In 1999, Cary Fridley left the Freight Hoppers to settle in Asheville, North Carolina. A year later, she released Neighbor Girl, showcasing the traditional Appalachian music she loves, on her own Juba label. While performing locally in various traditional contexts, […]
A dozen paces behind me, in a double closet filled with camping gear, winter coats, a box of stray patch cords and, perhaps, the family of mice our declawed cats chase in the midnight hours, there lurks a cheap acoustic […]
The scenes that open Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, with Harry Dean Stanton alone in the desert and the sound of Ry Cooder’s slide guitar curling around like a memory or a premonition, are among the most striking and beautiful images […]
The irreplaceable jazz drummer Max Roach died in his sleep August 15. Roach played with Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Parker. He was one of the creators of bebop and a determined civil rights activist. […]
In Sia Michel’s heartbreaking yet inspiring January 2007 New York Times profile, Lee Hazlewood, dying of kidney cancer, summed things up succinctly: “I’m 77. I’ve been around long enough now. I’ve lived a pretty interesting life — not too much […]
To that list of storied musical roads — Route 66, Highway 61, Broadway — Blackie & the Rodeo Kings’ Tom Wilson wants to add Highway 6. It’s a less-heralded stretch of blacktop that knifes through southern Ontario and, according to […]
He’s one of the most creative, unpredictable, fun-finding, fundamentally alive personages to have graced rock, country, and (but of course) Hawaiian and polka music over the past 50 years or so, but the first chance for most people to really […]
It took Gram Parsons just over six years to change the face of American music. Parsons brought fresh force to country tradition with the International Submarine Band, remade the Byrds in his own image on the classic Sweetheart Of The […]
A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMOUS: Sugar Hill Records band the INFAMOUS STRINGDUSTERS were big winners at the eighteenth annual International Bluegrass Music Awards Show held October 4 at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, Tennessee. The Stringdusters […]
Don’t let the name, or the lush landscape depicted on the cover of their debut disc Invitation Songs, fool you. Seattle trio the Cave Singers are city boys. Guitarist Derek Fudesco hails from upstate New York, and singer Pete Quirk […]
