On the opening cut of her superb recent release, “Promise of a Brand New Day,” Ruthie Foster sings of her love for the blues, music she grew up with in a small Texas town. Yeah, I’ve been in and out […]
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Lake Street Dive. After all the raving reviews, let’s see what you got. With “Eye of the Tiger” setting the evening’s tone at the Cannery Ballroom in Nashville, drummer Mike Calabrese was first on stage to lay down a groove. […]
One of the problems with music criticism is that, sometimes, a performance (or album) is so unspeakably stunning that words don’t — can’t — fairly capture or convey the experience. Such was the case when Jason Isbell began his three-night […]
I went to Magfest this past weekend (review will be posted later), and then the weekend before that I went to go see The Subdudes. The Subdudes show was absolutely out of this world. They performed to a packed house at […]
Edinburgh, Scotland-based troubadour Billy Liar, whose take on acoustic punk has been widely appreciated throughout the scene in recent years, is what you get when you consider the punk-before-punk standard of the genre, before much of it was stamped with […]
It’s been a pretty busy week here, what with all the pickin’ going on out in the orchard and preparations being made for my very first trip to Brooklyn, the ancestral homeland of Woody Allen, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, and Ernie […]
The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee is one of the two greatest theatres in North America (Massey Hall in Toronto the other). The acoustics, the vibe, the location make any artist that performs there seem otherworldly. Wilco — seminal band […]
Since its inception in 1980, the Blues Hall of Fame hasn’t been much more than a list of venerable buesmen. But, by 2015, Memphis will provide a home in which to present their living treasures and revere the ones who […]
One hundred and fifty years ago, my ancestor Orrin O. Brown of Michigan, entered the military service of the United States in the great Civil War. I am following his diary these many years later as he marches with General […]
Way back in August of 1995 (August 24, to be exact), I saw Joan Osborne perform for the first time. By the end of the opening song (“Pensacola,” to be specific), I was smitten. In the 19 years since that […]
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