By day three I'm starting to flag, but Canada House at the Blind Tiger looks intriguing: a line-up sponsored by music organisations from three of the western provinces. I'm off to Alberta at the end of July, so this could be a good warm-up.

'We're here to show…

There are bands and there are bands, but occasionally there are BANDS and No Small Children are right now proving that they are one of those.  Elementary school teachers by day, they toss off the persona of schoolmar'm at night, donning pretty dresses, plugging in amps and rocking the various dives and bars to submission.  Three ladies, not young (indeed, their song "Dear Youth" flat out states that age is just a number--- "Who knew that forty-two could be so…

Brown Bird's Dave Lamb faces a crisis, and his fans have his back in a big way.

Spend a few minutes hanging at the warm side of street musicians’ guitar case, lost in the rawness of word and melody, and a niggling sense will creep into your reverie: Playing for quarters and raggedy dollar bills is a scary way to make a living. That musician, however, might have paying gigs too.  Hell, they might even tour with a partner or band.  What a life!  Unfortunately, no…

Rivers flood broad expanses of the Southern imagination. The mythic Mississippi rolls through literature, our watery national spine, by turns torpid and apocalyptic. But there are countless intimate tributaries and every Southerner knows one. Flowing water provides blessed relief in summer, spiritual cleansing and profane recreation.  If you grew up messing around in creeks and rivers, you pushed through thick, brown water past insect skaters skimming the surface in sunny pools -…

FTB podcast #211 features The Moorings by New Orleans singer/songwriter ANDREW DUHON. Also new music from FREE RANGE FOLK, SAMANTHA CRAIN and HE’S MY BROTHER SHE’S MY SISTER. Here's the…

Moving and socially significant Australian country music

Though country music is most typically associated with the Southern United States, it's impact has been felt all around the world. In addition to Nashville and Texas exports, a strong but little-known strain developed among Australian aboriginals in the second half of the twentieth century.…

Morning River Band's latest release, To Suzie, described by Fields as “an ode to good riddance,” was inspired by encounters with George Jones and Jim Beam.



I am sure a lot will be made of ‘A country band from Philly?’ but let’s get past all that, this is a drinkers band from Philly. While known for great songs of booze and blues, there is a glimpse of insight and depth of character on this album that…

It was definitely Billy Bragg's day, with a strong contender for performance of the year, not just of TGE. In comparison with the other stuff I saw, it's a bit like wondering how the rest got on when Mo Farah turned up for the dads' race at sports day...

It was probably the fifth or sixth time I've seen Billy over the last 25 years or so and the first that he's had a full band available throughout. We still got some solo and stripped-down numbers, but it was…

Delta Rae might sound like the down-home name of a backwoods country singer but it’s really just Greek to Brittany Holljes.

“I think there are a lot of ‘Delta’ bands out there, too, so we kind of get that ... people get confused,” said Holljes, the whip-smart singer of the North Carolina-based sextet (like Deborah Harry used to say about Blondie, Delta Rae is a group). “And I completely…

If Kat Edmonson ever becomes a household name, she can put it down not just to her talent as a jazz singer, but to some decidedly modern financing as well.

The 29-year-old Texan, an old-school chanteuse with a contemporary lilt, has funded production of her second album via a community workshop and through…

By Ken Paulson, Sun209.com

There’s a moment on the Chet Atkins and Les Paul album Guitar Monsters (Real Gone Music) where the two playfully compare notes on CB radio and Dolly Parton’s attributes. It’s an exchange that simultaneously signals just how long ago Atkins and Paul recorded the LP, and how much fun they had doing it.

This 1978 album, their second together, showcases the two virtuoso guitarists in a playful and informal setting. Paul…

How does the co-writing song process differ from the alone songwriting process you just wrote about?

Co-writing is quite different from writing alone. When I'm working on something alone I have complete freedom. Freedom to experiment, to make mistakes, to try things I'm quite sure won't work and the freedom to reconstruct whatever has come before and rebuild it like a bad water pump. When I'm working on a song with another writer there is the presence of…

The ambitious new album See The Light, from Alabama quintet Fiddleworms is a cavalcade of styles with literally a parade of guest musicians including the University of North Alabama marching Band. The eleven original tracks are interspersed with snippets of radio sound effects and spoken word segments that flow from jazzy blues to stomping country rock fusion all centered around the lazy everyman vocals Russell Medford. The level of production and…

“Have you talked to Jesse Winchester? You can’t talk about

the best songwriters and not include him.” ~ Bob Dylan

Way back in the early 70s my then girlfriend told me I had to listen to this new singer-songwriter that she loved Jesse Winchester. She particularly loved the song "Yankee Lady". I listened she was right and through the years I've become the bigger fan! Today we celebrate Jesse's 69th birthday!…

May 2013

There are very few singers or bands that have a 100% distinctive Trademark sound; but The Mavericks achieved that very early in their career and in the UK you still can’t go to a Wedding without being corralled onto the dance-floor as soon as you hear the opening bars to Dance The Night Away.

After breaking up in 2004 lead singer and songwriter, Raul pursued a successful solo career visiting the UK several times…

So, here we are again, tramping the streets of Brighton, squeezing into someunfeasibly small spaces to see bands we've never heard of...

I'd been feeling somewhat underexcited by this year's Great Escape because it the only one of hundreds of names on the bill that I knew I liked was Billy Bragg, who appears at the Dome tonight. But a quick burst of venue-hopping last night –bookended by…

DATC: Gary, tell us what Document Records is and what makes it special?

Gary: It is rather unique! I was a CD reviewer when I first encountered it. From the 1970s onwards there were labels that were reissuing pre-war country blues. Artists’ works…

Outlaw country three years before RCA named it

There may never have been as iconoclastic a country artist as David Allan Coe. Though his rejection of Nashville norms drew parallels with the outlaw movement, he always seemed a notch wilder and less predictable than Waylon, Willie and the boys. Reared largely in reform schools and prisons through his…