Our last note in this space not surprisingly spurred a range of reactions among our readers, as is reflected in this issue’s letters section. Some folks agreed with us; many others disagreed; some offered a different perspective on the matter […]
It’s so succinct and sweet that it goes by in the blink of an eye, the title track of Hem’s new disc, Eveningland. Clocking in at 1 minute and 1 second, it begins with the lonesome drone of a clarinet, […]
The bouncy, bluesy jazz of the first track “Pony” notwithstanding, Wayward Angel finds Kasey Chambers, Australia’s #1 import to Americana music in recent years, working pretty much the same territory as on her first two releases. That’s a good thing, […]
The lion’s share of attention has gone to the two-disc model on Or Music, but another Alejandro Escovedo tribute album was recently assembled by an assortment of Canadian artists. Escovedo 101 is a much smaller-scale affair than its American counterpart, […]
Of the half-dozen records the Old 97’s have made over the past decade, “Drag It Up is our most personal,” guitarist Ken Bethea writes in a brief band biography that accompanied press mailings of the group’s new disc. He’s right […]
It was just before 2pm on Sunday afternoon that a seismic shift very nearly overtook Merlefest in its 17th year. On the far corner of the festival grounds at Wilkes Community College in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains […]
It was twenty years ago todayawell, this fall, actually, when I first heard Suzy Elkins sing. Back home to attend the University of Texas as a sophomore after a year of exile at TCU in Fort Worth, I’d yet to […]
I recall an evening, a good while before this magazine came into existence, in which my future co-editor and I were discussing the status of a local music rag that was in the midst of troubled times, and how it […]
When is a tribute album not a tribute album? Quite often, actually, depending on exactly how you define the beast. A handful of new releases serve as cases in point of the different approaches that can be taken in assembling […]
It’s not that Amy Farris lacked the talent to step out on her own. After nearly a decade playing fiddle and singing harmony with some of Austin’s finest artists, including Kelly Willis, Bruce Robison and Alejandro Escovedo, she’d certainly developed […]
