by Nick DeRiso A truly special, even virtuoso, street-level discovery, Snooks Eaglin burst onto the musical landscape with this nearly uncatagorizable 1959 debut. The in-joke around New Orleans was that he was presented as a “folk” musician, when in actuality […]
by Nick DeRiso A Bob Dylan song reimagined into something like the Beach Boys, and also something like the Beatles — and nothing like folk music — propelled the Byrds to their first No. 1. Oh, and started the folk-rock […]
by Nick DeRiso Grateful Dead co-founder Bill Kreutzmann, great groovy Meters bassman George Porter Jr. and hoodoo guitarist Papa Mali have joined together to form 7 Walkers, a rousing fusion of Bay area jam-rock with greasy New Orleans rhythm and […]
by Nick DeRiso You can’t fault Gregg Allman his nostalgia on Low Country Blues. Legendarily restless, he’s still a man, and the leader of a band, that’s been through a great deal. Just as importantly, this record’s hat-tips to blues, […]
by Nick DeRiso We find Robbie Robertson, former guitarist with Bob Dylan and the Band, again hurtling through the Mississippi Delta, racing past old churches with scolding signs out front, hanging out with grifters and cardsharps, searching for something deeper, […]
by Pico I know no one will believe it, but a couple of weeks ago I heard Muddy Waters‘ 1948 classic recording of his first hit “I Can’t Be Satisfied” for the first time in a while and decided then […]
By Nick Deriso An underrated artist with an eye for the offhand gem, Ry Cooder remains an all-but-anonymous, genius-grade poet in the American vernacular of brown bottles, trailer parks, stray dogs and rascals. Give Cooder a guitar, and he becomes […]
by Nick DeRiso They are the two-by-fours that make up country music’s earliest construction, rootsy legends whose very names conjure never-faded invention and old-timey amusements. That’s probably why nobody messes with Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. It’s like […]
by Nick DeRiso Lucinda Williams brings a brave, riveting vulnerability to Essence — and, for me, it’s her masterpiece. Yet you are more apt to find it in the cutout bin at a big-box department store than at the top […]
by Nick DeRiso Johnny Cash leaves us, finally, much the same way he arrived — rustic, spiritual, unbent. But something, these newly released final recordings make clear, had changed. Cash died nearly seven years ago still in mourning over the […]
