Xavier Dphrepaulezz has tried on a closet full of personas. As his alter ego Fantastic Negrito, he has been a shape-shifting shaman sewn up in the skin of a preacher, funkateer, soothsayer, bluesman, poet, roots doctor, rocker, and prognosticator. […]
Xavier Dphrepaulezz’s latest album title is not a catchphrase, but a genuine inquiry into how folks have been coping with the coronavirus and all the other broken things in our everyday lives. He asked people around the world to send […]
There are 84 Grammy categories, eight of which (numbers 45 to 52) are dedicated to “American Roots” music. That number does not include the four categories devoted to country music. Not an altogether bad thing, especially given that the marketplace […]
Year Two of the Arroyo Seco Weekend brought an eclectic mix of up and coming artists and Rock and Roll Hall of Famers to the beautiful Brookside Golf Course in Pasadena, California. The Arroyo Seco Weekend is making its own […]
Music can take us outside our own head and into something else entirely. Lot of that going on in this week’s new releases, from Fantastic Negrito’s hard look into a not-so-rosy reality of America to Petal’s dispatches from the life […]
In his essential book on the American musical tradition, Mystery Train, Greil Marcus wrote of iconic bluesman Robert Johnson: To be an American is to feel the promise as a birthright, and to feel alone and haunted when the promise […]
Americana music is, intentionally, a very broad term. While that “big tent” philosophy has annoyed some roots music purists, it has also led to the surge in popularity seen in recent years. That classic country crooners like Malpass Brothers can […]
FloydFest and the Waterfront Blues Festival are, in many respects, opposites. Whereas FloydFest is off the beaten path in the middle of a forest that’s in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Floyd, Virginia, the Waterfront Blues fest is in downtown Portland, […]
