Americana, Alt.Country
575 articles
The Band, Bob Dylan: The Band: Country Soul from Bob's Backup Band
Profile and Interview by Al Aronowitz, LIFE, 26 July 1968
BIG PINK IS one of those middle-class ranch houses you would expect to find in suburbia rather than on a mountain top in rustic Woodstock, ...
Review by Al Kooper, Rolling Stone, 10 August 1968
EVERY YEAR since 1963 we have all singled out one album to sum up what happened that year. It was usually the Beatles with their ...
The Band: Friends and Neighbours Just Call Us The Band
Profile and Interview by Al Aronowitz, Rolling Stone, 24 August 1968
NEW YORK: Big Pink is one of those middle class ranch houses of the type that you would expect to find in development row in ...
The Band: On The Horizon: The Band
Profile and Interview by Al Aronowitz, Hullabaloo, October 1968
BIG PINK IS ONE of those middle-class ranch houses of the type that you would expect to find in development row in the heart of ...
Taj Mahal: At Last — A Welcome New Voice
Profile by Chris Welch, Melody Maker, 22 March 1969
A NEW VOICE on the music scene and a very welcome one, belongs to Mr Taj Mahal a young blues singer and guitarist from Massachusetts. ...
Joe South: Joe Tells Of The Games People Play...
Interview by Derek Boltwood, Record Mirror, 5 April 1969
GET UP, GO over to the window and look out. Up and down that pavement outside every day walk people, some for pleasure, some going ...
The Band: We Can Talk About It Now
Report by Greil Marcus, Good Times, 15 August 1969
THE BAND has been together the best part of a decade, almost nine years. Little Richard has been Little Richard for about double that, but ...
Joe South: The Other White South
Comment by Charlie Gillett, Record Mirror, 6 June 1970
MOST WHITE people in the American South like country and western music. ...
Ry Cooder: The Name To Watch In 71...
Interview by Jacoba Atlas, Melody Maker, 19 December 1970
Jacoba Atlas talks to the States' hottest new guitarist ...
The Band: A Melody Maker Band Breakdown
Profile and Interview by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 29 May 1971
FEW ROCK AND ROLL concerts can have been so eagerly awaited as those which The Band are due to play at London's Royal Albert Hall ...
Report and Interview by Geoffrey Cannon, Melody Maker, 5 June 1971
NO DIFFICULTY KNOWING when you've just finished hearing a great rock concert. Because you'll be in the middle of a great crowd of people standing ...
Taj Mahal: The Real Thing (CBS)
Review by Jerry Gilbert, Sounds, 31 July 1971
FOR SOME reason it all seems to have gone wrong for Taj Mahal. ...
The Band Comes Back to California
Live Review by uncredited writer, Los Angeles Times, 30 November 1971
SAN FRANCISCO -- It was exactly 9:30 p.m. Saturday when Bill Graham, far more relaxed than in his intense Fillmore days, walked on stage at ...
The Band: 'There's Still Togetherness': The Band
Report and Interview by Nick Logan, Hit Parader, December 1971
The Band – now down to playing 10 to 15 gigs a year over four or five weekends...a couple of tours a year the rest ...
Rita Coolidge, Kris Kristofferson: Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge: Kris and the Delta lady
Interview by Rosalind Russell, Disc, 13 May 1972
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON and the Delta Lady — Rita Coolidge — arrived in London last week to a hero's welcome. Could it be that people are ...
Rita Coolidge, Kris Kristofferson: Kris Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge: Royal Albert Hall, London
Live Review by Andrew Means, Melody Maker, 20 May 1972
Kris the casual pro ...
Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks: Dan Hicks Strikes it Rich
Profile and Interview by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 7 October 1972
ROBERT PLANT was the first Dan Hicks fan I ever knew. A couple of years ago he broke up an interview session by playing a ...
Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks: Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks: Troubadour, Los Angeles CA
Live Review by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 19 April 1973
DAN HICKS, HOT LICKS ON TROUBADOUR STAGE ...
Report by Bill Wasserzieher, The Village Voice, 27 September 1973
PARK RANGERS found the half-charred body of country-rock musician Gram Parsons in a burned casket at Joshua Tree National Monument in California last Friday. ...
Doug Sahm: Arise, Sir Douglas is Blowing Up A Storm
Report and Interview by Loraine Alterman, Melody Maker, 6 October 1973
THE FUNKY SOUNDS of 'Texas Tornado', Doug Sahm's latest single, blasted out of the stereo in the office of Atlantic Records' co-ordinator of A&R, Mark ...
Lowell George, Van Dyke Parks: Van Dyke Parks
Interview by John Tobler, Hot Wacks, 9 November 1973
...with contributions from Lowell George and Pete Frame. ...
Bonnie Raitt: The Troubadour, Los Angeles
Live Review by Steven Rosen, Sounds, 17 November 1973
IT WAS a unique week in Hollywood recently when female performers simultaneously headlined three clubs. The Ash Grove hosted Tret Fure, The Roxy offered Linda ...
Review by Loraine Alterman, The New York Times, 2 June 1974
Setting a Scene for Rock ...
Maria Muldaur: Waitress In A Donut Shop
Review by Bob Woffinden, New Musical Express, 16 November 1974
MARIA MULDAUR'S got class – no argument about it. It may have been a long, hard climb, but she is now receiving the attention she ...
Flying Burrito Brothers: Sneeky Pete Kleinow
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 February 1975
SNEEKY PETE KLEINOW looks like you'd expect a veteran pedal-steel player to look. Green shirt with an elaborate marijuana-leaf motif emblazoned there-on, neatly pressed, white ...
Maria Muldaur: Maria Hangs Loose
Interview by Karl Dallas, Melody Maker, 2 August 1975
Maria Muldaur, the American singer who has just completed a highly-successful week at London's Ronnie Scott Club, talks to KARL DALLAS ...
Live Review by Philip Elwood, The San Francisco Examiner, 18 November 1975
Can't get enough of 'em ...
The Band: Northern Lights — Southern Cross (Capitol St— 11440)
Review by Michael Watts, Melody Maker, 20 December 1975
The Band is back — almost ...
Review by Michael Watts, Melody Maker, 3 January 1976
THE LINK between these two artists is by no means absolute, but the somewhat eccentric tastes of each have produced intriguing and offbeat albums. ...
Country Joe & The Fish: Country Joe McDonald: Paradise With An Ocean View
Review by Mick Farren, New Musical Express, 24 January 1976
Gimme a W, gimme an H, gimme an A, gimme an L... ...
Commander Cody: Lost Planet Airman Finds Lone Star, Starts Drinking
Report and Interview by Mick Brown, Street Life, 21 February 1976
THEY DIDN’T ask Commander Cody if they could use his face to advertise Lone Star beer, but he’s the first to admit it fits. "Country ...
Jesse Winchester: New Victoria, London
Live Review by David Hepworth, New Musical Express, 17 July 1976
JESSE WINCHESTER certainly didn't have things easy for his British concert debut last week. For a start, the combination of heatwave and Bonnie And Clyde ...
The Band: ...Mounties, Maple Syrup: The Band at the Greek Theatre, Los Angeles
Live Review by Mick Farren, New Musical Express, 25 September 1976
RUMOURS HAD BEEN circulating (the way rumours always do) for some months. They claimed that there was some kind of rift between The Band and ...
Review by Max Bell, New Musical Express, 25 September 1976
THERE ARE only a few things you need to know about J.J. Cale. ...
The Band: The Best Of The Band
Review by Bob Woffinden, New Musical Express, 25 September 1976
ANYTHING THAT allows The Band to maintain their self-imposed torpor should be actively discouraged, and it is with this sentiment in mind that I proposed ...
Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen: Hot Licks, Cold Steel And Truckers' Favourites
Review by Mick Farren, New Musical Express, 2 October 1976
We've Got A Live One Here ...
Ry Cooder, Flaco Jimenez: Ry Cooder: Ry Talks
Profile and Interview by Richard Harrington, Unicorn Times, November 1976
IF YOU know Ry Cooder's music for its own brilliance, then you can be considered lucky. If you don't know it specifically, then chances are ...
Interview by John Tobler, Rock's Backpages audio, Fall 1976
The great guitar player talks about the musicians who influenced him; his friendship with John Fahey; the Rising Sons, and Ed Cassidy and Taj Mahal; his encounter with Captain Beefheart; film scores (and more) with Jack Nitzsche; other things he did and didn't do; his early Warner Bros. albums, and Depression-era songs; his unique album covers; Paradise and Lunch, and not being a songwriter; getting into Hawaiian and Tex-Mex music, and his latest album, Chicken Skin Music.
File format: mp3; file size: 51.1mb, interview length: 53' 14" sound quality: ****
Profile and Interview by Giovanni Dadomo, Sounds, 15 January 1977
Mr & Mrs Dadomo of North London present the moving tale of Ryland P Cooder, guitar hero to the rock-gentry and one of Giovanni's personal ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 18 June 1977
Taj Me In The Morning ...
The Band: The Weight: The Band's Anthology
Review by Dave Marsh, The Boston Phoenix, 1978
IT'S NOT HARD to understand the release of Anthology, the second repackaging of Band material in two years. The group made only eight albums (one ...
Delbert McClinton: Second Wind (Capricorn)
Review by Fred Schruers, Circus, 11 May 1978
THIS IS one of those (rare) lock-up-your-daughters records. In fact, better run the sheep into the pen and turn on the floodlights, because Delbert McClinton's ...
The Band: Ten Years of Stage Fright: The Life And Times Of Robbie Robertson & The Band
Retrospective and Interview by Mick Farren, New Musical Express, 17 June 1978
ALTHOUGH AT the time individuals may tell you different, it's no big deal for a band to break up. It happens almost every week and, ...
Stephen Stills: Thoroughfare Gap
Review by Sandy Robertson, Sounds, 11 November 1978
IN THE end all will be disco, or so it would seem, so the best you can hope for is that your chosen hero exercises ...
Ry Cooder: Bop Till You Drop (Warner Bros.)*****
Review by Peter Silverton, Sounds, 21 July 1979
THERE'S PROBABLY a whole bunch of enormous ironies knocking around this world but right now I can't think of a bigger or more slap-happy one ...
Ry Cooder: Bop Till You Drop (Warners Import)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 21 July 1979
RYLAND P. Cooder is a most reliable fellow. Ever since the days when he was laying down that stinging bottleneck guitar behind the likes of ...
Ry Cooder: Ry And Related Stuff
Interview by Paul Rambali, New Musical Express, 11 August 1979
"Me and my wife, Went all over town, And everywhere we went, The people turned us down, Lord, in a bourgeois town, In a bourgeois ...
Taj Mahal: Recycling the Blues
Interview by Max Bell, New Musical Express, 11 August 1979
"I'm goin to the river goin to sit down on the ground/I'm goin to the river goin to sit down on the ground/And let the ...
Fabulous Thunderbirds: Thunderbirds Are Go!
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Sounds, 15 March 1980
"I'M REALLY good at this kind of thing." said Kim Wilson. "Broken hearts or broken legs, they're all the same to me." He jabbed a ...
Ry Cooder: Vinyl Choice: Ry Cooder
Interview by Mick Brown, The Sunday Times Magazine, November 1980
RY COODER was once described as a "curator of American music". A fair assessment, but it hardly captures the joy and affection of his modern ...
Interview by Danny (Shredder) Weizmann, Flipside, 1981
THE GUN CLUB don’t give a shit. Born and bred under the scorching suns of Dallas, El Paso and (yuk yuk) Los Angeles, rifle in ...
Levon Helm: An interview with Levon Helm
Interview by Peter Stone Brown, unpublished, March 1981
NOTE: Originally broadcast on the country/bluegrass show "Sunnyside" on WXPN, FM Philadelphia, in March 1981. ...
The Blasters: Down Home with The Blasters
Profile and Interview by Don Snowden, New York Rocker, March 1981
FIRST THINGS first: I love roots music but I'm no great rockabilly fan. The part I like best – the beat – is pure black ...
Delbert McClinton: The Last of the Great Texas Honky-Tonkers
Interview by Todd Everett, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 24 December 1981
YOU TAKE a right turn off the Pacific Coast Highway and head into the hills of Malibu. If you pick the right road and travel ...
Profile and Interview by Michael Goldberg, Musician, April 1982
WITH THEIR hair greased back into pompadours, their shirtsleeves rolled up and cigarettes dangling from their lower lips, Phil Alvin and his younger brother Dave ...
Profile by Todd Everett, Trouser Press, April 1982
IT'S AN IRONIC fact of life that until quite recently very few of the so-called (and frequently maligned) "Los Angeles" bands had deep roots in ...
The Blasters: The Blasters (F-Beat)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1 May 1982
THE BLUSTERERS ...
Dr. John: Dr John: On Becoming Mac Rebennack
Interview by J.D. Considine, Musician, June 1982
The legend of Dr. John and his gumbo ragtime voodoo funk medicine, as told by the man who invented him, lived him and let him ...
Interview by John Hutchinson, In Dublin, June 1982
WITHIN HOURS of arriving from Glasgow, Ry Cooder walked into a room in Jury's Hotel wearing a black track suit, with a towel bundled under ...
Rank and File: Rank & File: Not a Common Band
Profile by Gary Pig Gold, The Pig Paper, 1983
"THEY SOUND like a cross between Buck Owens and the Ramones!" "Watching Chip Kinman on stage is just like watching Gary Busey in The Buddy ...
Lone Justice: Country Not For Clods
Interview by Bill Bentley, L.A. Weekly, 14 July 1983
THERE'S A scene in The Last Picture Show in which Ben Johnson confronts a crowd of kids who, as a prank, have set up a ...
Interview by Byron Coley, Boston Rock, 8 August 1983
Since their inception as the seminal punk tabloid of the late '70s, the Slash organization has always kept its finger on the pulse of new ...
Interview by Mark Leviton, BAM, 23 September 1983
LOS ANGELES – Fringe jackets, mini-skirts, turtlenecks, striped trousers, long hair, 12-string guitars, LSD, acoustic instruments, garage rehearsals – lots of things are coming back ...
NRBQ: Organic Eclecticism in Orbit
Profile and Interview by Mark Rowland, Musician, October 1983
SEEING NRBQ play in a club for the first time is a little like sauntering into an amusement park with all-new rides — you're happy ...
The Blasters Ridin' On The Jubilee Train
Interview by Bill Holdship, Creem, December 1983
PERHAPS TAKING A cue from the Book Of Rock Lists, I once considered compiling a list of the best rock records to listen to when ...
Jason & The Scorchers: Jason and the Scorchers: Can't Be Real If It Ain't Got That Feel
Profile and Interview by Anthony DeCurtis, Record, January 1984
SWEAT-SOAKED and sprawled on a couch in the dressing room of Atlanta hot-spot 688 club, Scorcher guitarist Warner Hodges pulls on a cold one and ...
The Long Ryders: Long Ryders: Don't Call Us Country-Rock
Profile and Interview by Jeff Tamarkin, Billboard, 5 January 1984
L.A. Band Following in Burrito Brothers' Footsteps ...
Los Lobos: ...And A Time To Dance (Slash)
Review by J.D. Considine, Record, February 1984
VERY AMERICAN ...
Interview by Bill Bentley, DownBeat, June 1984
They've got the Louisiana boogie and the Delta blues, country swing and rockabilly too, jazz, country western and Chicago blues, it's the greatest music that ...
The Long Ryders: Long-Haul Ryders
Interview by Bill Bentley, L.A. Weekly, 20 December 1984
IF ROCK & roll were baseball, the Long Ryders would surely receive the Most Improved Players award. Two years ago, the group was little more ...
John Fogerty: Centerfield (Warner Bros.)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1985
TIME STANDS still in Fogertyville. It’s ten years since the old Creedence leader made a record and nothing much has changed. There’s a few syndrums ...
Jason & The Scorchers: Lost And Found (EMI America)
Review by Mat Snow, New Musical Express, 23 February 1985
We're sorry, but the headline has to be...PHEW! WHAT A SCORCHER! ...
The Beat Farmers: Beat Farmers: Tales Of The New West
Review by Roy Trakin, Creem, July 1985
ROOTS? DID I HEAR somebody say roots? These grizzled nugget-miners have wandered in from the San Diego desert town of El Centro with an impressive ...
Interview by Jack Barron, Sounds, 27 July 1985
All aboard The Blasters' American Express, en route to the heartland of rock 'n' roll '85 style. "That'll do nicely," exclaims an impressed Jack Barron ...
