– By Rich Gordon What’s Americana music? Is it “American roots music based on the traditions of country”? That’s how the Americana Music Association defined Americana in 2003. Or “music that honors and is derived from the traditions of American […]
This week’s post comes to you as I sit in Washington Square on a blue sky day, listening to an ad hoc jazz band while waiting for Kyla Fairchld, the former owner and publisher of No Depression. She flew into […]
For all the talk one hears in Americana circles about this being music for old white guys, you’d have been hard-pressed to maintain that argument during last night’s Americana Music Awards. Unlike so many music industry events — which can […]
The late Townes Van Zandt was the best songwriter in the whole wide world, Steve Earle said in an oft-cited quote, “and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.” Seventeen years after Van […]
If you want people to want something, tell them they can’t have it. From the moment I arrived Saturday morning, the buzz among the photographers was that Jack White wasn’t going to allow photography during his set. Never mind the […]
One warm spring evening not so long ago, I spent a few hours in the company of friends. We listened to music in their living room, shared food and a bottle of wine. It was over too quickly, as such […]
The presumption is probably safe that when a musical layman hears the name of a band they assume a sort of democracy. Who of us has been in a band? How do they operate from the inside? Do most bands […]
I’ve been a fan since 1992’s Short Man’s Room, and I’d been looking forward for months to Joe Henry’s show at the Melbourne Recital Centre. Save for a brief industry showcase in the early 90s I’d never seen Henry live – nor […]
As far as final chapters go, Scruffy the Cat’s isn’t too shabby. It just took a long time to get written. In the case of the ‘80s Boston-based roots rock band, it wasn’t a matter of writer’s block. It was […]
While such proclamations can ring hyperbolic at times, it’s no stretch to say Sturgill Simpson’s hourlong set before a couple of hundred spectators in a public park a few miles east of Mount Rainier will be the last time he […]
