By their nature, multi-artist collections tend to be uneven affairs. But two new ones are the exception to the rule, primarily I suspect because they both come from atypical record labels that dedicate themselves to releasing quality music rather than to reaching the masses.

The first of these packages is Red House’s Nod to Bob 2: An Artists’ Tribute to Bob Dylan on his 70^th Birthday, a 16-track follow-up to a collection released 10 years ago for Dylan’s…

I'm starting to wonder if there is a connection between me leaving town and the upward mobility at my place of employment.   I've been planning for Wakarusa for almost two months, meanwhile applying for higher paying job opportunities at my job.  Today I got a call, "Ryan this is Tina, we've set up an interview with you for Friday, June 3rd."   I promptly told Tina I would be in Arkansas listening to mind boggling bands having the time of my life, and that I couldn't be bothered with a pesky…

“NRBQ is a living, breathing, ongoing sound,” says Adams as he begins historic band’s next chapter.

NEW YORK, N.Y. — Terry Adams, visionary, driving force, and “untamed genius of the keyboards” for the great American band NRBQ since its inception more than 40 years ago, resumes his life’s work with the release of a new studio album, Keep This Love Goin’ by NRBQ, due out July 19, 2011. Recorded with the…

Scandalous, the new album by Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears, is a record I just kind of heard by accident and haven't quite been able to shake since my first listen.  "Livin In The Jungle" opens the tight 39-minute set with soaring horns and funky guitar grooves, and in a burst- Mr. Lewis arrives in full force. The leader delivers smoldering declarations throughout, and together with The Honeybears, the collective oozes out of the speakers with a well-balanced …

The Imperial Rooster are one of those bands, like Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show or Southern Culture on the Skids, who come around once a decade or so. The type of band who can play, sing, and write as well as anybody, but also injects plenty of humor into the mix. Love songs, murder ballads, drinking songs, political anthems. That shit's all well and good, but every band covers that ground. It takes a…

Tara Nevins has been one of the main songwriters and vocalists in the roots band, Donna the Buffalo, for more than two decades, building a collection of fine roots albums and a widespread fan base known as The Herd.

More than a decade after her solo debut, Nevins recently released "Wood and Stone," a stellar collection that moves easily from fiddle music to contemporary folk rock to Cajun. It's an album that sounds familiar, yet new, not an easy feat. Nevins is joined by a…

Latest installment of "Between Two Ferns":

http://tinyurl.com/42xkrm3

Tommy Stinson live in-studio preview of the new album:

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/05/26/tommy_stinson/

Mumford & Sons 4/27/11 Satellite Radio:…

Two postings, combined into one, on Gil Scott-Heron, dead at age 62, a poet, prophet and spokesperson of the black urban American experience.

A merciless and unsentimental truth-teller when he emerged on the scene in the '70s, by telling Afro-identified kids dancing to Motown and grooving on psychedelic rock that "the revolution will not be televised" Scott-Heron meant that the real…

There are more independent record labels springing up throughout the  underground music scenes of the world every year, certainly more than one can  keep track of on one's own, let's be honest. Only problem is, most of them are  either fly-by-night operations, as ephemeral as they come, or they simply have  poor taste and release large quantities of bad music, polluting what would …

By 'Rebel' Rod Ames

I arrived at the Kerrville Folk Festival for opening day on Thursday with my sister/photographer, T. K. Diaz to cover the evening for the blogs I enjoy writing. There is my blog, From Under the Basement and there is, of course, No Depression.

No…

I think Americana fans appreciate and respect all kinds of roots music – blues, folk, honky tonk, bluegrass, outlaw country – So, although Poor Man’s Poem is much different than the last couple of records I expect folks to give it an honest listen.  That’s really all I can ask.  I’m very proud of it and I hope folks like it as…

After just one listen to Shawn Pittman's Edge of The World (DeltaGroove, 5/17/11) I was immediately impressed with the band and Shawn's selection of obscure blues covers. Luckily the folks at DeltaGroove had sent a physical disc which meant liner notes allowing me to fact check!  First, there wasn't a band. Shawn had played everything except saxophone (Jonathan Doyle). Second, he…

I was on the road in the late Sixties, early Seventies, swept along by the wild ride Freedom takes you on when you're young. Just out of my one tour in the military. Vietnam era but like most of us I never had to fight. This freedom I'm talking about was like going from a babbling brook into dangerous rapids, except that you don't feel the danger. Just the speed.

I wound up in Sausalito sometime in 1970, trying to escape from the aftermath of the Summer of Love.…

Rosebuds

Loud Planes Fly Low

Merge

You’d think after six albums, the Rosebuds would be better known than they are. Admittedly, the personnel changes that have plagued them from the very beginning – along with an often times frustrating attempt to establish their own identity -- have hamstrung their efforts to entrench themselves in the indie firmament. New album, Loud Planes Fly Low, finds them pulling out all the ammunition in their arsenal to gain the…

Three tributes to the life and music of Hazel Dickens will take place within the next week.



Tonight, May 30, a cavalcade of local will musicians gather at Banjo Jim’s -- the city's embodiment of the Americana music scene --on the lower east side of New York to sing her songs and as many played with her, to share their stories. Led by Danny Weiss and Mary Olive Smith (Reckon So), the house band will include master instrumentalists, Tony Trischka & Barry Mitterhoff as well as…

Karin Bergquist (half of the husband/wife duo at the core of Over the Rhine since 1991) could sing a grocery list and make it compelling, so just imagine her smoldering vocals and unique phrasing on such lines as "I sing the bebop apocalypse/Lean into you, God's hands on my hips/Grip the midnight microphone/Steel every cell of my flesh and bone/I…

By Jim Simpson

Rare is the album that grabs you from the start -- from the first plucked notes, the initial poetic sentence -- with promises of deeply felt stories and engaging tunes. This album is one of those, and like the proverbial metaphoric onion, the layers are many.



Laserbeams and Dreams, Andy Friedman's third studio release, opens with the…

Last night I learned the secret of healthy living and longevity. 



I always wondered how so many of the hard-living, hard-luck folks you see in the beyond-dirt-poor areas of the almost-Third World southern states live so stinkin’ long and through so much.

I mean, haven’t you ever seen that: photos of really old folks with weathered faces who’ve persevered in life and lived beyond the normal life expectancy despite considerable odds that would’ve done in folks like…