Danny and Dusty, The Knitters: Old Punks At Home: The Knitters and Danny & Dusty
Review by Don Snowden, The Boston Phoenix, 30 July 1985
THE MOST VIGOROUS Los Angeles rock in the past five years has been staunchly traditionalist, the work of true believers rallying around and expanding upon ...
International Submarine Band: Missing Parsons: The International Submarine Band
Retrospective by Sid Griffin, Sounds, 7 September 1985
THE INTERNATIONAL Submarine Band is a classic example of a popular music act whose real worth was only revealed with the passing of time ...
The Blasters: Just An American Band
Interview by Don Waller, Spin, October 1985
The Blasters could play any bar in the U.S.A.: these roots were made for rockin'. ...
The Long Ryders: Griffin, Long Ryders Set To Go The Distance
Interview by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 19 December 1985
WHEN SID Griffin talks about his "family" these days, he doesn't just mean his folks back in Kentucky. He's referring to the Los Angeles musical ...
The Long Ryders: Roxy, Los Angeles CA
Live Review by Don Waller, Los Angeles Times, 21 December 1985
LONG RYDERS: WHO WERE THOSE COUNTRY-ROCKERS? ...
10,000 Maniacs: The Wishing Chair (Elektra)
Review by Ira Robbins, Rolling Stone, 27 March 1986
LEST 10,000 Maniacs be mistaken for members of the SoHo establishment, check your map: the sextet's home base, Jamestown, New York, is roughly the same ...
Interview by Martin Aston, Rock's Backpages audio, April 1986
Brian Ritchie talks about the acoustic approach of the trio's first two albums, and about getting more electric with The Blind Leading the Naked; about the instruments they use and the multitude of approaches they take in the studio. Ritchie and Gordon Gano talk about the sound of the new album, about being produced by Talking Head Jerry Harrison; about their previous album Hallowed Ground and their label Slash. Finally, Gano talks about what's important to him, his songwriting... and the existence or otherwise of God.
File format: mp3; file size: 44.7mb, interview length: 46' 35" sound quality: ***
Interview by Gene Santoro, DownBeat, August 1986
LATELY A lot of folks have been going back to school again studying the roots of the music they're making so they can grow their ...
Lone Justice: Maria McKee: Sweet Heart Of The Radio
Report and Interview by Mat Snow, New Musical Express, 1 November 1986
So, what's it to be then? Is MARIA McKEE of LONE JUSTICE last year's pretty thing or next year's Queen of the airwaves? MAT SNOW ...
Camper Van Beethoven: Camper Van Beethoven (Rough Trade)
Review by David Quantick, New Musical Express, 29 November 1986
CAMPER VAN Beethoven occupy the leftovers of Americana. Others have claimed the broader fields of country music and rock and punk, and the great subjects ...
Los Lobos: By The Light Of The Moon (Warner Bros 1-25523)
Review by Gene Santoro, DownBeat, April 1987
BY NOW it should be pretty damn clear to anybody with ears that these guys are no novelty act ready to fade back into the ...
Overview by John Morthland, High Fidelity, August 1987
The rehabilitation of the accordion: American pop's got a squeeze-box. ...
Ry Cooder Charts His Own Course
Interview by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 28 October 1987
RY COODER'S atmospheric film scores, eclectic albums and collaborations with prestige performers like Randy Newman and John Hiatt have created an image of the musician ...
Cowboy Junkies: Saddled With The Blues: Cowboy Junkies
Interview by Len Brown, New Musical Express, 1988
JOHN WAYNE on smack? Is that what you expected and outfit who call themselves Cowboy Junkies to sound like? Wild country and western shoot-outs and ...
Ry Cooder: Fascinatin' Rhythms
Interview by Dave Zimmer, BAM, 12 February 1988
FIVE YEARS may have passed since Ry Cooder last put together an album of non-movie music, but it's not as if the guy has been ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, March 1988
FIVE YEARS AGO Ry Cooder packed out the Hammersmith Odeon for eight consecutive nights, the culmination of a triumphant European tour. ...
Interview by David Sinclair, The Times, 13 May 1988
David Sinclair meets American guitarist Ry Cooder, in London to prepare for a six-city British tour ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, The Guardian, 20 May 1988
Ry Cooder is on the road again. He talks to Mark Cooper ...
Live Review by Hugh Fielder, Sounds, 28 May 1988
SLOW BURNING PERFECTION ...
Souled American: Fe (Rough Trade)
Review by Dele Fadele, New Musical Express, 11 February 1989
STILL TRAPPED in the much-vaunted US grassroots revival's clutches, Souled American are floudering. It's no surprise that the search for authenticity petered out, as the ...
Buckwheat Zydeco: The Gospel Accordion To Buckwheat
Interview by Simon Witter, New Musical Express, 4 March 1989
Down in New Orleans SIMON WITTER met squeeze-boxer Stanley 'Buckwheat' Duval ...
Cowboy Junkies: Royal Festival Hall, London
Live Review by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, 27 March 1989
Cowpoking explorers: one of the newest names in New Country and an all-out thrash attack ...
Lucinda Williams: Walking The Line
Profile and Interview by Sean O'Hagan, New Musical Express, 20 May 1989
LUCINDA WILLIAMS was caught just in time, the singer/songwriter was just about to head off into the hills when somehow Rough Trade pulled her back. ...
Cindy Lee Berryhill: Beat Poetry
Profile and Interview by Mark Kemp, Spin, June 1989
Cindy Lee Berryhill, a bowl of musical trailmix, left California for New York. But she brought a lot of folklore with her. ...
Doug Sahm: He's About A Rocker
Interview by Luke Torn, Austin Chronicle, 9 June 1989
DEFINING DOUG Sahm is no easy task. The original Texas Tornado. Doug Saldana. Sir Douglas. Talk to a dozen different people and you'll get a ...
Cindy Lee Berryhill: Naked Movie Star (Rhino)
Review by Holly Gleason, Rolling Stone, 29 June 1989
CINDY LEE Berryhill comes across as a mixture of beat poet, street waif and social gadfly — a dangerous combination that threatens to slide into ...
Cowboy Junkies: The Cowboy Junkies: Cowboy country
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, The Guardian, 30 June 1989
Mark Cooper hears how the Cowboy Junkies draw on Canada for their inspiration ...
BoDeans: Home (Slash/London LP/Cassette/CD)
Review by Edwin Pouncey, New Musical Express, 9 September 1989
SLASH RECORDS were one of the first American labels to offer an alternative selection of new artists to an industry bloated on feeble rock clichés. ...
J.J. Cale: J.J.Cale: Travel Log
Review by Andy Gill, Q, December 1989
SOME ARTISTS set a style so distinctively their own they become immediately generic; as with The Ramones or Led Zeppelin, J.J. Cale's first album Naturally ...
Review by Clinton Walker, HQ, 1990
"JOHNNY CASH DIES": It's a headline that some of us, with more than a tinge of sadness, have been dreading to see for some time ...
Lucinda Williams: Happy Woman Blues
Sleeve notes by John Morthland, Smithsonian Folkways, 1990
THE DAUGHTER of an English lit professor, Lucinda Williams was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and spent most of her youth moving from college town ...
Lucinda Williams: Annadale Hotel, Sydney
Live Review by Andrew Mueller, Melody Maker, 6 January 1990
MICK FROM Weddings Parties Anything and Jon from Paul Kelly's Messengers are The Indigo Boys, the support act, and something I miss entirely except for ...
Cowboy Junkies: Horse Latitudes
Interview by Chris Roberts, Melody Maker, 24 February 1990
"MOST OF THE SONGS, there's a grain of hope in there. The characters are always striving for something else. They're in a situation which is ...
Interview by Larry Jaffee, Rock's Backpages audio, 19 March 1990
Tulsa's finest talks about recording, songwriting, Leon Russell, Paul Simon and Spooner Oldham, Silvertone Records, 'After Midnight' and much more.
File format: mp3; file size: 52.5mb, interview length: 59' 03" sound quality: ***
David Lindley, Ry Cooder: Ry Cooder & David Lindley: Hammersmith Odeon, London
Live Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 15 July 1990
A backroom Stone slides into town ...
John Hiatt: Bottom Line, New York
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, August 1990
A SKINNY troubadour with a throaty, abrasive growl of a voice, John Hiatt slides in to the American rock dream somewhere between Ry Cooder at ...
Sleeve notes by John Morthland, Smithsonian Folkways, 1991
WHEN IT WAS first released in 1979, Ramblin' could not have been more out of step. Lucinda Williams, who did indeed have ramblin' on her ...
Chickasaw Mudd Puppies: 8 Track Stomp
Review by Mike Barnes, Select, April 1991
MICHAEL STIPE'S production involvement with Chickasaw Mudd Puppies has given them welcome exposure. Still, the duo from Athens, Georgia, would like to be remembered for ...
Chickasaw Mudd Puppies: 8 Track Stomp (Wing)
Review by Max Bell, Vox, April 1991
WE'VE GOT a weird one here. The Chickasaw Mudd Puppies, for those who don't know, take their name from a river running through Alabama, though ...
Danny Gatton: Of Cars, Bars and Vintage Guitars
Interview by Geoffrey Himes, DownBeat, April 1991
IMAGINE THAT you're an English roots-rock guitarist — say, Dave Edmunds or Billy Bremner — and you've spent your whole life trying to look and ...
Interview by Michael Goldberg, Rolling Stone, 18 April 1991
Hot Ticket Chris Isaak: The last time he played Los Angeles, he couldn't get a sound check. ...
Chickasaw Mudd Puppies: The Chickasaw Mudd Puppies: Puppy Love
Profile and Interview by Max Bell, Vox, May 1991
Pull the straw out of your teeth and take your pardners for a new kind of dance. The Chickasaw Mudd Puppies are here and they're ...
Memoir by Steve Roeser, Goldmine, 28 June 1991
GENE CLARK'S last performance took place about a mile or so from the spot where the Byrds took off from 27 years ago – Ciro's ...
Essay by Jeff Tamarkin, Goldmine, 26 July 1991
THE QUINTET KNOWN as the Band never did get back together in that same, familiar aggregation. To this day, however, there is a band called ...
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers: Into The Great Wide Open
Review by Mat Snow, Q, August 1991
THE TITLE says it all. Space, horizon and all those rich possibilities are so central to the idea of America that it's hardly surprising they ...
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, September 1991
Collectors of happy endings, look no further. Bonnie Raitt's career was dumper-bound until a P45 from her record company inspired her to rediscover her musical ...
Gram Parsons: Ben Fong-Torres: Hickory Wind – The Life and Times of Gram Parsons
Book Review by Bill Wasserzieher, Rock & Roll Disc, October 1991
"LIVE FAST, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse," the classic punk credo spoken by John Derek to Humphrey Bogart in Knock on Any Door ...
Little Village, Ry Cooder: Ry Cooder: At Home In The Village
Profile and Interview by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 16 February 1992
Robert Sandall talks to Ry Cooder about the band that has given his guitar-playing a new sense of pleasure and purpose ...
Review by John Swenson, Rolling Stone, 20 February 1992
MUSICIANS WHO live in New York City have often learned the hard way that the music industry can he short-sighted when it comes to recognizing ...
Cowboy Junkies: Steers Beers and Pointy Ears
Interview by Steven Wells, New Musical Express, 7 March 1992
Q: Who killed John Wayne?A: Burt Lungcancer.– Cowboy drug joke, trad. ...
James McMurtry: Candyland (Columbia CK 46911)
Review by Bill Wasserzieher, Rock & Roll Disc, Fall 1992
Producer: John Mellencamp Engineer: Not available Total disc time: 42:32 (AAD) Merit: *** Sound: **** ...
Uncle Tupelo: Mean Fiddler, London
Live Review by David Bennun, Melody Maker, 2 January 1993
RELATIVE VALUES ...
Uncle Tupelo: Are You Ready for the Country?
Interview by David Bennun, Melody Maker, 9 January 1993
They don't play maudlin ditties about truck driving or dead sweethearts, but Uncle Tupelo are definitely a country band. Their three acclaimed albums, the latest ...
Profile and Interview by Christine Natanael, Creem, April 1993
"THE EARLIEST people that helped to invent rock 'n' roll and create whatever It may have gotten to today – people like Johnny Cash and ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, May 1993
ANYONE WHO remembers Maria McKee whooping it up with her country-rock band Lone Justice back in the ‘80s will concur with Deacon Blue's verdict that ...
Review by Mark Kemp, Rolling Stone, 9 December 1993
BEFORE UNCLE TUPELO'S No Depression sneaked out of Belleville, Ill., in 1990, the respective sounds of Sonic Youth and Lynyrd Skynyrd probably never occupied a ...
Crash Test Dummies: Things that make you go mmm...
Interview by Craig McLean, Vox, 1994
Crash Test Dummies smile and say "cheesy" in a desperate bid to avoid rock'n'roll pretentiousness. So why is frontman Brad Roberts still so serious? ...
Review by David Sinclair, Q, February 1994
THE LONGEST-RUNNING trio in rock, ZZ Top come down from the hills less frequently these days, yet they remain blithely impervious to the ravages of ...
Ben Harper: Welcome to the Cruel World (Virgin)
Review by Jon Young, Spin, March 1994
STILL PONDERING his options, Ben Harper raises an array of tantalizing possibilities on this confident, sometimes inspired debut. His spicy guitar work and Dobro licks ...
Profile and Interview by Lisa Verrico, Vox, June 1994
How can Beck be a Loser? He's ridiculed MTV, yet it still gives heavy rotation to this Kansas runt and his band of OAPs. ...
Beck, Jeff Buckley, David Gray, Ben Harper, Palace Music, Liz Phair: Beck et al: Don't fake the folk
Overview by Cliff Jones, The Face, August 1994
A WASTED voice wails to a scratchy guitar, drifting in some desolate, unforgiven shopping mall limbo: "I was working at McDonald's, doing the late night ...
Review by Ted Drozdowski, Rolling Stone, 8 September 1994
GLUM IS Howe Gelb's revenge — at least for the head-butting I gave Giant Sand's Purge and Slouch in the last issue. But his band's ...
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers: Tom Petty: Wildflowers (Warner)
Review by Andy Gill, Q, November 1994
THE SURPRISING choice of Rick Rubin as producer after a highly successful liaison with Jeff Lynne over his last couple of albums might suggest a ...
Report and Interview by Paul Gorman, Music Week, 1995
HE’S BACK IN BLACK...again. And, as ever, he means business. Johnny Cash, the original rock'n'roll spectre lets loose the leashes with new album Unchained, covering ...
Smog in a Wild Kingdom of Burning Love
Interview by Ian Christe, Alternative Press, 1995
BILL CALLAHAN has spent so much time alone that almost all he can do is be true to himself. He is absolute Bill, and people ...
Chris Whitley: A Latter-Day Folkie Gets Noisy
Profile and Interview by Tony Scherman, The New York Times, 26 March 1995
THE ROCKER TODAY whose music evokes Jimi Hendrix's splendid noise more powerfully than anyone else's is Chris Whitley – an improbable claim, given Mr. Whitley's ...
The Coal Porters, Sid Griffin: What a Long, Strange Ryde(r) It's Been: Sid Griffin
Interview by Bill Wasserzieher, The Bob, April 1995
SID GRIFFIN emerges from the underground tube station at Piccadilly Circus, a long coat over his shoulders, collar up against the chill, and coattails adrift ...
Wilco: A.M. (Reprise/Sire) ***½
Review by Holly George-Warren, Rolling Stone, 6 April 1995
GRAM PARSONS had a vision back in the '60s. With his International Submarine Band, Flying Burrito Brothers and later as a solo artist, he blazed ...
Review by Tony Scherman, Entertainment Weekly, 7 April 1995
WHEN CO-LEADER Jay Farrar quit the rootsy alternative-rock band Uncle Tupelo last year, the group renamed itself Wilco and cut A.M. (Reprise). As it turns ...
The Band: Live at Watkins Glen
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, June 1995
"They got their own thing together that takes you to a certain place. Takes you where they want to go... they play their things on ...
The Walkabouts: Strangely Famous in Greece, the Walkabouts Trace Their American Roots
Profile and Interview by Jason Cohen, Option, November 1995
IT'S SATURDAY, just past noon, in Austin, Texas. A fine time to be in bed, or at the very least, shaking off sleep over a ...
