Jess Williamson: Raised on Dolly, Bound for Elsewhere By Brian D’Ambrosio Jess Williamson was four or five years old, riding in the backseat while her mother drove and her grandmother sat up front. A song came over the radio. The two women began talking about how much they loved the singer. “Who is that?” Williamson […]
Wyatt Flores: Between the Road and the Ranch (photo by Matt Paskert) There are worse places to figure out what comes next than a mountain, a hammock and a sky full of stars. Wyatt Flores had been living in that temporary kingdom when we talked. He had been on the road, as usual, but this […]
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Ruthie Foster: The Long Road to Saying Yes For Ruthie Foster, the road to music began with a child’s stubborn curiosity: sitting close to the television, trying to convince her siblings that the Grammy Awards mattered. She watched singers like Janis Ian and Roberta Flack step into the light and sensed something larger than fame. […]
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Norwegian-Americana: Maren Davidsen and the Long Road Back to Herself Before there was Tennessee, there was Stavanger. Before the highways, honky-tonks and imagined horizons of America, there was the Norwegian coastline—cold water, hard wind, immense mountains and a young girl searching for where she belonged. Maren Davidsen’s music exists in that distance between two worlds. […]
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Still in the Groove: Martha Reeves Keeps Searching Martha Reeves has spent more than six decades giving people reasons to dance. Her voice powered Motown landmarks like “Dancing in the Street,” “Heat Wave,” “Jimmy Mack,” and “Nowhere to Run,” songs that still spill from radios and playlists with enough spark to lift a room. Now, […]
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Matthew Stevens and the Many Meanings of Sound For guitarist and composer Matthew Stevens, instrumental music is not a fixed statement but an invitation. It leaves room for listeners to bring themselves into the experience, carrying their own memories, moods, and interpretations into the music. That philosophy lies at the heart of Matthew Stevens, the […]
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Samantha Fish and the Last Honest Noise There was a time when live albums felt dangerous. Not polished. Not corrected by committee. Dangerous. You could hear the room breathing. You could hear amplifiers misbehaving and drummers pushing a little too hard. Sometimes the singer missed a note. Sometimes the singer found one nobody knew existed […]
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Good Taste and Short Songs: Teddy Thompson on Influence, Restraint, and Never Be The Same Teddy Thompson doesn’t talk about influence so much as drift—what finds its way in early, what stays, and what quietly shapes a life without ever announcing itself. On his new album Never Be The Same, Thompson returns to original material […]
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Ellen Froese photo by Landon Johnson Ellen Froese: Songs from the Prairie Edge There is a long stretch of road in Canada where the land seems to empty itself of everything but distance. Gas stations thin out, forests close in, and the horizon feels less like a destination than a state of mind. It was […]
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From Busker to Believer: The Hard-Earned Songs of Slaid Cleaves Slaid Cleaves lives in Wimberley now, tucked into the folds of the Texas Hill Country, playing closer to home, keeping the circle small. The road that once stretched from Maine to Cork to Austin has narrowed. The songs, though, are still wide open There was […]
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