Seeing Beyond What You Know Rascal Flatts Goes Down to the River They make it so easy, They really do. The hair, the high Wal-Mart bling, the bad jokes. Rascal Flatts, the pop-leaning country trio whose songs have spoken to […]
Seeing Beyond What You Know Rascal Flatts Goes Down to the River They make it so easy, They really do. The hair, the high Wal-Mart bling, the bad jokes. Rascal Flatts, the pop-leaning country trio whose songs have spoken to […]
Kentucky Headhunters 3rd + Lindley Re-Opening Nashville, TN 21 July 2011 When the Kentucky Headhunters hit country music with a low rumble and those loud guitars, people weren’t sure what to make of them. Looking like hillbilly cavemen, they […]
There was an unspoken, almost unacknowledged war at our house – and it only happened on Fridays. But on Fridays, it was on! It was a race to the front door, and that morning’s pristine copy of The Cleveland Plain […]
Jimmie Dale Gilmore + the Wronglers Beachland Ballroom Cleveland, Ohio 21 June 2011 They call it Heirloom Music, going so far as to make it the title of their first collaborative recording; but for Jimie Dale Gilmore and chockablock […]
I’m in a shitty hotel room, chattering and chilled to the bone. I’ve driven all day, and it doesn’t even matter. Sometimes you do what you have to do – even when it doesn’t make sense to the people who […]
Gil Scott-Heron’s Gone Turn Around, Turn Around… I’m New Here, Again He wasn’t like anything you’d think. A raw-voiced truth-seeker, crippled by addiction to where Riker’s Island became a return address. A provocateur working on a template of […]
Women Who Rock Exhibition Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Cleveland, Ohio 13 May 2011 When Ronnie Spector sings, hearts – almost half a century later – still jump. That voice, so raw and wide open, bristling with desire and […]
Matraca BergHarvest Nashville’s Lost Soul, Family Farmer’s Truth + Grief as a Thing of BeautyDreaming in Fields, Falling + Chasing The Angels I shouldn’t be writing this. It’s not right. You see, I first met Matraca Berg — as Delbert […]
I LOVE – Tom T Hall’s SONGS OF FOX HOLLOW Various Red Beet When a journalist takes a fancy to or strikes up a friendship with an artist, the paranoid scream “conflict of interest,” a tragedy since the best and […]
The Bobby Keys Band Mercy Lounge, Nashville, TN 2 May 2011 There are few musicians synonymous with an oeuvre or a sound, yet Bobby Keys pretty much defines rock & roll saxophone, especially of the Rolling Stones varietal. Sweaty, […]