The Band, Rick Danko: The Band's Rick Danko (1995) [transcript]
Transcript of audio interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages transcripts, 21 November 1995
This is a transcript of Barney's audio interview with Rick. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Son Volt: Troubadour, Los Angeles CA
Live Review by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 6 December 1995
Son Volt's Engaging but Not Deep at the Troubadour ...
Cowboy Junkies: The Cowboy Junkies (1996)
Interview by Johnny Black, Rock's Backpages audio, 1996
Timmins frère et soeur talk about recording, writing and performing, and latest album Lay It Down.
File format: mp3; file size: 15.4mb, interview length: 16' 52" sound quality: *****
16 Horsepower: Divine Inspiration
Interview by Holly George-Warren, Rolling Stone, 4 April 1996
SIXTEEN HORSEPOWER conjure up that old-time religion ...
Emmylou Harris: Singing With a Voice That's Always True to Her Heart
Interview by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 11 April 1996
EVEN WHEN Emmylou Harris was a fixture on the country charts for a decade starting in 1975, her music was marked by an uncommon sense ...
Palace Music, Will Oldham: Will Oldham's Palace
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1996
THERE IS A STRANGE subcurrent in the American rock music of the mid-'90s: a subcurrent of lo-fi, willfully inept, not-quite-country rock that stretches from the ...
Review by Geoffrey Himes, New Country, June 1996
WHEN ROBBIE ROBERTSON and the rest of the Band split into two camps in the late '70s, who ever thought Robertson would get the worst ...
Report by Geoffrey Himes, Crawdaddy!, October 1996
ON OCTOBER 20th, 1977, the single-engine prop plane carrying Lynyrd Skynyrd crashed into a swamp in Gillsburg, Mississippi, killing the band's lead singer Ronnie Van ...
Johnny Cash (1996) [transcript]
Transcript of audio interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages transcripts, 14 October 1996
This is a transcript of Barney's audio interview with Johnny. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1997
"Got 29 acres and one ginnie mule," complain dustbowl balladeers Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Barney Hoskyns investigates their sharecropper chic. ...
Billy Bob Thornton Talks Movies and Music
Report and Interview by Steven R Rosen, Denver Post, 16 February 1997
ALL ACROSS AMERICA last week, there was one big question after the Academy Award nominations were announced: "Billy Bob who?'' ...
Kate & Anna McGarrigle: The Stubborn McGarrigles' Folk Music Keeps On Shining
Retrospective and Interview by Steven R Rosen, Denver Post, 23 February 1997
LIFE IS SHORT with few guarantees. But here's one – Kate and Anna McGarrigle will always make wonderful folk music. If only they weren't so ...
Richard Buckner: Devotion + Doubt
Review by Holly George-Warren, Rolling Stone, 20 March 1997
ON THE STARK and spacious Devotion + Doubt, Richard Buckner's aching vocals stand weather-beaten but unbowed, like a lone saguaro on the Mojave. And just ...
Interview by Keith Cameron, Vox, May 1997
THE WAITRESS next door to the Blue Note desperately wants to come, but she couldn't get the night off work. "Oh, it'll be fantastic!" she ...
Bill Callahan, Smog: Bill Callahan: Communication chord
Interview by Ben Thompson, The Independent, 11 May 1997
Bill Callahan spares nobody in his songs — himself least of all. Ben Thompson talks to the American who chooses to go by the name ...
Smog: Pea Super! Smog: Red Apple Falls (Domino 9 tks/43 mins)
Review by Neil Kulkarni, Melody Maker, 17 May 1997
You might not want him living next door to you, but Bill Callahan, aka SMOG, is surprisingly fine company... ...
Wilco: Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton
Live Review by Tom Cox, Uncut, June 1997
"WE SAW all those teenage girls outside and we assumed they were here for us. Hey, man, what gives?" ...
Gillian Welch: As Real And As Raw As It Gets
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, The Independent, 7 June 1997
Mark Cooper samples Gillian Welch's alternative bluegrass ...
Review by Paul Lester, Uncut, July 1997
IF, LIKE me, you thought The Jayhawks were just another bunch of New Country journeymen, then prepare to have your mind radically, brutally altered. ...
Bob Dylan: A Map You Can Throw Away: Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind
Review by Greil Marcus, The San Francisco Examiner, 2 November 1997
THE CHALLENGE of Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind – his first collection of self-written songs since 1990 – is to take it at face ...
Gene Clark: Flying High (Polydor)
Review by Jon Savage, MOJO, 1998
UNTIL RECENTLY, Gene Clark has been one of rock's best kept secrets. Harassed by his Byrd colleagues, ignored as the real inventor of country rock ...
The Band, Levon Helm: The Weight on Levon Helm
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1998
LEVON HELM is perched on the arm of a carved wooden chair in his large house-cum-recording studio in Woodstock, N.Y., and he’s cackling his head ...
Will Oldham: Viva Will Oldham: The Permutations of Palace
Book Excerpt by Ben Thompson, 'Seven Years of Plenty', 1998
THE VARIOUS mutations of the Palace name are a cover for the extraordinary career of Louisville's Will Oldham. The opposite of the businessman who opens ...
Comment by Glenn O'Brien, Artforum, January 1998
I HEARD A TRACK from Bob Dylan's new Time Out of Mind (Columbia) on the radio a few weeks before the album's release. I didn't ...
Victoria Williams: Musings Of A Creekdipper (Atlantic)
Review by Holly George-Warren, Rolling Stone, 5 February 1998
LOUISIANA-BORN songwriter Victoria Williams may share an audience with the alt-country likes of Wilco and the Jayhawks, but she remains a true outsider artist with ...
Willard Grant Conspiracy: Rustic Grunge
Interview by Tom Cox, Uncut, May 1998
LOG CABINS. Big coats. A stroppy Tindersticks undercut with ghostly suspense. Damp, misty woodland. Autumn. These are the things Flying Low, the second album by ...
The Handsome Family, Tom Leach, Whiskeytown: Pretty boys in big hats need not apply
Report and Interview by Paul Sexton, The Times, 14 May 1998
Forget the Nashville pin-ups. Country music is taking a turn for the darker, as Paul Sexton reports ...
Sparklehorse: Good Morning Spider
Review by Chris Roberts, Uncut, August 1998
Second LP from highly rated alt country act with edge and attitude. ...
Review by Tom Cox, Uncut, October 1998
Divine stratospheric trip from sentimental gadgeteers ...
Son Volt: Wide Swing Tremolo (Warner Bros.) ***½
Review by Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times, 10 October 1998
SON VOLT'S Jay Farrar is one of alternative country's big thinkers. Rather than go the easy route and retrace the steps of the Byrds, Gram ...
Overview by Tom Cox, The Guardian, 16 October 1998
Tom Cox on the new bands that are making country music sexy ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages audio, 2 November 1998
Ms Williams talks about the often-torturous gestation of her magnificent Car Wheels On A Gravel Road album, and about her roots and influences, musical and literary.
File format: mp3; file size: 29.8mb, interview length: 32' 29" sound quality: ** (phoner)
Vic Chesnutt: Gravity's Rainbow: Vic Chesnutt
Profile by Will Hermes, The Village Voice, 24 November 1998
LIKE PLENTY of other folks in wheelchairs, Vic Chesnutt doesn't want your sympathy. In fact, he can challenge the compassion of even those closest to ...
Review by Ian MacDonald, Uncut, December 1998
Downbeat apocalypse: US master of ironic eclecticism unearths a diamond in the trash. ...
Beck: The Shock of the Old: Beck and the New Roots Explosion
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1998
"...to be an American (unlike English or French or whatever) is precisely to imagine a destiny rather than to inherit one; since we have always ...
Crosby Stills Nash & Young: Crosby Stills Nash and Young: Looking Forward in Y2K
Interview by Debbie Kruger, unpublished, 1999
GRAHAM NASH IS by nature an ebullient man, but maybe this time he went too far. Such was the anticipation of the long-awaited new Crosby ...
Interview by Rob Hughes, unpublished, 1999
OCTOBER 1999. On the release of early-years compilation Down In The Valley - and four months prior to fourth studio album, In The Air - ...
Interview by Johnny Black, Rock's Backpages audio, 1999
The Chicago boys talk about the making of Summerteeth, and life on the road.
File format: mp3; file size: 32.8mb, interview length: 35' 47" sound quality: ****
Mercury Rev: 5 For '99: Mercury Rev
Interview by Ben Thompson, MOJO, January 1999
HOW MANY BANDS ARE THERE who have made their best records after losing their lead singer? Whoever said "Marillion", go and sit in the corner, ...
Vic Chesnutt: The Salesman and Bernadette (Capricorn)
Review by Eric Weisbard, Spin, January 1999
THIS IS THE best record of the year at making time stop. Vic Chesnutt tells a story. Maybe the tale pulls into it specific figures, ...
Bonnie "Prince" Billy: Bonnie Prince Billy: I See A Darkness (Domino)
Review by Andy Gill, The Independent, 22 January 1999
WILL OLDHAM'S whimsical penchant for changing his name with each successive release (Palace Brothers, Palace Music, Palace, even Will Oldham) has already resulted in the ...
Review by Andy Gill, The Independent, 29 January 1999
THE NONCHALANT fatalism that marked Bill "Smog" Callahan's previous records continues to pervade Knock Knock, although his musical palette has suddenly expanded in strange new ...
Bonnie "Prince" Billy: The great pretender — Bonnie "Prince" Billy: Water Rats, London
Live Review by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 6 February 1999
Caroline Sullivan knows one thing about Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. He's common ...
Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Will Oldham, Smog: Bonnie "Prince" Billy & Smog: The Country Frontlash
Profile and Interview by Ben Thompson, The Independent, 12 February 1999
Bill Callahan and Will Oldham are acclaimed pioneers of alternative country, yet the former is inspired by the Wu-Tang Clan and the latter does heavy ...
Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Will Oldham: Prince of Darkness
Interview by Gavin Martin, Uncut, March 1999
WILL OLDHAM is supposed to be the Mr Misery of new country. So what's he doing on GLR trying to persuade Sean Hughes that Aerosmith ...
Jon Langford, The Mekons, The Waco Brothers: An Interview with Jon Langford
Interview by Jason Gross, Bangsheet, May 1999
IN THE MIDDLE of yet another tour for the alt-alt-country act the Waco Brothers and on hiatus from his original band the Mekons, Jon "Boy" ...
Robert Earl Keen: Rise Up, Texas
Interview by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, May 1999
Robert Earl Keen leads Texas acts on tour ...
Interview by Simon Price, Uncut, May 1999
Smog's Bill Callahan is to Nineties USA what Morrissey was to Eighties Britain: the undisputed bard of smalltown melancholia. Simon Price meets the pea-souperman. ...
Chris Smither: Accoustic Blues
Profile and Interview by Chris Smith, Revue, 13 May 1999
DESPITE HIS UNPARALLELED folk-blues guitar work, a voice that seems to channel ancient, Appalachian spirits, and near-legendary status in folk-circles, Chris Smither has never been ...
Willard Grant Conspiracy: Songs of Suffocation and Hard-Won Hope
Profile and Interview by Nick Hasted, The Independent, June 1999
IT'S AN embarrassment of riches, a shotgun marriage of two underselling headliners that works an instant alchemy. On a bill that began at an ungodly ...
Deep River: The Bounty of Alan Lomax
Retrospective by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 14 June 1999
THE CD STARTS with a banjo picker burning on a hoedown called 'Cripple Creek,' progresses along a chain of mountain songs to 'Arkansas Traveler,' and ...
The Grifters, Those Bastard Souls: Bastards No More: Life After Grifting
Interview by Andria Lisle, Ray Gun, July 1999
The Grifters’ David Shouse seeks redemption with THOSE BASTARDS SOULS. ...
Gram Parsons: The Long Way Around: Gram Parsons
Retrospective and Interview by Holly George-Warren, No Depression, July 1999
I keep my love for variations, even tho I've some sort of "rep" for starting what (I think) has turned out t'be pretty much of ...
Kelly Joe Phelps: Zen Guitar: Kelly Joe Phelps Heads East
Report and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 5 July 1999
KELLY JOE PHELPS is a traveler. With a pair of acoustic guitars in his car's trunk and notepads scattered about its seats, he drives across ...
Johnny Dowd: Pictures From Life's Other Side (Koch Entertainment)
Review by Gary Pig Gold, In Music We Trust, October 1999
I SURE HAD A feeling something was up when a strange little disc called WRONG SIDE OF MEMPHIS, written and solely performed by a forty-nine-year-old ...
Chuck Prophet: Underworld, London ****
Live Review by Keith Cameron, The Guardian, 17 November 1999
IN 1989 CHUCK Prophet was the snake-hipped, guitar-slinging foil to Dan Stuart's punch-drunk sheriff in American rock'n'rollers Green On Red. ...
Sally Timms: Cowboy Sally’s Twilight Laments ... for Lost Buckaroos
Review by Eric Weisbard, The Village Voice, 17 November 1999
THE DREAMING COWBOY has been away from his home and his woman for 20 years, riding in rodeos. After his body breaks down he stays ...
Drive-By Truckers: Pizza Deliverance (Soul Dump/Ghostmeat)
Review by Eric Weisbard, The Village Voice, 22 December 1999
WE DROVE TO Pittsburgh the weekend before Halloween, to watch the leaves change and attend a three-day fest called the Haunted Hillbilly Hoedown. ...
Richard Buckner: Bloomed (Slow River/Rykodisc)
Retrospective by Matt Hanks, No Depression, Summer 1999
RICHARD BUCKNER'S 1994 debut album, Bloomed, heralded the arrival of a uniquely expressive and honest songwriter and reaped Buckner tomes of critical praise, a deal ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, CDNOW.com, 2000
THE BAND THAT helped kick-start the alterna-country sound over a decade ago has undergone a major transformation since the departure of co-founder Mark Olson following ...
Review by Nick Hasted, Uncut, March 2000
Knife In The Water: Plays One Sound and Others Midnight Choir: Amsterdam Stranded Sunshine Club: Home Jonny Kaplan: California Heart Neal Casal: Anytime Tomorrow Lou ...
Susan Tedeschi's Old-Fashioned Success Story
Profile and Interview by Anthony DeCurtis, Rolling Stone, 2 March 2000
"YOU SAY you haven't been rocked in a long, long time/ And good hard rockin' is so hard to find."The opening lyrics to Susan Tedeschi's ...
The Handsome Family: Tales Of Extra Ordinary Madness
Interview by Gavin Martin, Uncut, April 2000
Welcome to the dark, disturbing world of Brett and Rennie Sparks, otherwise known as THE HANDSOME FAMILY. ...
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, May 2000
Ninth dry—lipped album from the Buster Keaton of sadcore ...
The Jayhawks: Smile (Columbia)
Review by Tom Cox, The Guardian, 5 May 2000
"THESE SONGS ACT like country-tinged rock and roll with an intellectual attitude and shit-kicking ambiance, but they're smarter than they act... they aren't as simple ...
Review by Eric Weisbard, Spin, June 2000
Kelly Hogan & the Pine Valley Cosmonauts: Beneath the Country Underdog (Bloodshot);The Handsome Family: In the Air (Carrot Top); Mekons: Journey to the End of ...
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, June 2000
Fourth outing from prolific Giant Sand rhythm kings and assorted playmates ...
Calexico, Lambchop, Wheat: Kings Of Americana: Lambchop, Calexico, Wheat
Report and Interview by Gavin Martin, Uncut, June 2000
Lambchop THE GREAT AMERICAN Music Hall is an exotic relic in the middle of San Francisco's Tenderloin district. Outside, the streets are full of junkies, hobos ...
Lee Hazlewood: 13/The Cowboy And The Lady (Smells Like)
Review by Ian Penman, The Wire, June 2000
LEE HAZLEWOOD is not one of those cult objects who, on closer inspection, looks like a frail talent protected by decades of vinyl scarcity and ...
Victoria Williams: Water to Drink (Atlantic)
Review by RJ Smith, Spin, September 2000
I SING THE SONG of the okra: There's a lot more there than you think. If it's the pluperfect artifact of the country kitchen, the ...
Buddy and Julie Miller: Julie Miller: Broken Things; Buddy Miller: Cruel Moon (both Hightone)
Review by Eric Weisbard, The Village Voice, 27 September 2000
SO I CHECKED and no, Buddy Miller didn't have CHRIST written on his baseball cap when he played the Bottom Line September 16; that was ...
Emmylou Harris: Red hot and no sign of a cowboy
Interview by Tim Cooper, The Evening Standard, 11 October 2000
Forget all those whiney, lovesick singers. Emmylou Harris is the performer who makes country music respectable. Tim Cooper talks to her in New York as ...
