One of the most notable facets of the music business in 2019 is the lack of prolificacy. It’s not that musicians are any less creative than their predecessors. But, with music sales bottoming out, leaving artists chasing other sources of much-needed revenue (touring, selling merch, launching Kickstarter campaigns), there’s simply less time (and monetary incentive) […]
It would be easy to get snarky about someone being named the “Best Country Singer” in Los Angeles. When you think LA, the only horses you picture are trucked in and out of studio back lots. Even my home of Colorado, a “real” western state, is more known for John Denver than for any “true” […]
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I’ve gotta say – I’m stunned. Stunned by the number of albums by ace female guitar players that have landed in my inbox over the past few months. Just this year, I’ve written reviews of Molly Tuttle, Courtney Hartman, Abigail Lapell, and Our Native Daughters with their four banjo virtuosos. It’s not that I thought […]
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When you think Oklahoma, you think “Red Dirt.” But Tulsa’s different. Because of its relative diversity and a historically transient population (largely due to its oil and gas deposits and the boom and bust cycles inherent with such resources), music styles from various regions have coalesced beside the Arkansas River to form the Tulsa Sound. […]
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“Harmony” in music is really a pretty simple concept. Sing the notes, practice, and (hopefully) make beautiful music together. “Chemistry,” on the other hand, eludes easy definition, which is maybe part of the reason it’s so difficult to attain. Chris and Adam Carroll have that chemistry. Not because they done got hitched (although, they did, […]
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Singer-songwriter-guitar player Courtney Hartman’s young career has wandered its way from bluegrass band member (a stint with Della Mae) to collaborator (recording albums with Robert Ellis and Taylor Ashton) to recording her own EP (2016’s Nothing We Say). Before writing songs for her first full-length solo record, she undertook (voluntarily!) a 500-mile trek on the […]
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Is there anything more artistically daunting than standing up on stage – alone, save a guitar – and singing your own songs to a room full of people who have enjoyed a multitude of adult beverages? Songwriters, by nature, are an introverted bunch – they often write those songs because it beats actually talking to […]
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Muddling your way through a major health scare can change the way you live. And not in a faux-inspirational, Hallmark-movie-with-a-schmaltzy-musical-swell-at-the-end kind of way, but in a more subtle, almost mundane (to outsiders, anyway) manner. Priorities get shifted around, some things become clearer, others fade into the background. Nashville-based singer-songwriter Rod Picott wrote much of his […]
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Just about all of us love to travel – hell, we’re all on a website called Americana Highways, after all. But travel has different purposes, and different results, for different folks. What might be a chance for some of us to catch a show and guzzle a beer or two might represent a chance for […]
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photo by Matt Bizer After wrapping up the tour promoting her well-received debut album, Gilded, California’s Jade Jackson decided to dig a little deeper for her second record. She’d suffered a serious fall during a hike 7 years ago, resulting in shattered vertebrae, an allergic reaction to medication, time spent in a wheelchair, dependence on […]
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