Personal and professional partners Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have been performing minimal, slowed down, dreamy lonesome country folk for some three decades now. The main thing that’s changed since Welch’s string of classic albums — Revival (1995) through The […]
Like Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Alison Krauss, and Iris DeMent before them, the Nashville-based duo Paper Wings mixes coffeehouse folk with old-time and bluegrass — the haunting self-reflective introspection of Joni Mitchell and the haunting high lonesome sound of Bill […]
Woody Guthrie’s grandchildren Abe and Annie show up on a couple of tracks on Black Legacy Project, Vol. 1, and that’s a good indication of this album’s roots and approach. The Black Legacy Project was inspired by the Black Lives […]
Ketch Secor’s Old Crow Medicine Show started out as a hip retro stringband/bluegrass amalgam, playing traditional music with a reverent irreverence, and/or an irreverent reverence, depending on which side of the holler you were staring down. That was 25 years […]
Lots of starry-eyed dreamers over the years have hoped that music would be their path to fame and fortune. But heading into the fifth decade of his career, Dale Watson has learned better. Thus the title of his latest album, […]
Bobbie Lee Nelson is one of the great unheralded legends of country music. Her piano-playing — ranging from yearning contemplation to honky-tonk barrelhouse — provided the backbone for her brother Willie’s band on classic tracks like “Always On My Mind” […]
Brennen Leigh is a retro country true believer. For two decades, she’s celebrated the music of Nashville’s various golden ages, releasing tribute discs to The Carter Family and Lefty Frizzell and penning her own songs in the spirit of countrypolitan […]
If you are not an ethnomusicologist and/or from West Africa, you may well read the title Ears of the People: Ekonting Songs from Senegal and the Gambia and wonder, “What on earth is an ekonting?” The collection, and its extensive, […]
“I won’t let you down / I’m in it for the long haul,” Anthony D’Amato harmonizes on “Long Haul,” the first track of his new album, At First There Was Nothing. The lyrics are a promise to a lover, but […]