Emmylou Harris: Born to Run: Emmylou Harris' Red Dirt Girl
Review by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 12 October 2000
THE SOUND OF Wrecking Ball (Elektra), Emmylou Harris's 1995 album produced by former Brian Eno/Neville Brothers associate Daniel Lanois, drew me back toward her. ...
Allison Moorer: Dingwalls, London
Live Review by John Aizlewood, The Guardian, 16 October 2000
SHE MAY BE TRADITIONAL down to her oft-repeated felicitations to "y'all", but Alabama's Allison Moorer is hardly a typical country woman, and not solely because ...
Various Artists: Arhoolie Records 40th Anniversary Collection 1960-2000 (Arhoolie)
Review by Tony Russell, MOJO, November 2000
A 5-CD box set and photo-packed book celebrate a life committed to roots music. Subtitled The Journey of Chris Strachwitz. ...
Review by Stevie Chick, New Musical Express, 27 November 2000
IT BEGINS WITH AN ARGUMENT. Surprisingly, Ryan Adams and his bandmate aren't arguing about some dusty Gram Parsons track, but a Morrissey record. And, surprisingly, ...
Profile and Interview by Bill Holdship, Dallas Observer, 30 November 2000
THE GREAT major-label mergings and purgings of the last several years have lost hundreds of people their jobs – but another tragic result is that ...
Buddy and Julie Miller: Buddy & Julie Miller: Buddy & Julie Miller
Review by Holly Gleason, Cleveland Free Times, 2001
WHAT IS THE sound of marriage hardfought, hardscrabble, hardwon? Is it Yoko Ono's dissonant shrieking? Trent Reznor's most post-ndustrial cacophony? Or the ruminations on various ...
Book Excerpt by Phil Hardy, Dave Laing, Faber Companion to 20th Century Popular Music, 2001
Paul Burch Jr; C Scott Chase; Dennis Cronin; John Delworth; Allen Lowery; Alex McManus; Jonathan Marx; Mark Nevers; Paul Niehaus; Matt Swanson; Marc Trovillion; Deanna ...
Book Excerpt by Phil Hardy, Dave Laing, The Faber Companion to 20th-Century Popular Music, 2001
Jay Farrar, b. 26 December 1966, Belleville, Illinois, USA; Michael Heidorn (replaced by Ken Coomer); Max Johnson; John Stirratt; Jeff Tweedy, b. 25 August 1967, ...
Retrospective by Richard Gehr, My Generation, 3 February 2001
A GORGEOUS MELANCHOLY lies at the core of the music created by The Band, four Canadian rockers and an Arkansas drummer who, some argue, brought ...
Jeb Loy Nichols: Just What Time It Is
Review by uncredited writer, No Depression, 28 February 2001
JEB LOY NICHOLS'S first release since his acclaimed 1997 disc Lovers Knot is so laid-back, it should come packaged in a hammock. And while there's ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages audio, 3 March 2001
The ex-Whiskeytown man on his solo albums Heartbreaker and Gold; singing with Emmylou Harris and on the ghost of Gram Parsons; recording in Woodstock; the end of Whiskeytown and going solo; living in Los Angeles and Nashville; side project the Pink Hearts; the Lost Highway label... and his hair!
File format: mp3; file size: 54.8mb, interview length: 59' 26" sound quality: ***
Will Oldham: The Prince Of Darkness
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 12 March 2001
"I created Billy and let him take care of the performing. It's not me, Will Oldham, who gets up on stage." ...
Bonnie "Prince" Billy: Ease Down The Road
Review by Sylvie Simmons, MOJO, April 2001
There's a party on his patio, and Will Oldham's in a hellish good mood. All hail His Royal Happiness, says Sylvie Simmons. ...
Profile and Interview by Rob Hughes, Uncut, April 2001
ON HIS EXTRAORDINARY NEW ALBUM, NO SUCH PLACE, HE HAS CONTRIVED AN ASTONISHING MIX OF SPOOKILY DEMENTED COUNTRY, SKEWED ROCK AND HIP HOP THAT CHARTS ...
John Fahey: The Great San Bernadino Birthday Party And Other Excursions
Review by Ian MacDonald, Uncut, April 2001
Solitary fingerstyle pioneer evokes the dark side of the Sixties ...
Alejandro Escovedo Under the Influence
Report and Interview by Geoffrey Himes, Baltimore City Paper, 25 April 2001
ON MARCH 22, 1998, Alejandro Escovedo introduced a new song at La Zona Rosa in his hometown of Austin, Texas. He was dressed cowboy-formal in ...
Interview by Gavin Martin, Rock's Backpages audio, May 2001
On learning guitar with a broken leg; drugs and religion; poverty and outsiderdom; art vs. commerce; the dangers of cab driving: Jim White tells all.
File format: mp3; file size: 69.7mb, interview length: 1h 12' 38" sound quality: ****
Sparklehorse: Out Of The Woods
Report and Interview by Keith Cameron, MOJO, July 2001
BEHIND AN 1850s Virginia farmhouse sits Static King, the recording studio where Mark Linkous made the first two Sparklehorse albums. We are not looking at ...
Lambchop, Tahiti 80: Lambchop: Somerset House, London/Tahiti 80: The Spitz, London
Live Review by Simon Price, Independent on Sunday, 14 July 2001
THE OPEN-AIR Georgian quadrant of Somerset House may be an unusually elegant setting for a gig, but it has its drawbacks when the main attraction ...
Lucinda Williams: Even Cowgirls Get The Blues
Interview by Sylvie Simmons, MOJO, August 2001
A HOT SUNDAY AFTERNOON. PEOPLE IN CUT-OFFS AND STETSONS sprawl along the banks of the Cumberland River, sucking beers, fanning themselves with stiff paper fans ...
Emmylou Harris: Anthology (Warner Archives/Rhino)
Review by Ian Penman, Uncut, September 2001
ALTHOUGH RARELY FORWARDED as a "woman in music" icon, it’s hard to think of a more exemplary career - male or female, consistent and daring ...
Retrospective and Interview by Gary Pig Gold, fufkin.com, September 2001
"MUSWELL HILLBILLIES isn’t just a better country-rock album than anything by Wilco or Son Volt; It’s a better country-rock album than anything by the Byrds." ...
Ryan Adams: "I'm not a star to myself. I just make records"
Interview by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, 19 September 2001
THE YOUNG BOB DYLAN once said that the only way for an aspiring songwriter to develop was to write 10 songs every day, then throw ...
Bill Callahan, Smog: Bill Callahan: I want to be alone
Interview by Andy Gill, The Independent, 21 September 2001
Alt-country's reluctant star, Bill Callahan, aka Smog, is not a man to stand still. Or get too close to people. Or talk much. Andy Gill ...
Interview by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, 22 September 2001
Leaving the South behind for La-la land, Ryan Adams makes a bid for rock stardom. And why shouldn't he, asks the Reverend Al Friston? ...
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, October 2001
CALL IT WHAT you will – proto-country, Southern Gothic, backwoods noir, Americana, cow-punk, insurgent twang, murderous balladry, Appalachian folk. Whichever way you slice it, The ...
Overview by Tom Cox, The Observer, 21 October 2001
Country has gone way beyond Nashville, says Tom Cox. It's the new rebel music. ...
Gillian Welch: Dustbowl Darling
Profile and Interview by Luke Torn, The Wall Street Journal, 26 October 2001
STRANDED IN Los Angeles for a taping of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on the day of the terrorist attacks, singer Gillian Welch, her ...
Bonnie "Prince" Billy: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy: Shepherd's Bush Empire, London
Live Review by Nick Hasted, The Independent, 6 November 2001
THE MAN ON stage with the bulging barfly beard and ruffled scraps of remaining hair may not look much like royalty. But Bonnie "Prince" Billy, ...
Live Review by Simon Price, Independent on Sunday, 25 November 2001
IT'S POSSIBLY THE single most obvious thing you can say about Ryan Adams, and it's a joke that's been made countless times already, but you'd ...
Bill Callahan, Smog: Bill Callahan (2001)
Interview by Andy Gill, Rock's Backpages audio, Fall 2001
Mr Smog talks about his latest album Rain on Lens; about his songs not being autobiographical; on not deserving his reputation as a miserabllist; discovering music in his youth, from John Lee Hooker to punk; enjoying a peripatetic existence; playing the 2000 Meltdown Festival and meeting Scott Walker; on not trying to make hit records, and his admiration for Buster Keaton.
File format: mp3; file size: 33.6mb, interview length: 35' 01" sound quality: ** (phoner)
Kelly Joe Phelps: Beat The Devil
Interview by Nick Hasted, Uncut, February 2002
KELLY JOE Phelps is on stage at the Knitting Factory in New York City, one month after the World Trade Center's destruction, in front of ...
Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, 7 February 2002
Kurt Wagner, songwriter and former floor-layer, has stripped down the sound of his 13-strong band for their latest and finest album. He tells Ben Thompson ...
Review by Peter Stone Brown, Gadfly, April 2002
NOW WAY BACK in 1966, Bob Dylan at the suggestion of his producer decided to record in Nashville. The result of course was Blonde On ...
Profile and Interview by Sylvie Simmons, MOJO, April 2002
A year ago, Kurt Wagner was laying floors. Now his country-soul collective Lambchop have become Nashville's strangest success story ...
Wilco: Hi, My Name's Jeff, and I'm a Wilcoholic
Interview by Toby Manning, Q, May 2002
LIKE ALL LAS VEGAS hotels, the Mandalay Bay is a self-contained city, comprising restaurants, bars, even a "beach," complete with electric waves: anything and everything ...
Caitlin Cary, Ryan Adams, Whiskeytown: Life After Whiskeytown: Ryan Adams and Caitlin Cary
Comment by Geoffrey Himes, Baltimore City Paper, 1 May 2002
Who was the most important figure to emerge from the break-up of Whiskeytown – Ryan Adams or Caitlin Cary? Geoffrey Himes ponders the issue. ...
Retrospective by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 16 May 2002
WHEN I FIRST saw The Last Waltz in 1978, I almost walked out, although I was a fan of both director Martin Scorsese and The ...
Lee Hazlewood: The Lee Hazlewood Interview
Interview by Rob Hughes, Get Rhythm, July 2002
IT'S BEEN A hellish few days for Lee Hazlewood. Three days into a four-day promo frenzy of our nation's fair capital, and everyone after a ...
Profile and Interview by Nick Hasted, The Independent, 22 August 2002
IN 1971, WHEN he was 18, Tom Ovans dropped into an underground America, and never came back. Born into a working-class community just outside of ...
Ryan Adams: Demolition Man: Ryan Adams
Interview by Graeme Thomson, The Herald, September 2002
RYAN ADAMS IS not feeling well. "Summertime cold," he snuffles, and for a while, early on in our conversation, he seems intent on spreading the ...
Flying Burrito Brothers: Sincity — The Very Best Of The Flying Burrito Brothers (Universal)****
Review by Max Bell, Uncut, September 2002
ALTHOUGH THEY fit neatly into the silver-stitched seams on the patchwork quilt that became the country-rock heritage centre, The Flying Burrito Brothers were neither as ...
Review and Interview by Sylvie Simmons, MOJO, October 2002
BETWEEN HIS spare solo debut Heartbreaker and last year's swaggering Gold – the one where he sounded like he'd swallowed a jukebox of Stones, Who ...
Jim Dickinson: James Luther Dickinson: Free Beer Tomorrow (Artemis)
Review by Joe Nick Patoski, Austin Chronicle, 18 October 2002
YOU MAY KNOW Jim Dickinson as the daddy of those North Mississippi All-Stars, producer of the Replacements' Pleased to Meet Me, or the guy who ...
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, November 2002
IF ROCK'N'ROLL were high school, Ryan Adams would be the faintly irritating yet firecracker-hot 2001 valedictorian-acing history, kicking it with that cute young chem teacher, ...
Will Oldham: Still Voice, Distant Life: Will Oldham
Profile and Interview by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 17 November 2002
He’s the finest songwriter to come out of America in the past decade. Just ask Johnny Cash. But Will Oldham doesn’t play the fame game. ...
Josh T. Pearson: Upstairs At The Spitz, London
Live Review by Nick Hasted, Uncut, December 2002
YOU CAN'T SEE his fearsome, feral face any more. It's covered by a beard so vast and wild at first you think Josh Pearson's become ...
Patty Griffin: Bush Hall, London
Live Review by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, 4 December 2002
AFTER COMPLETING A DOZEN DATES supporting Billy Bragg, who played his last gig of the tour at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, Patty Griffin moved around ...
Review by Andy Gill, The Independent, 6 December 2002
RICHARD BUCKNER'S four previous albums somehow slipped under my radar, an indication, perhaps, of the difficulties that fringe talents experience in securing adequate promotion and ...
Retrospective by Yancey Strickler, Neumu, 31 December 2002
In terms of great music, 2002 is as good a year as I can remember. It says a lot that when making this list, and ...
Retrospective by Peter Stone Brown, Gadfly, Spring 2002
THIRTY YEARS BEFORE T-Bone Burnett gathered a bunch of excellent musicians in a Nashville studio to re-create early country music for the O Brother soundtrack, ...
Interview by Geoffrey Himes, Harp, Summer 2002
After more than 30 years since their first recorded project together, the Flatlanders have come together again to record Now Again. Forward all 'thank you' ...
Iron & Wine: The Creek Drank The Cradle
Review and Interview by Keith Cameron, MOJO, January 2003
Debut album from 28-year-old Miami cinematographer and part-time roots savant Sam Beam. Could be time to quit the day job. ...
Victoria Williams: Sings Some Ol' Songs
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, January 2003
Beguiling collection of sepia-tinged ephemera spanning 1993-2002 from L.A. songstress, sometime Creekdipper and full-time fairer half of Mark Olson ...
Bonnie "Prince" Billy: Master and Everyone
Review and Interview by Gavin Martin, Uncut, February 2003
Literate hillbilly Bonnie "Prince" Billy — aka Will Oldham — raises his profile and lays the heart bare with a candidly beautiful album about the ...
The Be Good Tanyas: Be Good Tanyas: Chinatown
Review by Colin Irwin, MOJO, March 2003
Second album by the Canadian trio who seduced us with their disarmingly unassuming old-timey debut Blue Horse. ...
Review and Interview by Adam Sweeting, Uncut, March 2003
TAKE A TWIST of The Wild Bunch and some ghosts from The Alamo, wash down with tequila, then fall asleep on the back porch. That ...
Calexico: Bowery Ballroom, New York City
Live Review by Kandia Crazy Horse, Rock's Backpages, March 2003
IN MY OLD AGE, I am trying to get hip. So I have temporarily relinquished my inner redneck. Left that twang-and-trash loving gal on the ...
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, March 2003
First UK releases for currently hot band ...
John Doe: Dim Stars, Bright Sky
Review by Devon Powers, PopMatters, 3 March 2003
JOHN DOE IS on a mission, albeit an undefined one. He tells us as much in 'Magic', a song that comes two thirds of the ...
Interview by Keith Cameron, MOJO, April 2003
PACKING UP his gear after a recent gig in Dublin, Calexico's Joey Burns was approached by a young couple. Would you play at our wedding? ...
Songs: Ohia: The Magnolia Electric Co.
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, April 2003
Unheralded Chicago-based tunesmith comes of age ...
Maplewood: Lads of the Canyon: Maplewood at the Knitting Factory, New York
Live Review by Kandia Crazy Horse, PopMatters, 8 April 2003
ONCE UPON a time not so long ago the musical sub-genre variously known as alt-country / y'allternative / No Depression / cosmic country / cosmic ...
Lucinda Williams: World Without Tears
Review by Will Hermes, Entertainment Weekly, 11 April 2003
"WE ARE SO out of touch," sang Lucinda Williams on 2001's Essence. It's a line that could double as a proud slogan for her label, ...
Lucinda Williams: World Without Tears (Lost Highway)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, May 2003
IT STARTS WITH A shivery vibrato guitar, straight off one of those '60s New York soul ballads – Betty Harris' 'Cry To Me', perhaps, or ...
Lucinda Williams: Shepherd's Bush Empire, London
Live Review by Martin Colyer, Rock's Backpages, May 2003
I LAST SAW Lucinda Williams live about ten years ago when she supported Mary Chapin Carpenter in London – not an auspicious show. She seemed ...
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, May 2003
A concise guide to the Williams oeuvre before World Without Tears ...
