Author: Jeff Burger

From the earliest days of his musical career, Peter Stampfel has avoided popular music’s main roads, preferring to wander down side streets that have allowed him to be his idiosyncratic self and innovate. In the early 1960s, he cofounded the quirky psychedelic folk group the Holy Modal Rounders, which reinvented songs dating back to the […]

  Maria Muldaur with Tuba Skinny, Let’s Get Happy Together. Maria Muldaur enjoyed a brief flirtation with the pop world with “Midnight at the Oasis,” a Top 10 hit in 1974, but the bulk of her six-decade career has found her immersed in folk, jazz, and blues. She performed in the Even Dozen Jug Band […]

Ask a music fan to name a favorite Who album—or simply any Who album—and the response is likely to be their 1969 rock opera, Tommy, or perhaps that record’s 1971 follow-up, Who’s Next. Both contain some great music, and the former was groundbreaking. But the group’s best album is arguably neither of these; rather, it’s […]

  By Jeff Burger John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band—which first appeared in December 1970 and has just been reissued as a vastly expanded box set—was Lennon’s his first major post-Beatles release. (A trio of slightly earlier and rarely heard avant-garde records that he made with Yoko Ono hardly qualify as “major.”) He would make some excellent […]

By Jeff Burger If you’re looking for concert material from the Allman Brothers Band’s classic original lineup, your first purchase should unquestionably be one of the expanded versions of 1971’s At Fillmore East. The fantastic The Fillmore Concerts, which came out in 1992, would be an excellent choice, though if you want to really dig […]

The Beat Farmers, Tales of the New West (Deluxe Edition). It’s probably safe to say that this is the only album in existence to include covers of both the Velvet Underground’s “There She Goes Again” and “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” the old country folk song. But then there aren’t many groups whose apparent influences are […]

Hope Dunbar, Sweetheartland. The second full-length album from Nebraska-based singer/songwriter/guitarist Hope Dunbar pairs her passionate vocals with nine memorable original tunes that come loaded with quotable lyrics. The full-band backup on this follow-up to 2017’s Three Black Crowsincorporates acoustic, electric, bass, and slide guitars plus banjo, harmonica, lap steel, keyboards, dobro, drums, and several background […]

Here’s a quick look at half a dozen new EPs and full-length albums from artists you might not have heard of. They all merit a listen, and at least a few of them deserve standing ovations. Sunny War, Simple Syrup. When Los Angeles-based folk singer Sunny War’s With the Sun album appeared in 2018, I […]