Jenny Owen Youngs has lived through just about every possible human experience since her last full-length album in 2012, An Unwavering Band of Light. Eleven years, a marriage, a divorce, a second marriage, and a baby later, Owen Youngs returns […]
There’s a scene in the 1976 documentary Heartworn Highways where an array of songwriting legends — Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Rodney Crowell, and a young Steve Earle among them — are sitting around a room having a classic guitar […]
Woody Guthrie’s grandchildren Abe and Annie show up on a couple of tracks on Black Legacy Project, Vol. 1, and that’s a good indication of this album’s roots and approach. The Black Legacy Project was inspired by the Black Lives […]
In 1969, Lee Oskar went to war. But this one was not an armed conflict, but rather a war using words and music as ammunition against a system that fed young men into a shredder for political gains and ignored […]
Margo Cilker writes what she knows. Steep and dusty canyons, getting a fire going when the wind is just right, a cup of chili at diner near Santa Rosa, fragrant orchards of apricot trees, a night of heavy drinking and […]
For Jim Lauderdale, it’s another opportunity to extend his far-reaching legacy to a new generation. For the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, it’s a well-deserved badge of honor that further builds their bona fides. Together, on their new collaborative album, The Long […]
“Those ’70s and ’80s blues men took on these Black stereotypes and made this new stereotype of bad, ‘your uncle’s band in a garage’ blues music,” Carl “Buffalo” Nichols told David Browne in a 2022 Rolling Stone story. “It’s already […]
Willie Nelson is on the road again. But this time the road goes backwards to the roots music that influenced him. He’s labeled it simply Bluegrass, but with Willie, nothing is that simple. You can stick banjos and dobros and […]
Vivian Leva and Riley Calcagno’s exceptional self-titled debut from 2021, as well as Leva’s 2018 solo foray, leaned in a notably rustic direction. The duo’s new album, produced by Alex Bingham, largely backburners the old-timey tells as they embrace a […]
Movie of the Week, the latest by singer-songwriter Shakey Graves (the nom de plume of Alejandro Rose-Garcia), has an intriguing backstory. It started out in 2018 as an entirely different thing altogether, a soundtrack Rose-Garcia had recorded for some friends […]