Rank and File: Western Union: Rank And File
Retrospective and Interview by Fred Mills, Seattle Weekly, 7 May 2003
A new archival set revisits Chip and Tony Kinman’s pioneering alt-country outfit Rank And File, as the brothers continue to expand their Cowboy Nation. ...
Adam Masterson: Younger and wiser
Interview by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, 27 May 2003
THE GLUT OF ARTISTS working in the alt-country and folk-rock areas might be a logical reaction against the treacly deluge of pubescent pop, but there ...
Willard Grant Conspiracy: Come Together
Interview by Nick Hasted, The Independent, 13 June 2003
The Willard Grant Conspiracy has gone underground. The only way you can hear the new album by one of America's best bands in their home ...
Report and Interview by Fred Mills, Detroit Metro Times, 25 June 2003
SOME MIGHT SEE it as a generational passing of the torch: an established music icon sharing the stage with a younger rising star, and there’s ...
Report and Interview by David Quantick, The Word, July 2003
Born in a place anyone would be desperate to leave, Grandaddy decided to stay, and earn their wit and wisdom the hard way. Now their ...
Willard Grant Conspiracy: Regard The End
Review and Interview by Rob Hughes, Uncut, July 2003
Glorious fifth album proper from ever-shifting Bostonians reaches down through the years ...
Gillian Welch: Soul Journey (Acony)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2003
GILLIAN WELCH, with her hard 'G', is indisputably a Good Thing. Tall and gawky, decidedly non-photogenic, Gillian gives hope to all of us who contend ...
Gillian Welch: The Girl With No Name
Profile and Interview by Toby Manning, The Word, August 2003
The fastest-rising folk singer of her generation is an urban college girl writing spare, soulful country tunes set in a bygone America. Her natural mother ...
The Byrds, Gram Parsons: Going Up the Country: The Byrds and Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Retrospective by Bill Wasserzieher, ICE, August 2003
THOUGH OPINIONS differ on who recorded the first country-rock album, there is no question that the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo was the first one ...
Lucinda Williams: Lucinda's World
Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Guitar World Acoustic, August 2003
"I KIND OF MISS the days when I wasn't well known," says Lucinda Williams, "Then, I was an 'undiscovered genius' when people heard my albums. ...
The White Stripes: White Stripes Or Shite Hype?
Comment by Stephen Dalton, The Times, August 2003
NEXT WEEK the White Stripes release their latest single, a highly distinctive reading of the Burt Bacharach standard 'I Just Don't Know What To Do ...
Gillian Welch: A Kind Of Bluegrass
Interview by Rob Hughes, Uncut, September 2003
Don't be fooled by her old-time country music and rural folk imagery. Gillian Welch is no mountain girl… ...
The Blasters: Dingwalls, London
Live Review by Gavin Martin, Uncut, October 2003
TONIGHT, DAVE ALVIN looks like a man out to settle an old score. With his gunslinger necktie and low-slung guitar, he fires off endless streams ...
David Olney: Borderline, London
Live Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, 1 October 2003
THE QUALITY OF his writing has earned him namechecks from the late Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle, and the likes of Emmylou Harris and ...
Ryan Adams: Rock'n'Roll (Lost Highway) ****
Review by Keith Cameron, MOJO, November 2003
Fourth solo album from erstwhile alt country poster-boy. Recorded in 13 days in New York with James Barber, aka Mr Courtney Love. ...
Johnny Dowd: The Spitz, London
Live Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, 13 November 2003
BECAUSE THEY SHARE a dark gothic sensibility and a preoccupation with biblical notions of sin, Johnny Dowd is often bracketed with Nick Cave. ...
Ryan Adams: "I've Been Jumping Off Bridges"
Interview by Sylvie Simmons, The Guardian, 21 November 2003
THE ONE GOOD thing about projectile vomiting is that at least your T-shirt stays clean. Ryan Adams's frat-house top is a spotless scarlet, its brightness ...
Interview by Jaan Uhelszki, Harp, December 2003
Ten Things You (Don't) Want To Know About Ryan Adams: He spills the beans on his romantic foibles, his phobias and chocolate. ...
The Band Of Blacky Ranchette: Still Lookin' Good To Me
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, December 2003
Fourth album in 20 years from Giant Sand's twisted country cousin ...
The Handsome Family: Singing Bones (Carrot Top)
Review by j. poet, Harp, December 2003
THE HANDSOME FAMILY - the duo of Brett Sparks, composer, singer and instrumental jack of all trades and Rennie Sparks lyricist, harmony vocalist and plucker ...
The Flatlanders: Wheels Of Fortune
Review by John Morthland, No Depression, 31 December 2003
MUCH AS I LIKED Now Again, the reunited Flatlanders' 2002 album, it was also a somewhat frustrating set that in the long run seems a ...
Bonnie "Prince" Billy: Cecil Sharp House, London
Live Review by Nick Hasted, Uncut, January 2004
PHOTOS OF MORRIS dancers adorn this home of the English Folk Dance & Song Society, and the atmosphere is pin-drop reverent as the Prince's legions ...
Johnny Cash: Unearthed (American Recordings/Lost Highway)
Review by Jon Wilde, Uncut, January 2004
Five-CD epitaph includes 64 never-before-heard tracks. ...
Mark Olson & The Creekdippers: Creekdippin' For The First Time
Review and Interview by Rob Hughes, Uncut, January 2004
ASPIRING SONGSMITHS Mark Olson and Victoria Williams first met in 1984. When they hooked up again, a little over 10 years later, things were different. ...
Lambchop: Aw Cmon /No You Cmon
Review by Sylvie Simmons, MOJO, February 2004
Not a double album, we're told, though you can't buy one without the other. Nashville country-soul collective's seventh (and eighth) full-length release(s). ...
Lambchop: Aw C'mon/No You C'mon
Review by Ben Thompson, Observer Music Monthly, 1 February 2004
LIKE OUTKAST'S Speakerboxx/ The Love Below, the eighth album by Nashville's premier artisan country/ soul collective is a double-disc set designed to prompt endless speculation ...
Jolie Holland: Spectral Americana
Profile and Interview by Sylvie Simmons, MOJO, March 2004
HERE'S SOMETHING eerie and ectoplasmic about Jolie Holland's solo debut, Catalpa. The beguiling voice and haunting music sound channelled from some mysterious backwoods past. Holland, ...
Lambchop: Aw C'mon/No You C'mon
Review by Toby Manning, The Word, March 2004
Twiglets! Beer! Community! The kings of country melancholia are having a party ...
Gram Parsons: In His Hour Of Darkness: Gram Theft Auto and the Road Mangler Deluxe
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 6 March 2004
IT IS THE midsummer of 1973. Two men stand together amidst a throng of mourners at the graveside of Clarence White, former Byrd and the ...
Gillian Welch: Revival: Gillian Welch
Profile and Interview by Andria Lisle, Memphis Flyer, 18 March 2004
Roots renegade Gillian Welch tries to resuscitate classic rock with a two-person band. It worked for the White Stripes. ...
Lambchop: Tracks of His Tears: Kurt Wagner and Lambchop
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, April 2004
IT’S KURT Wagner who spots The Nipple. ...
Steve Earle: Proud to be an American
Interview by Graham Reid, The New Zealand Herald, 16 April 2004
STEVE EARLE'S career has been one of the most extraordinary in American music. He crashed into country music with his 1986 classic rockin' country album ...
Chris Smither: Honeysuckle Dog
Review by John Morthland, No Depression, 30 April 2004
RECORDED WITH producer Michael Cuscuna in two sessions – Woodstock, December 1972, and New York City, Spring 1973 – this was to be Smither's third ...
Jim White: Drill A Hole In That Substrate And Tell Me What You See
Review and Interview by Sylvie Simmons, MOJO, May 2004
Two years on from No Such Place, the prodigal Southerner makes a third metaphysical voyage. ...
Jim White: Drill A Hole In That Substrate And Tell Me What You See
Review by Jude Rogers, The Word, May 2004
Pumped full of drive — Jim White's off-kilter alt.country ...
Jim White: Drill A Hole In That Substrate And Tell Me What You See
Review and Interview by Rob Hughes, Uncut, May 2004
A YANKEE-BLOODED outcast in the Bible-thumping enclave of his adopted Pensacola, White has unwittingly spent his entire life foraging on the wrong side of the ...
Tom Russell: Indians Cowboys Horses Dogs
Review and Interview by Mick Houghton, Uncut, May 2004
Nineteenth album from a great American storyteller ...
Review by James Hunter, L.A. Weekly, 20 May 2004
VAN LEAR ROSE is an album of 13 songs explosively written and sung by Loretta Lynn. Jack White, of the White Stripes, produced it. Eric ...
Calexico: World Drifts In: Live At The Barbican
Review and Interview by Adam Sweeting, Uncut, June 2004
Tucson's finest bring their unique compression of American musical styles to DVD with a London concert recording. DVD ALWAYS RUNS the risk of turning into a ...
Review and Interview by Andy Gill, Uncut, June 2004
Haunting back-porch quirkiness from former Be Good Tanya ...
Jon Rauhouse: Jon Rauhouse's Steel Guitar Rodeo
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, June 2004
A HIGHLY ABLE sideman to the likes of Neko Case, Calexico, The Waco Brothers, Sally Timms and Kelly Hogan, Tucson-based Rauhouse's prior form included seven ...
Sufjan Stevens: The 50 States of Rock: Sufjan Stevens
Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, 8 June 2004
THERE HAVE BEEN MANY extra-curricular activities traditionally associated with the life of the travelling rock'n'roller. Teaching knitting to the blind is not one of them. ...
The Long Ryders: Lock 17, London
Live Review by Andrew Mueller, The Independent, 5 July 2004
THE LONG RYDERS enter to a tape of the theme tune from The Magnificent Seven, and begin their set with a cover of the Byrds' ...
Interview by Tim Cooper, The Evening Standard, 9 July 2004
After a decade of crises that would have finished off most bands, Wilco are back ...
Review by Dorian Lynskey, The Guardian, 30 July 2004
THIS GENERATION-crossing family outfit's second album was originally recorded for Nick Drake producer Joe Boyd's Hannibal label, but not released. It emerged in America two ...
Jay Farrar: Independent Streak
Interview by Andria Lisle, Memphis Flyer, 30 July 2004
Alt-country godfather goes it alone. ...
Uncle Tupelo: Are you ready for the alt. country?
Interview by Rob Hughes, Uncut, August 2004
UNCLE TUPELO only recorded three albums, but their legacy is extraordinary. Here we talk to original members Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy and Mike Heidorn about ...
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings: Shepherds Bush Empire, London
Live Review by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, 2 August 2004
"WE LOVE PLAYING HERE," Gillian Welch told us more than once, and since she and her musical soulmate David Rawlings were on for more than ...
Burrito Deluxe: The Whole Enchilada
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
Inoffensive country rock featuring original Burrito Brother Sneaky Pete Kleinow plus Band deity Garth Hudson on keyboards. ...
Howe Gelb, Giant Sand: Howe Gelb: True Grit
Interview by Sylvie Simmons, The Guardian, 3 September 2004
Howe Gelb, of Giant Sand, may be the hardest-working man in alt-country. But as he releases yet another record, he'd rather talk about mojitos and ...
Johnny Cash, Rick Rubin: Johnny Cash and Rick Rubin: American Communion
Retrospective and Interview by David Kamp, Vanity Fair, October 2004
Johnny Cash thought his recording career was over. Then he met legendary producer Rick Rubin. Together, Nashville's Man in Black and the co-founder of Def ...
Gillian Welch finds new audience with old-time Americana music
Interview by Graham Reid, The New Zealand Herald, 31 October 2004
FOR SOMEONE WHOSE stark songs sound like they have come from the impoverished rural underbelly of Depression-era America, Gillian Welch seems as lively as a ...
Willy Mason: A Breath Of Fresh Air
Profile and Interview by Nick Hasted, The Independent, 12 November 2004
IF YOU'RE FEELING bad about America after last week's election, Willy Mason is one reason to change your mind. The 19-year-old New Englander has already ...
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Tracks, December 2004
Mark Knopfler was once world-famous. He's happier now. ...
Report and Interview by j. poet, Paste, 1 December 2004
AT THE BEGINNING of every autumn, the local music community in Martha's Vineyard comes alive. That's when the vacationers leave and the working-class folks who ...
The Magnolia Electric Co.: Magnolia Electric Company: Trials And Errors (Secretly Canadian)
Review by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, January 2005
I’VE NEVER been a big fan of live albums. Maybe it's because I'm usually just not that interested in live versions of a bunch of ...
Profile and Interview by Holly George-Warren, Harp, January 2005
TONY JOE White is having his picture taken. By the looks of things, the Ray-Ban-wearing sixty-something-year-old is an A-list movie star, rather than a singer/songwriter/guitarist ...
Richard Buckner: Dents and Shells
Review by Sylvie Simmons, The Guardian, 14 January 2005
THERE ARE THREE kinds of American folk artist: those who sit, contented, on a back porch contemplating America's landscape and ways; those for whom its ...
Review by Andy Gill, The Independent, 28 January 2005
More Adventurous is exactly the kind of title you want a band to choose when they make the jump from independent to major label. No ...
Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Matt Sweeney: Matt Sweeney & Bonnie "Prince" Billy: Superwolf
Review by Mike Barnes, The Wire, February 2005
IT'S STILL DIFFICULT for me to listen to the music of Will Oldham – aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy – without thinking back to when I ...
Live Review by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 19 March 2005
"YOU ROCK!" SQUEALED AN AMERICAN VOICE, in a fit of either delusion or rank flattery. What this country-influenced LA quartet notably don't do is rock. ...
Born Heller: 12 Bar Club, London
Live Review by Frances Morgan, Plan B, May 2005
FEBRUARY WAS so cold it was almost fun. Snow whipped round the corners of buildings, full in your face. Under the railway arches, I found ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages audio, 9 May 2005
From his youth in Santa Monica via the Ash Grove scene through to movie soundtracks and his explorations of world musics: Ry on the music business, his fellow musicians and his politically progressive background and instincts.
File format: mp3; file size: 81.6mb, total interview length: 1h 25' 03" sound quality: ***
Beck: The Man Who Wasn't There
Profile and Interview by Sylvie Simmons, MOJO, June 2005
Beck's back, with a b-boy bouillabaisse to compare with his grooviest work. But behind the impassive visage, what's really going on? And can he really ...
Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell: Begonias
Review by Geoffrey Himes, The Washington Post, 24 June 2005
Traditional country music is marriage music, and there's no better way to dissect a troubled marriage than to have a female country singer and a ...
Report by Geoffrey Himes, Baltimore City Paper, 29 June 2005
HUMAN TOUCH: After mastering the rockin' Bruce album, Bruce Springsteen is now honing the acoustic Bruce album. ...
Shannon McNally: No Bones About It
Profile and Interview by John Morthland, No Depression, 30 June 2005
THIS IS A STORY about new beginnings, or at least about keepin' on keepin' on. Or maybe it's about, as some really pissed-off wit once ...
Live Review by Tim Cooper, The Independent, 8 July 2005
FORMED IN Los Angeles around the former child actors Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett in 1998, Rilo Kiley are hard to pigeonhole. Their first two, ...
Review by Keith Cameron, MOJO, October 2005
Epic sounds from the Big Country, with a pocketful of soul and sanctified song. The Kentucky quintet's fourth album is a religious experience, says Keith ...
The Band, Robbie Robertson: The Backpages Interview: Robbie Robertson
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2005
RBP: A Musical History seems like a formidable undertaking. ...
The Beau Brummels: Bradley's Barn
Review and Interview by Jon Savage, MOJO, November 2005
IF 1967 WAS the year that the torch passed from England back to America, from Swinging London to Haight-Ashbury, then 1968 was the year that ...
Drive-By Truckers: Confessions of a Trucker
Interview by Jason Gross, Creative Loafing, 16 November 2005
TRYING TO FIT in as the newbie in an established band is a weird, awkward, disorienting task – just ask Ron Wood what it was ...
Interview by Scotty Almany, ARC magazine, Spring 2005
JOLIE HOLLAND was born and raised in Texas. Taking an interest in music at a young age, she was playing multiple instruments, not to mention ...
Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, March 2006
BESIDES HAVING THE SEXIEST snaggletooth in indie rock, Neko Case may be the scene's hardest-working gal. She records and tours with Canuck ultrapoppers the New ...
