Nashville is filled with stories. It is filled with veteran musicians who have been doing what they do many years, and it filled with emerging talents chasing their particular vision through the miasma of hype and noise and “the industry”. […]
What was going on back in 1995, when No Depression was founded? Well, to start with, Uncle Tupelo was no more. Son Volt debuted with Trace, while Wilco released A.M. Trace won the first round in that little set to, […]
Bluegrass is one of the true American musical gems. It’s mountain music, straight and strong. Guitars, mandolins, banjos and upright basses have fans dancing from the get-go. That’s what’s in store for fans and not-yet-fans as Southern Rail steams into […]
Reverend Peyton is the first to admit that the name of his outfit – Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band – could appear to some like mere hyperbole, or worse, wholly misleading. “We’ve had so many soundboard people ask us over […]
Aaron Jonah Lewis does write the occasional song, such as “Bell & Anchor Rag” and “Route 77,” both of which appear on The Corn Potato String Band’s debut album, Volume 1, released last year. Songwriting, however, has never really been […]
It’s been an especially cold and snowy winter here in New York’s Hudson Valley, although not quite on the level of what my friends up in Boston have been dealing with. They just might stay frosty until the summer. But […]
What really got me into touring full time was my first trip to the Kerrville Folk Festival in 2005. Growing up in Portland, OR, I always figured there wasn’t much for me down in Texas, but an 18-day camping festival […]
A couple of months ago, I was introduced to the terrific blues guitar of Shun Ng, a young master with an unusual style of fingerpicking. At that show, he appeared with three other young guitar masters, but this was the […]
City Winery (in Nashville and elsewhere) is set up and sold as a listening room. And, when the calendar is full of acoustic singer/songwriters and small jazz ensembles, that makes absolute sense. But, sometimes, a more emboldened band or artist […]
They say music is the great mediator, the universal language, the common bond. If that’s indeed the case, then credit the Piedmont Brothers with building ties of international fellowship. By sheer happenstance, Marco Zanzi and Ron Martin, the two founders […]
