Various Artists — Stoned Cold Country London and Nashville are about as far apart musically as they are on a map, but The Rolling Stones managed to bridge their gap with much of the early 70s work. Moving naturally from blues-based rock to country, Mick, Keith and company strove to push past the pop status […]
Continue Reading
The Band of Heathens has maintained a mantra of independence that few other artists have been able to sustain. The Austin-based group, centered around singer-songwriters Ed Jurdi and Gordy Quist, has survived for two decades – thrived, really, with eight albums, an Austin City Limits appearance, and their own studio – while remaining unsigned and […]
Continue Reading
The Panhandlers — Tough Country There’s a lot of country music on the radio written for (and by) people who haven’t lived the life – too many songs about horses, tractors and rough honky-tonks come from pens held by hands as smooth as the latest white-collar East Coast ex-pat. Well, that’s not so of the […]
Continue Reading
The place and time of one’s raising can place indelible marks – and permanent scars – on some folks. Singer-songwriter Drayton Farley is like that – for him, the good that came from growing up in Alabama is what draws his mind back to his home state, even with the ghosts that remain there. On […]
Continue Reading
Lucero — Should’ve Learned By Now The basis of Lucero’s sound has always been a gut-bucket hybrid of Southern rock and punk. Even when they added Memphis-flavored horns in 2009’s 1372 Overton Park or dipped into synthy 80s sci-fi in 2021’s When You Found Me, Ben Nichols’ crew kept the guitars front and center, creating […]
Continue Reading
Decisions…can’t make ‘em, at least not quickly. I envy the folks who can change course almost instantaneously. Me, I’ll get buried in the possible downfalls of each course of action. That’s the idea behind the title of Alex Mabey’s latest album, The Waiting Room. The Nashville-via-Washington State singer-songwriter based the album on a series of […]
Continue Reading
Sunny War — Anarchist Gospel “Closure” is a self-help buzzword that…doesn’t mean anything in the real world. We seem to be in an awful rush to “heal” and move on, usually at the expense of learning something from the scars we’ve incurred. Well, that’s not Sunny War’s way. The Nashville-based singer-songwriter-extraordinarily gifted guitar player prefers […]
Continue Reading
Reckless Son — Reckless Son I’ve long been a fan of prison dramas (Oz, Prison Break and Mayor of Kingstown rank among my favorites). But what those dramas miss in their fast-paced, one-hour run times is the regret, despair and strange sense of placeless-ness felt by the folks in real-life detention. New York-based musician Matt […]
Continue Reading
H.C. McEntire — Every Acre Very early on in the country music drama of Nashville, young Scarlett is convinced by hunky musician Gunnar to turn her poem into a song. Never mind that the song (“If I Didn’t Know Better”) was a (damn good) John Paul White/Arum Rae composition recorded by The Civil Wars – […]
Continue Reading
Rachael Price and Vilray Blair Bolles have a long history that only recently began producing music. Price (of Lake Street Dive) and Vilray (now a New York-based singer-songwriter-guitar player) met two decades ago as students at the New England Conservatory of Music and traveled in concentric musical circles before beginning to perform together in 2015. […]
Continue Reading
