EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is a long feature from our Fall 2016/Speak Up! issue of No Depression in print. We’ve digitized it exclusively for a subscription drive we’re running through June 15. If you want to see us continue to produce great music […]
John Prine, the original “new Dylan,” has always written songs with a deep heart and a strong empathy for the people who go unseen. Veterans ensnared in addiction, old people who are forgotten and alone, alienated women ignored in their […]
Americana – as the big tent pitched by the Americana Music Association – is its own conundrum. Drawing an audience that’s decidedly 30+, it embraces an eclectic group of artists who have massive critical acclaim and yet have yielded no […]
Working On A Building Tim Hensley, George Jones, Lilly Pulitzer, Christopher Hanna Ripple On… I’m at the Rhiga Royale, now called the London. Once upon the time, it was the high, but not most nosebleed expensive rock & roll hotel: […]
Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale have been friends so long, making a record seemed almost beside the point. They’ve played in each other’s band, recorded each other’s songs and followed each other from New York to LA to Nashville, and […]
Out in Hollywood, all the pretty people were swirling down the red carpet. Decked out to be seen, glittering and sparkling, heels that theaten nosebleeds or spinal injuries, clothing folded like origami armor or barely there to catch the eye. […]
I don’t own a tv. Maybe five, six years ago, I realized how easy it was to get sucked into stuff that didn’t matter; but even worse, to obsess about bad news. The pornography of the unthinkable, snuff films for […]
Ben Bullington had never played Nashville. The Montana doctor who’d lovingly crafted three albums thick with simple details and a voice that has a warm wool gentleness had dreamed of Music City, and iconic American songwriter Rodney Crowell decided it […]
For those who believe real country music has fled Nashville, the recent CMA Awards would do little to ease your notion. Bombast, smoke, lasers and lots of the arena rock are the anti-thesis of steel-soaked, fiddle-laced songs built on melody, […]
Dwight Yoakam is laughing. A lot. Over and over. If the once serious, whip thin hardcore traditionalist with the serious honky tonk bent was a man tortured and austere, these days the heart throb with the serious Johnny Horton, Buck […]