Drive-By Truckers: A Blessing and a Curse
Review by Mark Kemp, Paste, 12 April 2006
PATTERSON HOOD SUMS UP Drive-By Truckers' new album, A Blessing and a Curse, in one line of the closing track: "To love is to feel ...
Josh Ritter: Songs of innocence and experience
Profile and Interview by Laura Barton, The Guardian, 28 April 2006
Mark Twain, Bob Dylan, Einstein and Thomas Jefferson – singer-songwriter Josh Ritter tells Laura Barton what makes him tick. ...
Jim Dickinson: James Luther Dickinson: Jungle Jim And The Voodoo Tiger
Review by John Morthland, No Depression, 30 April 2006
IF 2002's Free Beer Tomorrow – Jim Dickinson's "follow-up" to his 1971 solo debut Dixie Fried – sounded like a well-conceived showcase for his favourite ...
The Blasters, Dave Alvin: Dave Alvin: Romeo's Escape
Sleeve notes by Terry Staunton, Acadia Records, June 2006
THE TIME: Summer, 1987. The place: Downtown Manhattan hang-out The Kat Klub. It's the height of the annual industry beanfest, the New Music Seminar, and ...
Review by Geoffrey Himes, Baltimore City Paper, 26 June 2006
NOVELIST/CRITIC George Pelecanos has called them "the American band of the decade". Amazon.com extended it to "the greatest band in the world". Blender said they ...
Profile by Jason Gross, Creative Loafing, 3 August 2006
ARE THERE ANY active old-school divas that we can still look up to? Cher? Retired. Tina Turner? Retired. Barbara Streisand? Her too. Joni Mitchell? Yep. ...
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2006
THERE WAS a time when Kurt Wagner’s Lambchop dwelled in the very eye of the alt.Americana hurricane: a folksy but literate Nashville troupe making highbrow ...
Sparklehorse: Dreaming of Fiery, Misty Mountains: Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse
Interview by Mike Diver, Drowned in Sound, 11 October 2006
WALK AROUND the stage of London's Bush Hall, through the dressing room, and there you'll find a small outside area, just big enough for a ...
Joanna Newsom: The New Kate Bush?
Profile and Interview by Jude Rogers, The Word, November 2006
Angelic voice, radiant songs about "flickering wastelands" and childhood trips to Folk Summer Camp. Meet Joanna Newsom. ...
Lucinda Williams: Shepherds Bush Empire, London
Live Review by Tim Cooper, The Independent, 15 November 2006
EVEN BY THE tardy timekeeping standards of rock'n'roll, 16 months is a little long to keep your audience waiting. Originally scheduled to play here in ...
Iron & Wine: Sam Beam: Love, God, death and a tree of bees
Interview by Andy Gill, The Independent, 17 November 2006
The famously uncommunicative singer-songwriter Sam Beam — also known as Iron & Wine — discusses his hauntingly poetic musical world with Andy Gill. ...
Joanna Newsom: It's a Thin Line…
Profile and Interview by James Medd, Esquire, December 2006
From Bush to Bjork, pop's greatest women have always divided audiences. Joanna Newsom knows it – and she doesn't care. ...
Lucinda Williams: Westside Story: Lucinda Williams' Confessions of Love, Lust and Violence
Profile and Interview by Jaan Uhelszki, Relix, February 2007
LUCINDA WILLIAMS is a little distracted. She keeps popping up from her seat, perched between the four overstuffed pillows that are arranged artfully on her ...
Lucinda Williams: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (Deluxe Edition)
Review by Mark Kemp, Paste, 1 February 2007
The story of Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is long and winding. ...
Desperate Man Blues – Discovering The Roots of American Music
Film/DVD/TV Review by Tony Burke, Blues & Rhythm, March 2007
JOE BUSSARD, "King Of Record Collectors", would be an excellent contributor to the UK television series 'Grumpy Old Men'. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2007
MUCH IS MADE of Lucinda Williams the writer, the poet of southern aches and pains. Time magazine called her "America's Best Songwriter" and the New ...
Willard Grant Conspiracy: Faith and Fury: Robert Fisher and his Willard Grant Conspiracy
Report and Interview by Jim Sullivan, The Boston Phoenix, 5 March 2007
"SOBER, BUT NOT healthy, that's the way I always refer to myself," says Robert Fisher, who's dressed in black, sipping hot tea, and nursing a ...
Bob Dylan, King Crimson: Ian Wallace, 1946-2007
Obituary by Alan Clayson, The Guardian, 27 April 2007
Drummer with King Crimson and Bob Dylan ...
Live Review by Holly Gleason, No Depression, 30 April 2007
YOU HAVE TO start at the end – where they paid respects to Townes Van Zandt, the songwriter/compadre who captured the essence of life after ...
Interview by Alan Light, Mother Jones, 17 May 2007
Wilco, beautiful not stoned ...
Ryan Adams: "I only have so much fight in me…"
Interview by Andrew Mueller, Uncut, July 2007
That's a damn sight more fight than most people, then. Meet the new Ryan Adams, back with a fine album, a new scrap with his ...
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, July 2007
Boy Wonder Eases Up: Only His 9th LP In Seven Years ...
Blue Mountain: Back to Blue Mountain
Interview by Andria Lisle, Memphis Flyer, 30 August 2007
WAS 1993 REALLY so long ago? It seems like almost yesterday when Oxford, Mississippi's Blue Mountain arrived on the alt-country scene. With songs such as ...
Robert Gordon: (Still) Red Hot
Retrospective and Interview by Fred Mills, Harp, September 2007
IN 1977 a skinny young man with a gravity defying pompadour and a room-filling, Elvis-worthy voice kicked off his solo career with the old Billy ...
The Mekons: Mekon…And On…And On…
Report and Interview by Rob Hughes, Uncut, September 2007
They wanted to be punk's slowest band. They ended up accidentally inventing alt.country and sticking around for 30 years. Raise your glasses, please, to the ...
Cowboy Junkies: Royal Albert Hall, London
Live Review by Tim Cooper, The Independent, 17 October 2007
IT WOULD BE myth-making mischief to suggest that, upon its release 20 years ago, The Trinity Session was acclaimed as a landmark album. The best ...
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss: Raising Sand
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 26 October 2007
OUT OF THE BLUE, Jo Bartlett, the co-organiser of the small folk festival, Green Man, received a phone call one day from someone purporting to ...
Lucinda Williams: Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2007
Poetic, Eclectic, Atmospheric: A Grammy-Winning Snapshot Of The South. ...
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss: Raising Sand
Review by Kate Mossman, The Word, November 2007
SEVEN YEARS AGO, Robert Plant rang country music superstar Alison Krauss and one imagines, toying casually with the telephone cord, said something like, "Hey, we ...
Levon Helm: The Return of Levon Helm
Comment by Peter Stone Brown, CounterPunch, 12 November 2007
THE FIRST TIME most people heard Levon Helm sing was way back in 1968 when The Band released Music From Big Pink. ...
The Band, Levon Helm: Levon Helm: Dirt Farmer
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, December 2007
LEVON HELM was the southern heart of that essentially Canadian group The Band, the drummer/singer/mandolinist who gave Robbie Robertson's songs their corn-starch authenticity. Helm it ...
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss: Raising Sand
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, 2008
THE PAIRING OF the wily old tomcat and the classy country thrush turns out as magically in reality as it seemed unlikely on paper. ...
Review by Daryl Easlea, bbc.co.uk, 4 January 2008
ALREADY MAKING waves since its US release last autumn, here's a very pleasant surprise to get 2008 underway. ...
Fleet Foxes: America's Next Great Band
Report by Paul Lester, The Guardian, 11 February 2008
HOMETOWN: Xachua'Bsh, Washington.THE LINEUP: Robin Pecknold, Nicholas Peterson, Skyler Skjelset, Christian Wargo, Casey Wescott. ...
Bon Iver: Hail, Hail, Rock'n'Roll: Bon Iver
Report and Interview by Laura Barton, The Guardian, 29 February 2008
IF WE HAVE spoken in the past couple of weeks, I apologise. If you have poured out your heart and found me blank-faced, if you ...
Lambchop: Damage Control: Lambchop's Kurt Wagner
Interview by David Burke, R2/Rock'n'Reel, March 2008
LAMBCHOP DEVOTEES can rest easy: despite frontman Kurt Wagner's solo tour of Europe last autumn, the Nashville collective have not made their last elegantly sombre ...
T-Bone Burnett, Bob Dylan, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss: T Bone Burnett: Brother, Who Art Thou?
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, May 2008
WHO EXACTLY IS T Bone Burnett? Is he really the man who turned Dylan onto Christianity and split Costello from the Attractions? As the producer ...
Felice Brothers: The Felice Brothers: The Felice Brothers
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, May 2008
Killer second from rural New York siblings ...
Howlin Rain — Did the earth move for you?
Profile and Interview by Stevie Chick, The Guardian, 2 May 2008
THE PATRONAGE OF RICK RUBIN is considered a Very Big Deal within the US music industry. Aged 21, in 1984, this white heavy rock fan ...
Whiskeytown: Strangers Almanac Deluxe edition
Review by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, 8 May 2008
A FREQUENT ACCUSATION levelled at both Prince and Van Morrison is that they're too prolific, the sheer volume of their output leading to dips in ...
Kathleen Edwards: Asking for Flowers (Zoe/Rounder)
Review by Kandia Crazy Horse, San Francisco Bay Guardian, 14 May 2008
BEING OF so-called American Indian and African descent, I have never believed in borders. These imperial lines have only wreaked havoc and sealed our fate. ...
Willard Grant Conspiracy: Pilgrim Road
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, June 2008
Opulent seventh from Robert Fisher's ever-evolving collective. ...
Profile and Interview by David Burke, R2/Rock'n'Reel, September 2008
Singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier was something of a late starter – but once she picked up that pen she certainly had plenty to write about. Having ...
Alejandro Escovedo, The Nuns: Alejandro Escovedo
Profile and Interview by Gavin Martin, Uncut, October 2008
The cowpunk who survived Sid Vicious and Hepatitis C to duet with Springsteen, and become a legend of Americana. ...
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, October 2008
Deconstructionist country-blues from Arizona hero ...
Review and Interview by Andrew Mueller, Uncut, October 2008
Intriguing and perplexing solo salvo from Rilo Kiley mainstay. ...
Review by James Medd, The Word, October 2008
Cosmic cowboys Mercury Rev, mushroom mariachi merchants Calexico, heartbroken hobos Giant Sand. Can you even call this stuff Americana anymore? ...
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, November 2008
Best in nearly a decade from newly-trimmed Nashville collective. ...
Retrospective and Interview by Andrew Mueller, Uncut, November 2008
There are few bands that this magazine has championed as long and ardently as Lambchop. This fluctuating collective have dramatically broadened the palette of country ...
Lucinda Williams: Little Honey
Review and Interview by Andrew Mueller, Uncut, November 2008
Nine albums in, the queen of heartbreak tempts fate by cheering up. ...
Ryan Adams: Brixton Academy, London
Live Review by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 25 November 2008
DESPITE WHAT Ryan Adams tells us tonight, it wasn't true that this was the first time he had ever played London "without being chemically challenged". ...
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, December 2008
Reissued early stuff from Kentucky-born folkstress. ...
Ryan Adams & The Cardinals: Cardinology
Review by Andrew Mueller, Uncut, December 2008
Intermittent greatness from Americana's hardest-working man. ...
Bon Iver: Victoria Apollo, London
Live Review by Andy Gill, The Independent, 9 December 2008
"THIS IS AN extremely big deal for us," says Justin Vernon, standing beneath a giant pterodactyl. Vernon is the songwriter, lead singer and creative mainspring ...
Howlin Rain: Magnificent Fiend
Press Release by Don Waller, Birdman Records, Spring 2008
MAGNIFICENT FIEND is the second album from Howlin' Rain and the first to be issued under a joint agreement between multi-platinum record producer Rick Rubin's ...
Lucinda Williams: Album By Album
Interview by Andrew Mueller, Uncut, January 2009
"SNOW COVERS the street lamps and the windowsills," sang the alt.country queen on 2003's 'Minneapolis'. When Uncut calls her in that same city on her ...
J.J. Cale: Laying Low: The Elusive J.J. Cale Releases Possibly His Final Opus
Report by Geoffrey Himes, Baltimore City Paper, 25 February 2009
THE POPULAR MYTH about the Velvet Underground is that the band never sold many records, but everyone who bought one started a band. As exaggerations ...
Ernest Stoneman: Ernest R Stoneman: The Unsung Father Of Country Music 1925-1934
Review by Tony Burke, Blues & Rhythm, March 2009
JIMMIE RODGERS is normally identified as the "father of country music". However, in the booklet notes to this two-CD, 46-track set, Hank Sapoznick argues a ...
Gillian Welch: Gilllian Welch: Revival/Hell Among the Yearlings/Time (the Revelator)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2009
Reissues of first three albums by the high priestess of "American Primitive" and partner David Rawlings. ...
Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit: Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit
Review and Interview by Andrew Mueller, Uncut, June 2009
Confident country-soul from former Drive-By Trucker. ...
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, July 2009
ON THE SECOND DISC of this sumptuous collection of oddities is a cover of New Order's 'Love Vigilantes', in which a soldier returns home to ...
Sunny War: Songstress-Musician Sunny War
Profile and Interview by Michael Simmons, L.A. Weekly, 15 July 2009
ON THE TINY YouTube screen is a close-up of a diminutive black woman who looks about 12 but is, in the video, 16. Her hair's ...
The Handsome Family: Handsome is as Handsome does
Profile and Interview by David Burke, R2/Rock'n'Reel, August 2009
WHAT DO YOU GET when you cross the Platters with 19th century Romanticism? Why, the new album from the Handsome Family, of course. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages audio, September 2009
Together with his co-conspiritor Larry Campbell, the great Band drummer looks back over his recent solo activities, the people he works with, and his unique take on American music.
File format: mp3; file size: 31.5mb, interview length: 34' 27" sound quality: ****
The Jayhawks: Music From The North Country – The Jayhawks Anthology
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, September 2009
Roots-rockers' double-disc retrospective, with excellent extras ...
The Band, Levon Helm: The Shape I'm In: Levon Helm
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, October 2009
IF LEVON HELM'S studios have a Green Room, then this must be it. A ramshackle den leading off a homely wooden kitchen, it's currently crawling ...
David Rawlings, Gillian Welch: Dave Rawlings Machine: A Friend of a Friend
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, December 2009
ANYONE WHO EVER felt that David Rawlings hid his light under Gillian Welch's bushel – never getting the full credit he merited as her partner ...
John Fogerty: Beacon Theatre, NYC
Live Review by Hank Bordowitz, Rock's Backpages, 1 December 2009
I'M NOT SURE what John Fogerty went through internally after (and even during) the fall of CCR. I have my educated guesses, but they're just ...
Laura Veirs: Mixed-Up Confusion
Interview by John Lewis, Hotline, January 2010
Laura Viers came to folk via punk, is geeky yet cool, young but experienced and both delicate and tough. John Lewis meets her. ...
Carolina Chocolate Drops: Genuine Negro Jig
Review by Lloyd Bradley, bbc.co.uk, February 2010
An extraordinary and stylish history lesson of an album ...
The Low Anthem: The Folk-Rockers Who Sing About Darwin
Profile and Interview by Stevie Chick, The Guardian, 4 February 2010
"I HOPE PEOPLE don't think we're just relics," says Ben Knox Miller, sincerely, dressed in a jacket fashioned from an old burlap flour sack, and ...
Midlake: In Tune with the Times of Others
Interview by Andy Gill, The Independent, 5 February 2010
IN THE RUSSIAN visionary film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky's long, prismatic biopic of the great 15th-century icon painter Andrei Rublev, the monk Rublev strives to sustain the ...
The Low Anthem: Children of the Evolution
Profile and Interview by Jaan Uhelszki, Uncut, March 2010
In the world of Americana, 2009'ss Oh My God, Charlie Darwin marked out the Low Anthem as true originals of the species. In Washington D.C., ...
Various Artists: Gastonia Gallop – Cotton Mill Songs & Hillbilly Blues
Review by Tony Burke, Blues & Rhythm, March 2010
Piedmont Textile Workers On Record, Gaston County, North Carolina 1927–1931 ...
Bill Callahan, Smog: Bill Callahan: Album by Album
Retrospective and Interview by Nick Hasted, Uncut, May 2010
"I'M SOMEWHERE between a gumshoe and a journalist," Callahan says. "A writer, not a symbol. I don't want to be a performer who gets applause ...
