Editor’s Note: Valerie June is No Depression’s Spotlight Artist for April 2025. Learn more about her life and new album, Owls, Omens, and Oracles, which was released April 11, in this feature. Valerie June cozied up in her basement for a solo-acoustic version of […]
With Earth Day on Tuesday and Arbor Day today, we thought it prudent to share some roots music in honor of the planet, the trees, and our urgent, global need for environmental protections. Nashville-based alt-country artists Jobi Riccio (ND review) […]
In the 1970s and ’80s, Tammy Faye Messner and her ex-husband Jim’s Christian television show, The PTL Club, flourished then flamed out in the white-hot, big bang of TV evangelism. Preachers like Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham proselytized directly into […]
One-hundred artists are scheduled to perform across 12 stages at this year’s MerleFest, to be held April 24-27, 2025 on the campus of Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. The artists highlighted below are, with a couple notable exceptions, […]
Like an alter with mystical crystals, holy spirits, and positive energies, everything about Valerie June’s fourth studio album is offered right there in the title — Owls, Omens, and Oracles. Calling from her home in Brooklyn, seated in front of […]
On shelves already groaning under the weight of books on The Beatles (not to mention books by and about former Beatles), there is always space for one more exploration of the teetering highs and staggering lows of a band lurching […]
So much of American roots music is steeped in Celtic tradition. As British and Irish settlers came to America in the 18th and 19th centuries, they brought their favorite folk songs with them. As these songs passed down through generations, […]
This is going to be about The Bottle Rockets, the other alt-country band from St. Louis, that graced the cover of the original magazine twice (even though the second time we all knew the futility of the gesture). But it’s […]
Earlier this month, New Zealand/Aotearoa singer-songwriter Marlon Williams released his fourth studio album. A noted collaborator, Williams has also released four record co-written and released with artists like Delaney Davidson, Tami Neilson, and Kacy & Clayton. This new music holds […]
It was the mid-1990s when Cody Canada first came to Stillwater, Oklahoma. The then-17-year-old ventured an hour or so north from his native Yukon to the small college town to see country elite Chris LeDoux perform live. What he found […]
