There hasn’t been enough new music from Britain’s Billy Bragg lately. In 2017, he addressed current events with his usual plainspoken eloquence on the bracing EP Bridges Not Walls, though no album followed (apart from a 2019 collection of mostly […]
“If we deal in anything as artists, we must be promoting empathy. That’s what music can do. It can’t change the world, but it can make you feel things for people you’ve never met. It can make you understand the […]
If it is October, it’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass time at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Once again readers of this column will be able to experience, up close and personal, that autumnal gathering via the photos and words of Peter Dervin, […]
Whenever skiffle comes up in a conversation, folks mention Lonnie Donegan — and maybe Van Morrison — as if just the sound of the name should be the end of the conversation. Thankfully, Billy Bragg decided that a proper history of […]
In the Fall 2016/Speak Up! issue of No Depression in print, singer-songwriter Allison Moorer wrote about her experience performing with other artists as part of the Voices of A People’s History — a show concocted of musicians and poets, moved by Howard Zinn’s book […]
This is the week we have all been waiting for. Let’s face it, we – the Americana Music Association headed by Jed Hilly and the rest of us – have changed Nashville, and significantly influenced other genres as well. No longer […]
For the past few years, Billy Bragg has been working on a book about the birth of guitar-driven British pop. He says the moment can be pinpointed to January 1956, when Lonnie Donegan’s version of “Rock Island Line” became a […]
Longtime ND photographer Steve Ford recently attended the Bluesfest Byron Bay, Australia’s premiere blues and roots festival that features many American artists. This year’s lineup included Patti Smith, Mavis Staples, Buddy Guy, Bonnie Raitt, Rhiannon Giddens, Kasey Chambers, Hubby Jenkins, Andrew Bird, […]
Now in their 18th year, the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Awards have become a key highlight of the folk music calendar and, after starting out as a relatively low profile event, followed by touring around the country to venues […]
The largest and most important question to emerge from this year’s Folk Alliance International is not which side are you on, but who’s in and who’s out, whose voices are included and whose are excluded. Numerous conversations focused on the […]