Sparklehorse: Mark Linkous: Singer-songwriter, Sparklehorse leader (1962-2010)
Obituary by Rob Hughes, Uncut, May 2010
OF ALL THE tributes that followed the tragic death of Mark Linkous, who shot himself through the heart in Knoxville, Tennessee, none was more concise ...
Micah P. Hinson: Micah P. Hinson and the Pioneer Saboteurs
Review by Wyndham Wallace, bbc.co.uk, May 2010
A powerfully ominous reshaping of old-school Americana. ...
Delbert McClinton: Tarrytown Music Hall, New York
Live Review by Kris DiLorenzo, Rock's Backpages, 21 May 2010
IT'S BEEN A WAAAY too long time, but I'd be stupidly remiss if I didn't rave about Delbert McClinton's show at the Tarrytown Music Hall ...
Band of Horses: Infinite Arms (Fat Possum/Columbia) *****
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, June 2010
N.B. A revised version of the following review appeared in the June 2010 issue of Uncut. ...
Midlake get set to take Glastonbury
Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 18 June 2010
MIDLAKE'S TIM SMITH is hunched over the small sink beside his Bristol dressing room. Possibly because an overnight trip from Belgium has left him bereft ...
Review by Bill Holdship, MOJO, July 2010
THIS IS one of those wonderful, unexpected releases that many people once believed could never exist. ...
Richmond Fontaine: Willy Vlautin: It's only rock'n'roll
Profile and Interview by David Burke, R2/Rock'n'Reel, July 2010
Devotees of Richmond Fontaine can rest easy: frontman Willy Vlautin's burgeoning reputation as a novelist doesn't portend the demise of the Americana outfit – at ...
Robert Plant & the Band of Joy: Dodge Theatre, Phoenix
Live Review by Robert Dean Lurie, Blurt, 20 July 2010
In concert in Phoenix and previewing new material while recasting selected gems from the past, the erstwhile Led Zep frontman kills it. ...
Review by Gavin Martin, Uncut, August 2010
State-hopping Americana, primed for the mainstream. ...
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 6 August 2010
Another quality offering from the L.A. outfit who once styled themselves "just another band" – but are definitely not. ...
Dylan LeBlanc: "Songs are like headstones to me"
Interview by Laura Barton, The Guardian, 19 August 2010
Dylan LeBlanc has crammed the baggage of his 20-year-old life — lost loves, southern living and breakdown — into his music. Now the new Neil ...
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, September 2010
East LA's finest return to their roots and deliver a landmark album ...
Ray Lamontagne & the Pariah Dogs: God Willin' & The Creek Don't Rise
Review and Interview by Graeme Thomson, Uncut, October 2010
Impassioned, old-fashioned soul-blues, and all the better for it, says Graeme Thomson. ...
Giant Sand: Blurry Blue Mountain
Review by Andrew Mueller, bbc.co.uk, November 2010
A worthy addition to a catalogue already embarrassed with riches ...
Local Natives: Clockwork from Orange County
Profile and Interview by Andrew Purcell, The Guardian, 11 November 2010
After years of honing their tight harmonies, southern Californians Local Natives are breaking out. But they've suffered a few comparisons too many. ...
Giant Sand: Blurry Blue Mountain
Review and Interview by Rob Hughes, Uncut, December 2010
25 years on, Howe Gelb's band are still a vital force. ...
Book Review by Richard Williams, The Guardian, 8 January 2011
Richard Williams hails the man who devoted his life to recording the songs and soundscapes of America and beyond. ...
Mavis Staples Is for the Children
Report and Interview by Amy Linden, The Village Voice, 12 January 2011
MAVIS STAPLES digs her some younger men, but she'd rather lead them to the studio than the bedroom. "I think it really makes for a ...
Retrospective and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, MOJO, February 2011
A GOLDEN RICH GUITAR PHRASE pulses out warmth and beauty and Neil Young keens "I want to live/I want to give/I've been a miner for ...
Iron & Wine: "It ruins something for me when I know all the answers"
Profile and Interview by Jaan Uhelszki, Uncut, February 2011
PERHAPS SURPRISINGLY, there is little privacy in Sam Beam's house, an octagonal behemoth one hour's drive from Austin, Texas. ...
Old 97's: The Grand Theatre (Volume One)
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, February 2011
Raw-blooded rock'n'twang from veteran Texan four-piece There was a time when Old 97's looked set to reap the same dividends as their peers Whiskeytown and Wilco. ...
Band of Horses: Tales of Terror from the Blasted Backwoods
Profile and Interview by Nick Hasted, The Independent, 4 February 2011
IT WAS THE first day by the lake when Band of Horses' singer Ben Bridwell saw the curtain twitch. He was staying at the isolated, ...
Fleet Foxes: Modern Life Is Rubbish
Interview by Andy Gill, The Word, May 2011
Fleet Foxes dust down their antique marxophones and twanging one-string zithers — and record it all on tape. ...
Profile and Interview by Alan Light, MSN.com, May 2011
LEVON HELM is standing in his kitchen, grinning. At the head of the table, singer-songwriter Garland Jeffreys is showing guitarist Larry Campbell, best known for ...
Laura Cantrell: St. Bonaventure's, Bristol
Live Review by Stephen Dalton, The Times, 4 May 2011
Moonlighting from her unlikely day job as a Wall Street consultant, the country-folk singer embarks on a low-key UK tour. ...
Caitlin Rose: On Caitlin's Rose's Own Side Now
Comment by Wayne Robins, Wayne's Words blog, 15 May 2011
I'VE BEEN LISTENING to Caitlin Rose for nearly two months now, and have not been quite ready to let go. ...
Review by Holly Gleason, Paste, 17 May 2011
WITH A DESCENDING CIRCULAR FLOURISH of acoustic guitar notes, the bluegrass influence on Follow Me Down is evident, but the almost weightlessness suggests something else, ...
Report and Interview by James Medd, The Word, June 2011
Mercury Rev's masterpiece was inspired by an orchestral record of Rip Van Winkle from childhood. Deserter's Songs has just reawaken. ...
Civil Wars, the: New band of the week: The Civil Wars
Profile by Paul Lester, The Guardian, 3 June 2011
We have Adele to thank for introducing us to this Americana duo, whose songs deal with affairs of the heart and lives lived hard ...
Fleet Foxes: How Fleet Foxes are handling high expectations
Profile and Interview by Laura Barton, The Guardian, 16 June 2011
Huge success began a steep learning curve for the Seattle band. Bandleader Robin Pecknold explains how the second album put the band in a "dark ...
Jimmie Dale Gilmore and the Wronglers: Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland
Live Review by Holly Gleason, nodepression.com, 21 June 2011
THEY CALL IT Heirloom Music, going so far as to make it the title of their first collaborative recording; but for Jimmie Dale Gilmore and ...
Amy LaVere: The Borderline, W1
Live Review by Lisa Verrico, The Times, 12 July 2011
THREE YEARS AGO the Memphis-based Amy LaVere was tipped to break Britain. Her second album, Anchors & Anvils, had received rave reviews, while the petite ...
Justin Townes Earle: Ripped Genes
Profile and Interview by Rob Hughes, The Word, August 2011
Steve Earle is your dad. You're sent to a boot camp for teenage delinquents. But watch what happened next for Justin Townes Earle... ...
Profile and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, MOJO, September 2011
"I FEEL WE'RE here to help each other and make this existence meaningful," says Abigail Washburn, skyping from Nashville. You couldn't begin to guess the ...
Jonathan Wilson: Gentle Spirit (Bella Union)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Word, September 2011
OVER A DECADE AGO, a very nice man named Simon Raymonde – son of cult '60s arranger Ivor – came to my house to answer ...
Other Lives: The Prairie Stories of Other Lives
Profile and Interview by Martin Aston, The Guardian, 13 October 2011
Inspired by the landscape of their native Oklahoma, Other Lives combine their rustic rock with classical minimalism. Martin Aston meets a band without limits. ...
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings: O2 Apollo, Manchester
Live Review by Rob Hughes, Daily Telegraph, 22 November 2011
"THIS IS A SONG of hope and optimism," announced David Rawlings, some dozen or so tunes into tonight's set. "They think you're joking," came the ...
Bon Iver: Bon Iver, Bon Iver (Jagjaguwar)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, December 2011
ADOPTING THE nom de plume Bon Iver, Justin Vernon made the leap from unknown to major artist in the few seconds between the strummed acoustic ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, December 2011
WILCO FANS ARE AS polarized as the US congress. Some revel in the band's eardrum-pulverizing forays into the sonic unknown, introduced on 2000's art-damaged Yankee ...
Gillian Welch: Air Miles: A Transatlantic Conversation with Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings
Report and Interview by David Burke, R2/Rock'n'Reel, Fall 2011
MOBILE PHONES, don't you just hate them? I know that to most of the Earth's populace they're as essential as a limb these days, but ...
Craig Finn: Clear Heart Full Eyes
Review by Graeme Thomson, Uncut, February 2012
Hold Steady man's impressive solo flight. ...
Interview by Kate Mossman, The Word, March 2012
Moon pies, Brylcreem, Elvis... Why has Chris Isaak been stuck in the '50s since the 1960s? ...
Karen Dalton: From the Golden Age of Colorado to the Golden Age of Reissues
Retrospective by Steven R Rosen, Blurt, March 2012
DAN HANKIN, now a retired school social worker living in Denver, fondly remembers back to 1966, when he would visit Karen Dalton's Colorado mountain cabin ...
Review by Rob Young, Uncut, March 2012
SINCE JONATHAN MEIBURG and Will Sheff splintered off from Okkervil River in 2001, the reason was ostensibly to create a backwater in which they could ...
Interview by Rob Hughes, The Word, March 2012
Music, pop-up stores, all-ages art, cabaret: Wilco's Solid Sound Festival is "what we can't get across in a live two-hour show" ...
Review by John Aizlewood, bbc.co.uk, 21 May 2012
There’s much to adore from the bluesy folk duo on this second set. ...
Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Will Oldham: An audience with… Will Oldham
Interview by John Lewis, Uncut, June 2012
We deliver your questions to a backyard in Kentucky: "Unless I'm performing as Bonnie "Prince" Billy, I get hot, bothered and embarrassed!" admits the shy ...
Obituary by David Hepworth, The Word, June 2012
'THE NIGHT THEY drove old Dixie down' is the perfect emblem for the life and career of Levon Helm. This one song, written by Robbie ...
Carolina Chocolate Drops: Sweet Sounds: Rhiannon Giddens and Carolina Chocolate Drops
Profile and Interview by David Burke, R2/Rock'n'Reel, June 2012
RHIANNON GIDDENS'S birthday back in February was a bittersweet occasion. The Carolina Chocolate Drops co-founder-member's celebrations were tempered by her grief upon learning of the ...
The Band, Garth Hudson, Levon Helm: Garth Hudson on Levon Helm
Memoir by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 2012
"THE FIRST TIME I saw Levon in action was in Woodstock, Ontario, about thirty-five miles from London, where I grew up. Ronnie and the Hawks ...
The Band, Levon Helm: Oh Brother Where Art Thou? The Night They Drove Ole Levon Down
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 2012
IN THE BACKWOODS gang that was The Band, Levon Helm was the lean and wiry chancer with one eye on the ladies and a voice ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 20 September 2012
IT'S HARD TO imagine a more preposterous road to platinum success than the one Mumford & Sons travelled. Sigh No More, the 2010 debut by ...
The Gift of Music: Anthologies to please
Review by Geoffrey Himes, Baltimore City Paper, 14 November 2012
WHY ARE multi-disc collections of old music still valuable in an era of downloads retrieved from nearly boundless clouds? Because these box sets and greatest-hit ...
Cowboy Junkies: Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum, Glasgow
Live Review by Stephen Dalton, The Times, 25 January 2013
ON ANY LIST of cool rock-star accessories, an old-fashioned tea trolley will rank somewhere near the bottom. But when Toronto's alt-country veterans Cowboy Junkies played ...
Interview by Geoffrey Himes, Nashville Scene, 31 January 2013
Performer Willy Mason returns home, searches through the fog, and carries on ...
John Fahey: Commemorating one of the New Weird America's founding fathers
Comment by Byron Coley, The Wire, February 2013
THE TERM New Weird America (NWA) was used by The Wire's David Keenan to describe the music at the Brattleboro Free Folk Festival in 2003. ...
Kris Kristofferson: Feeling Mortal
Review by Holly Gleason, Paste, 12 February 2013
AT 76, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON is one of Americana's true icons. A witness to old-school hillbilly music, rock's excess, punk's rebellion and modern country, the Rhodes ...
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, March 2013
CAPTIVATING SECOND ALBUM from the uncrowned queen of new Nashville. ...
Jim Lauderdale, Buddy Miller: Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale: Mercy Lounge, Nashville
Live Review by Holly Gleason, No Depression, 7 March 2013
BUDDY MILLER and Jim Lauderdale have been friends so long, making a record seemed almost beside the point. They've played in each other's band, recorded ...
The Magnolia Electric Co., Songs: Ohia: Jason Molina, 1973-2013
Obituary by Everett True, The Guardian, 19 March 2013
US singer-songwriter who combined rock with alt-country as Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co. ...
John Fogerty: Wrote A Song for Everyone
Review by Holly Gleason, Paste, 28 May 2013
JOHN FOGERTY'S GUESTS on Wrote A Song for Everyone may provide a pupu platter of genres, but the country/rock/progressive duet partners more often serve as ...
Jason Isbell: The Highway Loves The Sin
Review and Interview by Holly Gleason, Paste, 10 June 2013
"I REMEMBER that place being this mythical hellhole," Jason Isbell says quietly. He's not speaking of the addiction he's recently kicked, but the place of ...
Guy Clark: My Favorite Picture Of You
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, July 2013
Deeply personal return for seasoned Texan ...
Bobby Charles, Shannon McNally: Small Town Talk: Shannon McNally's tribute to Bobby Charles
Report and Interview by John Swenson, Oxford American, 2 July 2013
DURING A VISIT to New Orleans twelve years ago, Shannon McNally, a talented young vocalist from New York with a critically acclaimed pop debut to ...
Valerie June: Dingwalls, London
Live Review by Lois Wilson, MOJO, August 2013
Memphis singer follows the gravelled road to Camden Lock. ...
Robbie Fulks: Gone Away Backward
Review by Holly Gleason, Paste, 27 August 2013
ALWAYS THE contentious kind, Robbie Fulks flexes the old Tareyton Cigarettes mode of doing business: "I'd rather fight than switch." To that end, he's remained ...
The Band, Robbie Robertson: Robbie Robertson
Interview by Alan Light, MSN.com, September 2013
ROBBIE ROBERTSON isn't exactly known for being prolific. In the almost 37 years since The Last Waltz marked his final show with The Band, he ...
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: The Making Of Will The Circle Be Unbroken
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Country, October 2013
AT THE START of the '70s, America was riven by conflict. Inter-racial strife, the Vietnam War and the emergence of a new, left-leaning youth culture, ...
Review by Fred Mills, Blurt, 1 October 2013
TRUTH-IN-TITLING: Blur The Line is the operative term here, with the Nashville combo literally evolving before our eyes (ears). It's like watching a fish slip ...
The Band: Vinyl Icon: The Band's Music From Big Pink
Retrospective by Johnny Black, Hi-Fi News & Record Review, January 2014
IN 1965, BOB Dylan chose a hoary and somewhat grizzled rock'n'roll combo, the Hawks, as his backing group when he famously "went electric". ...
Rosanne Cash: The River and the Thread
Review by Graham Reid, The New Zealand Herald, 23 January 2014
ONE OF THE LAST songs Johnny Cash recorded was the moving 'September When It Comes' with his daughter Rosanne for her 2003 album Rules of ...
Uncle Tupelo: No Depression (Legacy Edition)
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 28 January 2014
IN THE SUMMER OF 1990, somewhere in the puzzling chasm between lipstick-smeared hair-metal excess and flannel-clad grunge irony, Uncle Tupelo arrived on the scene like ...
Review by Mick Houghton, Uncut, February 2014
TAKING THEIR NAME from a grocery store, Barefoot Jerry evolved out of Area Code 615, a group of top-notch young sessioneers who saw the light ...
Interview by Adam Sweeting, Rock's Backpages audio, 10 February 2014
The not-so-native New Yorker on her current album The River and the Thread; on rediscovering the American South, and the Tallahatchie Bridge; on being Johnny Cash's daughter; working with her husband and co-writer John Leventhal; on songwriting, and her sewing circle!
