/banjo-itis/ adjective That ringing in the ears that comes from prolonged exposure to the high pitched plunking of strings stretched over catskin. There is no known cure. MerleFest is a joyous annual celebration of old-time high and lonesome backed by […]
Big Walter Horton has been called the greatest harp player that ever lived. It‘s fitting then that this tribute to him kicks off with another great harpist, Kim Wilson. Horton’s sound was big and bold, wrapping around the melody like […]
Spring has sprung but you’d think it was still Christmas season to judge by the number of CDs being released. Here’s a look at a few of the more interesting ones to come my way lately. Bianca De Leon, Love, […]
In the late Sixties Gram Parsons came up with the term Cosmic American Music as a more eloquent and hippie-dippie way to describe the type of music he was making. Gram despised the term “country-rock” and felt his term was […]
This is far and away the most exciting disc to cross this desk in ages; there are eleven songs here, by nine artists and if you are good at figuring you will realize that 2 singers get to do 2 […]
You’d think we were still heading into the holiday season, given the number of new CDs piling up on my desk. Here’s a look at a stylistically diverse batch of relatively obscure ones that I hope won’t get buried under […]
This thing is so powerful, it’s intimidating. It’s like being thrown across a room and pinned to a wall by some unseen, immovable force. You might not have heard of Blind Willie Johnson, but his music has been the backbone […]
This is a wildly diverse four CDs of songs from the swampy and bayou dotted area west of New Orleans, Evangeline Country. They were selected by the singers and the producers of these discs from the songs John and Alan […]
Listen to a selection of artists on Mixcloud or Spotify January Little Jimmy Dickens, country vocalist and guitarist Andrae Crouch, pastor and gospel vocalist Curtis Lee, vocalist (“Pretty Little Angel Eyes”) Ray McFall, nightclub owner (The Cavern […]
As the soundtrack to Beth Harrington’s like-titled documentary, these songs sing the story of the Carter Family’s seminal invention and their on-going influence. But as a standalone volume, this virtually unannotated set provides little in the way of context or […]
