Hang out in Americana circles long enough, and you’ll start to hear people toss around phrases like “real country music”. More than an ethnocentric down-the-nose judgmnet about fakery, the phrase tends to be employed when describing music that comes from […]
When future Hollies Allan Clarke and Graham Nash were teenagers they approached the Everly Brothers after a concert and it changed their lives. Don and Phil, then huge stars, spent some time with Allan and Graham encouraging their musical ambitions. […]
Bloodshot Records recent deluxe double disc reissue of The Bottle Rockets’ self-titled debut disc packaged with their sophomore effort The Brooklyn Side and a slew of bonus tracks is my pick for reissue of the year. There is enough bonus material (19 tracks […]
Beatles music has never fallen out of fashion, never gone away even briefly, so it can be easy to forget just how long ago the Beatles themselves went away. They officially disbanded in 1970—nearly half a century ago—after little more […]
Its Saturday night before Thanksgiving. The wind whips through the trees, occasional snow flurries fall from the sky over the village of Hastings-On-Hudson in the state of New York, and inside the Unitarian…whatever it is (please don’t call it a […]
ST. LOUIS – The saying “good things come to those who wait” epitomizes folk singer Iris DeMent as well as her fans. It took 16 years for DeMent to release her fourth studio CD, last year’s “Sing the Delta.” And […]
One of the big surprises for me this year was watching Alice Cooper. Ok, he’s not Americana and only tangentially roots music. But in the belief that all music must be shared, I simply mention to you that his concert […]
An extraordinary collection of live folk performances Three hours north of Greenwich Village, Caffe Lena proved as important to the folk revival as Gerde’s Folk City or the Bitter End. Opened in 1960 by Bill and Lena Spencer, the coffee […]
Haunting electronica-backed folk Though he’d released two indie albums in the mid-90s, Richard Buckner arrived in most listeners’ ears with his 1997 major label debut, Devotion + Doubt. His voice and delivery were unlike just about anyone who’d come before. […]
