After quietly blazing a path of resonant blues-based songs and performances over the past decade and a half, Chris Whitley died November 20 in Houston, Texas, of lung cancer at age 45. Whitley was able to sing the piercing moan […]
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Outside the Sheldon Concert Hall in downtown St. Louis, someone steals a van parked next to Norman and Nancy Blake’s camper. Inside the hall, the couple have finished a two-hour concert and are packing up to head to Lexington, Kentucky, […]
In the 1980s, Meriden, New Hampshire, was hardly a hotbed of conservation. “I grew up in a town of 500 people,” explains Will Sheff, frontman for Austin, Texas, indie-rock ensemble Okkervil River. His tone is relaxed, mildly playful — a […]
Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham begin Moments From This Theatre, their in-concert collection of chamber soul, with “I’m Your Puppet”. The tempo is unhurried but insistent, with Penn’s voice sweet and soulful, his gently picked acoustic guitar brushing up against […]
In New Orleans, “How’d you make out?” has replaced “Where y’at?” Those who have been back in town and answering that question since early October are over it, so much so that percussionist Washboard Chaz Leary is contemplating getting a […]
Susan Tedeschi’s last studio album was called Wait For Me. She meant it, apparently. For the past three years, she has been busy with steady touring, assorted musical collaborations and, not least, the establishment of a full-blown family life. She […]
The road to Crane’s Nest, Kentucky, winds along the course of a rushing creek, flanked on one side by a steep hill and on the other by houses that are decorated in Christmas lights and plastic Nativity scenes. The sky […]
In 1970, Atlanta Journal reporter Paul Hemphill, having grown up with country music, published his first book, long considered the gold standard for non-academic country writing. The Nashville Sound: Bright Lights And Country Music captured the music and artists in […]
There’s a lot of blowhard swaggering of my own in here,” Tom Russell writes in the afterword to Tough Company. The veteran singer-songwriter is being a little hard on himself. Tough Company is a literary grab-bag with more hits than […]
His bluegrass recordings from the 1950s often comes to mind first. For some historians, and even hard-core fans, that’s all that comes to mind. For a lauded, unforgettable American singer whose key songs were more than once about memory itself, […]
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