When John Prine died on April 7, 2020, he left behind a sumptuous banquet of lyrically ingenious songs that captured the vagaries of the lives of individuals whom society had consigned to its margins. Prine was better than any other […]
When John Prine died on April 7, 2020, he left behind a sumptuous banquet of lyrically ingenious songs that captured the vagaries of the lives of individuals whom society had consigned to its margins. Prine was better than any other […]
Allison Russell’s jubilant follow-up to her award-winning solo debut dwells deep in the recesses of the soul. It’s imbued with a radiant spirituality that illumines the liminal spaces of human existence, and it exudes a joy that rides her transcendent […]
The Blind Boys of Alabama are back in the house with their first new album since 2017’s Almost Home. From the opening track on Echoes of the South — which was recorded at the NuttHouse Recording Studio in Sheffield, Alabama […]
Every fall brings another crop of big music memoirs and biographies, and I mean that both literally and metaphorically; Michael Azerrad’s “annotated” version of his 1993 Nirvana bio, The Amplified Come as You Are, totes up almost 700 pages, for example. […]
Like Marty Stuart’s rockabilly guitar licks and Ricky Skaggs’ lightning-fast mandolin runs, music historian and critic Michael Streissguth’s tour-de-force music history, Highways and Heartaches: How Ricky Skaggs, Marty Stuart, and Children of the New South Saved the Soul of Country […]
Much as they did with the music of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard on Bakersfield 10 years ago, country superstar Vince Gill and pedal steel master Paul Franklin now honor Ray Price on Sweet Memories: The Music of Ray Price […]
In the introduction to his often hilarious and poignant new memoir, Bang Bang Crash, novelist and drummer Nic Brown gets off a resounding rim shot at his own expense, revealing a glimpse of his own journey from drums to pen […]
Daryl Mosley spins reliably comforting stories about various facets of daily life. On his third album, A Life Well Lived, his songs cast a look back at the ways we’re shaped by people and places as well as by the […]
Alan Paul has done it again. In 2014, he published a definitive oral history of the Allman Brothers, One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. While that book covered much of the history of the band, […]
Drop this record on the player and let your backbone slip to these exuberant party tunes that soulful Charlie Faye and her band, The Fanimals, deliver with affection and merriment. Backed by the soaring harmonies of her former Fayettes, BettySoo […]