The goal of these Founders’ Keepers columns, for me anyway, is fairly personal. The half-dozen “keepers” I highlight every couple of months aren’t intended as any sort of comprehensive Americana overview; rather, they’re simply a few records that have […]
EDITOR’S NOTE: Peter Blackstock and Grant Alden launched No Depression as a print magazine covering alt-country (whatever that is) in 1995, steering it through 75 issues until 2008. While they’re no longer part of the staff, they’re still very […]
Renowned North Carolina producer and songwriter Chris Stamey has devoted a good chunk of the past dozen years to star-studded concerts featuring the music of Big Star, the fabled 1970s Memphis band fronted by Stamey’s late friend and onetime bandmate […]
The roots of this album stretch back even further than Uncle Tupelo’s 1993 swan song Anodyne, which featured a glorious cover of Doug Sahm’s “Give Back the Key to My Heart” that helped introduce Sahm to legions of younger fans. […]
When No Depression launched as a print magazine in 1995, its positioning as an alternative-country quarterly was intended to be squarely in contrast to the dominant acts on mainstream country radio at the time. The magazine championed the organic sounds […]
Preface: Nineteen years ago this month, Grant Alden and I were deep in the midst of creating the debut issue of No Depression magazine, which launched in autumn 1995 in Seattle. Nearly two decades later, our lives are much different. […]
(Editor’s note: About a year ago, Model Rockets ringleader John Ramberg dropped me a line to let me know that the band was planning a small-scale reissue of this album, which came out in the fall of 1994. Ramberg had […]
After three studio albums plus a live disc on Sugar Hill, Scott Miller embraces the full-on indie way forward with For Crying Out Loud but without any dramatic changes to his musical approach. Fans of his previous records under the […]
News that Neko Case’s latest album, Middle Cyclone, reached #3 on the Billboard charts upon its release last month signaled the arrival of a new phase in the singer’s gradually building career. No longer is Case a nightclub act; she’s […]
“That one hurts my hand a little bit,” Jake Shimabukuro confided as he shook his fingers to cool them down after playing his original composition “Blue Roses Falling” a couple songs into his early-evening set at the fabled Iron Horse […]