File format: mp3; file size: 57.9mb, interview length: 1h 00' 16" sound quality: ****
Ry Cooder: Cooder Been A Contender
Interview by Rob Hughes, Record Collector, April 2014
He had the option of becoming a major star and grabbing his couple of years of glory. Instead he took the long, slow, dusty road. ...
Delines, The , Richmond Fontaine: Willy Vlautin – an interview
Interview by Nick Hasted, Uncut, April 2014
A TIMELY CATCH-UP with Americana renaissance man, Willy Vlautin. Pending: a fourth novel, a first movie and a new band, too... ...
Nickel Creek: Celebrating the Now
Profile and Interview by Holly Gleason, Paste, 15 April 2014
NEVER MIND THE GRAMMY AWARDS, the accolades and being young, gifted and at her creative peak. There was a moment during the recording of 2005's ...
Report and Interview by David Burke, R2/Rock'n'Reel, May 2014
HARD TO BELIEVE now, given her adulatory reputation among commentators and contemporaries alike, but when Lucinda Williams was hawking her songs around, looking for a ...
Review by Holly Gleason, Paste, 6 May 2014
IF LANA DEL RAY HAD PORES, bodily fluids or even the rare hair out of place, she might be Nikki Lane, the East Nashville firebrand ...
Review by Terry Staunton, Uncut, July 2014
HIS CREDENTIALS as a top-flight producer firmly established over a broad range of jobs (Kings Of Leon, Laura Marling, Paul McCartney, Tom Jones), winning a ...
Ryan Adams: At Home, Kinda, With Ryan Adams
Retrospective and Interview by Bob Mehr, Buzzfeed, 7 September 2014
An alt-country wunderkind who hates country music, a restlessly prolific songwriter stifled by his label, a reformed hell-raiser determined to maintain privacy in a celebrity ...
Bob Dylan: Dylan's Basement Tapes: it sounded like nonsense, says his "cover girl"
Retrospective and Interview by Edward Helmore, The Observer, 2 November 2014
Woodstock insider Sally Grossman recalls star's "throwaway stuff" as complete recordings of legendary sessions are released. ...
Sid Griffin: The Trick is To Breathe
Review by Terry Staunton, Uncut, December 2014
SINCE THE demise of the Long Ryders at the beginning of the '90s, Kentucky native Griffin has made London his musical base, cutting records mostly ...
Natalie Prass: The Lexington, London
Live Review by Stevie Chick, The Guardian, 29 January 2015
DURING A MOMENTARY delay between songs, Nashville singer-songwriter Natalie Prass looks to the audience and, with a genial awkwardness, says: "I feel like I should ...
Brandi Carlile: Union Chapel, London N1
Live Review by Lisa Verrico, The Times, 18 February 2015
IN THE United States, Washington-born Brandi Carlile is sufficiently established to make whatever sort of music she pleases. Her five albums to date — one ...
Report and Interview by David Burke, R2/Rock'n'Reel, March 2015
RYAN BINGHAM'S IN a more hopeful place these days. And though his humility wouldn't countenance my or anyone else saying so, it makes you glad ...
Gurf Morlix: Strange Brew, Austin
Live Review by Geoffrey Himes, Baltimore City Paper, 16 March 2015
BEFORE BOBBY Womack and then the Rolling Stones turned it into a romantic-ultimatum pop song, 'The Last Time' was a bluesy gospel song performed by ...
Ray Wylie Hubbard, James McMurtry: Down in Austin, music is something of a family business
Live Review by Geoffrey Himes, Baltimore City Paper, 19 March 2015
AUSTIN MUSIC IS becoming a family business. Parents are passing down to their children songwriter/performer brand names as if they were used-car lots, drug stores, ...
Dwight Yoakam: Second Hand Heart
Review by Alfred Soto, Spin, 13 April 2015
ARTISTS DEPENDENT ON TRADITION as muse and subject gamble on fate. Eventually the marketplace will deal — so they think. Well, Dwight Yoakam has won ...
Review by Andrew Mueller, Uncut, May 2015
OVER NEARLY twenty years of existence on the fringes of Americana, Calexico have not paid for guitar-shaped swimming pools for their constituent members. But they ...
Interview by Holly Gleason, Paste, 11 May 2015
"AS I STAND HERE TALKING TO YOU," Shelby Lynne confesses, on the phone from her Palm Springs home, "I have no clothes on. I can ...
Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris: Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell: The Traveling Kind
Review by Holly Gleason, Paste, 26 May 2015
IF OLD YELLOW MOON, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell's first-ever duet album, felt like old friends catching up and remembering old times, The Traveling Kind ...
Kopecky: Drug for the Modern Age
Review by Holly Gleason, Paste, 28 May 2015
FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE KOPECKY FAMILY BAND, this Nashville sextet brings an eyes-open approach to the world of hooking up, checking out, disappearing into technology ...
The Decemberists: Merriweather Post Pavilion
Live Review by Geoffrey Himes, Baltimore City Paper, 5 June 2015
EARLY IN THE Decemberists' show at the Merriweather Post Pavilion Thursday night, silver-suited lead singer Colin Meloy was explaining how one of his songs started ...
Doug Sahm: Joe Nick Patoski on Doug Sahm
Interview by Stephen K. Peeples, stephenkpeeples.com, 25 July 2015
Totally true tall tales from Texas about Biblical floods, Doug Sahm, Texas music, Texas Tornados, rednecks, cowboys, hippies, San Antonio, Austin, Houston, Huey P. Meaux, ...
Live Review by Geoffrey Himes, Baltimore City Paper, 27 July 2015
JASON ISBELL came to the Merriweather Post Pavilion Sunday evening just nine days after releasing one of the year's best albums, Something More Than Free. ...
Overview by Geoffrey Himes, American Songwriter, 8 October 2015
RUTH UNGAR understands that a lot of people can't tell the difference between bluegrass and old-time music. Anytime they see a group with a fiddle ...
Patty Griffin: Servant Of Love
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 15 October 2015
WHEN JIMMIE RODGERS, the "Father of Country Music," cut 'Blue Yodel #9' with Louis Armstrong in 1930, combining rural mountain music with blues and jazz ...
Howe Gelb, Giant Sand: Sands of time — Way Too Much Light: Howe Gelb And Friends
Live Review by Kieron Tyler, MOJO, December 2015
Thirty years of Giant Sand celebrated with guests aplenty at Danish arts festival. ...
The Beau Brummels: Were The Beau Brummels America's Unluckiest Band?
Retrospective by Mitchell Cohen, Music Aficionado, 2016
EVERYTHING BEGAN so well. Almost a year after the all-consuming British Invasion began, the Beau Brummels were one of the first new homegrown bands to ...
Bob Dylan: Going Up the Country: Woodstock's Post-Dylan influx
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Small Town Talk' (Faber), February 2016
BOB DYLAN WASN'T the only artistic giant to seek sanctuary in the Catskill Mountains in the 1960s. Just as the singer had fled controversy and ...
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian, 24 April 2016
WILLY VLAUTIN is an American musician and novelist based in Portland, Oregon. His alt-country band Richmond Fontaine won critical acclaim with their 2004 album, Post ...
The Lumineers: O2 Academy Brixton, London
Live Review by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 25 April 2016
LIKE MUMFORD & SONS, the Lumineers have adopted a strand of rootless country-folk that has no geographical connection to Nashville. Founding members Wesley Schultz and ...
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, R2/Rock'n'Reel, May 2016
DONNIE FRITTS MAY be an alumnus of Muscle Shoals, the Alabama mecca of southern soul, and a renowned songwriter and recording artist in his own ...
Review by Stewart Smith, The Wire, May 2016
THE NEWS that Howe Gelb is to retire Giant Sand after 31 years is bittersweet. Given the fact that the Tuscon, Arizona indie rock 'anti-brand' ...
Review by Holly Gleason, Paste, 19 May 2016
BEFORE STURGILL SIMPSON or Chris Stapleton, there was Robbie Fulks: a hardcore alt-country sensation, writing subversive songs like his Nashville anti-Valentine 'Fuck This Town', 'She ...
Interview by Jamie Atkins, Record Collector, July 2016
Over the past two-and-a-half decades Kentucky, Lousiville's Will Oldham, or the artist most commonly known as Bonnie "Prince" Billy, has amassed one of the strongest ...
Jesca Hoop, Iron & Wine: Sam Beam and Jesca Hoop: Union Chapel, London
Live Review by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 2 September 2016
The voices of Iron & Wine's Beam and Californian singer-songwriter Hoop pool mellifluously together until they seem made for each other. ...
Review by Jamie Atkins, Record Collector, October 2016
IF MOST BANDS were to announce that their 10th album, 21 years into their career, will be a largely acoustic affair, it would cause all ...
The Jayhawks Soar Back Into Houston
Report and Interview by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 26 October 2016
THEY INITIALLY CAME to prominence under the alt-country/No Depression banner in the mid '90s. But no listener to the whole discography of the Minnesota-bred Jayhawks ...
Gillian Welch: Boots No. 1 - The Official Revival Bootleg
Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 28 November 2016
THE ARRIVAL OF A new record from Gillian Welch and her partner Dave Rawlings is an eagerly anticipated event at Just Backdated. ...
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 2016
THE BAND'S STORY continues to beguile: how did a group so rich in talent and promise implode so hopelessly, only to pull the rabbit out ...
Karen Dalton: Are You Leaving for the Country? Karen Dalton in Woodstock
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Small Town Talk' (Da Capo), Spring 2016
FRED NEIL had returned to his beloved Florida by the early '70s, but from 1970 onwards Karen Dalton spent much of her time in Woodstock. ...
Interview by Michael Simmons, MOJO, January 2017
DECKED OUT IN an all-black suit, Robbie Robertson exudes elegance and a well-read intelligence – the latter all the more fascinating given his teenage education chicken- pickin' in honky-tonks ...
Aaron Lee Tasjan: Silver Tears (New West)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, February 2017
Dope-smoking nomad's dazzling bag of tricks ...
Rhiannon Giddens: Freedom Highway
Review by Holly Gleason, Paste, 20 February 2017
ALWAYS AMBITIOUS, Americana/traditional folk artist Rhiannon Giddens uses Freedom Highway, her second solo album, for a contemporary end: tracing the roots of the BlackLivesMatter movement ...
Nikki Lane: Highway Queen (New West)
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, March 2017
Bruising third from Nashville songstress ...
Sam Amidon: The Following Mountain (Nonesuch)
Review by Jude Rogers, The Guardian, 1 June 2017
Gritty, personal new paths in folk ...
Shelby Lynne, Allison Moorer: Shelby Lynne & Allison Moorer: Not Dark Yet
Review by Jon Young, Paste, 16 August 2017
IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME COMING. Though Shelby Lynne and her younger sister, Allison Moorer, have released a slew of solo records between them since ...
Son Volt, Uncle Tupelo: The Compass and the Course: Jay Farrar/Son Volt Considered
Retrospective by Graham Reid, Elsewhere, 1 October 2017
BACK AT THE DAWN of the '90s, critical consensus and discerning listeners were drawn towards the emerging alt.country/American sound coming out of the US. It ...
Retrospective by Mitchell Cohen, Music Aficionado, 2018
THE IMAGE OF Los Angeles rock in the '80s is imprinted like a tacky tattoo: bands with poofed-up hair and eyeliner, girls with poofed-up hair ...
Calexico: The Thread That Keeps Us
Review by Andy Gill, The Independent, 17 January 2018
NOW EXPANDED to a full-time septet, Calexico display a new resourcefulness and determination on The Thread That Keeps Us, which may be the album that ...
Jeff Tweedy: Queen's Hall, Edinburgh
Live Review by Graeme Thomson, Uncut, April 2018
One man and his mic'd up acoustic guitar, "singing songs to humans..." ...
Review by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, April 2018
FOR AN ALBUM on which he takes stock of a 21st century US riddled with crises and uncertainty, Cooder astutely plunders the grammar of the ...
The Band: John Niven's Music from Big Pink: A Foreword
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Music from Big Pink' (Bloomsbury), July 2018
THE FACT THAT John Niven was just two years old in 1968 – the year in which The Band's Music from Big Pink was released ...
Report and Interview by Geoffrey Himes, Nashville Scene, 6 September 2018
A look at new work by Nathaniel Rateliff, Anderson East, Shemekia Copeland and other artists playing AmericanaFest ...
Mumford & Sons: SSE Hydro, Glasgow
Live Review by Graeme Thomson, Mail On Sunday, 24 November 2018
Mumford & Sons are 21st-century boys these days, with new album Delta continuing their self-conscious plunge into progress... but are they playing against their strengths? ...
Delines, The : The Delines: The Imperial
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, January 2019
IT'S BEEN a long way back for Amy Boone. In March 2016, the singer was hit by a car as she walked through a parking ...
Uncle Tupelo, Wilco: Jeff Tweedy: At Least That's What He Said
Interview by Jamie Atkins, Record Collector, February 2019
The recent publication of his autobiography and the release of his first solo album, Warm, have seen Wilco man Jeff Tweedy reflect on a remarkable ...
Our Native Daughters: Songs of Our Native Daughters
Review by Laura Barton, The Guardian, 21 February 2019
FOUR BLACK FEMALE BANJO PLAYERS wrestling with gender, race, slavery, sexual assault and the domination of the male gaze might make an admirable-if-arduous prospect, but ...
Rhiannon Giddens With Francesco Turrisi: There Is No Other
Review by Jude Rogers, The Guardian, 3 May 2019
FOLK MUSIC SHOULDN'T HAVE STARS, but Rhiannon Giddens' illuminating charge is hard to ignore. This February, she led the brilliant Our Native Daughters project, collaborating ...
Guy Clark's Triumphant Last Act
Retrospective by Mitchell Cohen, Music Aficionado, July 2019
IF YOU WERE watching television after midnight on July 21, 1998, you may have witnessed a musical performance that belongs in the history books. David ...
The Amazing Rhythm Aces: Russell Smith: An Ace, An Old Friend + An Echo of a Moment
Essay by Holly Gleason, hollygleason.com, 15 July 2019
THIRTY THOUSAND OR so feet above everything, late and tired. With the ear buds in, the demos – all top shelf kind of awesome – ...
Tyler Childers: Country Squire (Hickman Holler/RCA)
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, September 2019
Kentucky's latest emergent star proves his worth ...
The Mavericks: Why the Mavericks are the Bar Band of Your Dreams
Retrospective by Mitchell Cohen, Music Aficionado, September 2019
IT FELT LIKE some kind of a trick, the way the Mavericks seduced the world of country music when they came on the scene in ...
Various Artists: The Rough Guide To Country Blues/The Rough Guide To The Roots Of Country Music
Review by Tony Burke, Vintage Jazz Mart, Fall 2019
Two 25-track CD sets containing an excellent cross section of artists representing the best in 1920s and 1930s country blues and hillbilly music. ...
Dave Alvin: From An Old Guitar – Rare and Unreleased Recordings
Review by Wayne Robins, Copper, 14 January 2020
YOU'RE DRIVING through the New Mexico desert in the dark. Your teeth are grinding, though the buzz of the blue meth or whatever you were ...
Lucinda Williams: Good Souls Better Angels
Review and Interview by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, June 2020
IT MAY BE because she's not long come off the road from a lengthy live trek marking the 20th anniversary of her most celebrated album, ...
Fleet Foxes: "You can fake a guitar solo. You can't fake your voice"
Interview by Laura Barton, The Guardian, 23 September 2020
Back with a warm new album, Robin Pecknold talks about how the pandemic cured his anxiety – and how the Beach Boys' golden falsettos changed ...
Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi: They're Calling Me Home
Review by Jude Rogers, The Guardian, 16 April 2021
RHIANNON GIDDENS' NEW ALBUM with Francesco Turrisi, her partner in life as well as music, explores two subjects that occupied them (and, frankly, the rest ...
The Band, Levon Helm: Elusive Harmony: Levon Helm, The Band, and the birth of Americana
Retrospective by Ian Penman, City Journal, Winter 2021
IN MAY 1900, an advert appeared out of Florida for "60 coloured performers… male, female and juvenile of every description, Novelty Acts, Headliners, etc. We ...
Delines, The : The Delines: Two If By Sea
Report and Interview by Steven R Rosen, Rock & Roll Globe, 12 March 2022
Willy Vlautin and Amy Boone overcome the odds to create their best album with The Sea Drift. ...
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