There appears to be a resurgence of sorts of the modern troubadour. the male singer/songwriter armed with only an acoustic guitar and the stories he weaves always teetering on the precipice between emotional authenticity and cloying sentimentality. The balance becomes even more precarious when you have pop leanings as the term “pop” has been severed [...]
Remember that girl you met at the bowling alley? The one that chews gum, drinks several pitchers of beer, wears painted on jeans and tells you about French philosophy then winks at you as she gets strike after strike? She later on she goes and breaks your heart but you don’t care, you’re just glade [...]
It’s rare that I play a new release passed my way and my mind is stopped from lazily latching onto the closest analog. Classification is what the mind does to make sense of the word and allow progress but with music critiques it can be a handicap. The new release by Austinite and ex-Helpers front [...]
Part of the appeal of the Texas Yoda is his ability to musically transform himself in ways that balance his musical curiosity with a foxes eye towards expanding his market. This allows him to be the steward of this own musical journey and makes him a beacon for artists that prefer to forge their own [...]
Ever since seeing the darkly striking Australian western The Proposition I’ve been fascinated with the similarities between the Land Down Under and the American South and West of the nineteenth century, both good (confronting a wild frontier to achieve independence and establish a society) and bad (attacking and displacing an indigenous people.) Now due to [...]
David Fricke over at RollingStone.com has some noce things to say about the upcoming Hank Williams Unreleased Recordings box set – “…the 54 performances in this three-CD set pack a magical, concentrated immediacy that is, in its time and way, as electrifying as Johnny Cash’s Sixties prison shows or Bob Dylan’s early acoustic concerts. Williams’ [...]
We mere mortals can only hope to be meager conduits for the grand themes of life – Love, hope, fear, death – these concepts are bigger then any one of us but that doesn’t stop the courageous and foolish from shaping these experiences into music and words. Joe Pug, a Chicagoan sometimes-carpenter, is standing on [...]
Country music has some great male/female duos – Tammy Wynette & George Jones, Dolly Parton & Porter Wagoner and now… Robert Plant and Alison Krauss? No really, let me ‘splain. While Mssr. Plant and his partner in sonic larceny Jimmy Page spent most of their time pilfering Robert Johnson’s crossroads they never left the dirt [...]
I went to see Chris Knight about a year ago at a dive here in New York City. It was a great, albeit cozy, show. Once when Knight was about to launch into a song more geared to the tastes of the ladies he stated matter-of-factly “This is a song I wrote to broaden my [...]
Right from the dreaded Curb site, Hank III’s new release , Damn Right Rebel Proud, will be unleashed December 18 on edit: now the site reads “Coming Soon.” Mike Curb is already pulling the same shit. It’ll come in raunchy and wussy flavors. Let’ s hope Curb is smart enough to drop this baby on [...]