It’s not every day you get to see a universally acknowledged master of his craft do his thing. At 78 (!) Delbert McClinton may no longer be at the very top of his game — though he’s still impressively close to it — but the Texas roadhouse blues master put on an energetic and memorable […]
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Marah’s Christmas shows are justifiably legendary. Now based in central PA but originally hailing from the Conshohocken area of Philadelphia, the band clearly knows how to throw a kickin’ party. This year’s festivities were held at the City of Brotherly Love’s Underground Arts, a dark, industrial basement venue that probably hasn’t experienced such pure musical […]
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[Click on anything in bold to read related interviews and reviews on Americana Highways. Click icons to buy. Scroll to the bottom for playlist!] I have to be honest here. Music writers are people too, so their year-end top-whatever lists tend to be the soundtracks to their lives for that year, whether they’re conscious of […]
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While the Eagles-Cowboys rivalry played itself out to exhaustion in an over-lit sportsplex a few miles to the north of Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood, Richard Buckner treated his audience to the polar opposite of that corporate-sponsored mega-spectacle: an intimate, quietly soul-stirring evening of folksong and storytelling. The evening’s warm, congenial tone was set by the John […]
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In discussing his own addiction to opioids with the Twin Cities Pioneer Press a few months after Prince’s untimely painkiller-related death in 2016, Gary Louris confessed to its having brought him to the realization — following the band’s brief, unfortunate reunion and quick re-divorce from former collaborator Mark Olsen — that he already had “the […]
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To nick the subtitle of a recent collection of essays on Texas songwriters,1 Malcolm Holcombe’s approach to songcraft is “ruthlessly poetic.” Holcombe’s latest, the Marco Giovino-produced Come Hell or High Water (Singular Recordings), marks the 13th in a string of dependably strong collections bearing Holcombe’s distinct, darkly Appalachian imprint. Featuring Iris DeMent and Greg Brown […]
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Make sure your songs stand up to music that you like, to the stuff that other people you know and respect did. Be universally impressive. And if you can be as good as people you respect, then you did the best you can do.
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