. When Thomas Edison patented his first working phonograph in 1877, he promptly set up a new corporation under the name of the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company, to sell […]
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