5th May 2013

I only discovered the Toy Hearts in 2010 when they had a mid-afternoon slot at the Gateshead SummerTyne Festival and it was immediately obvious that not only were the two young sisters who fronted the band easy on the eye; they were excellent musicians too. Subsequently I’ve seen them a further twice and each time the band have been better than the previous visit.

Tonight’s…

Bluesfest

Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm, Byron Bay NSW Australia

28 March to 1 April 2013

Each year Peter Noble, the 60-something co-founder and supremo of the 23-year-old event, promises the 'best Bluesfest…

Take a trip to the West Coast via London’s West End

I saw the Treetop Flyers at the SummerTyne Festival last Summer and was instantly struck by their combined youth and their ability to create a West Coast harmony based sound that bands many years their senior would have been proud of.

Here we are 11 months later and they have somehow managed to move in leaps and bounds with their debut album THE MOUNTAIN MOVES.

All of their…

Oh Canada, ya surely now how to nurture Blues artists. Especially lady blues artists. Here we re-visit a friend Sunday Wilde and it’s like old friends getting together again, good times guaranteed.

First off I am drawn to ‘No Matter How Far’. From the wilds of Northern Ontario we hear traces of Patsy Cline, as the band works it’s melancholy mood over the music as Ms. Wilde thickly vocalizes the depths of the love for her man and in spite of the…

Sondra Sun-Odeon, one half of the Brooklyn-based band Silver Summit, has released an enchanting solo album titled Ætherea and its another connect-the-dot collection of songs and soundscapes that comes from a different branch of the folk music tree than most of the strictly-acoustic fans are accustomed to. Not being one to hold tight to the traditional, I sort of like that Wikipedia has seen fit to include the term psych folk as its own sub-genre, complete with a…

With the leading edge of what promises to be yet another "storm of the century" beginning to push through the Hudson Valley this weekend, I could either finish season three of Downton Abbey on Amazon Prime, read a book, do more online job hunting, clean the apartment, eat food or listen to some new music. Of which there seems to be plenty of. I suppose I should open this with my usual pronouncement: There are over 100,000 new album releases each year, and 97,500 of them sell…

Guest Blog by Llyn De Danaan

The Celtic Colours Festival, named for the adornment of brilliant fall foliage that cloaks the hills on Cape Breton in October, recently finished its 16th year. Its mission, as Joella Foulds, founder and artistic director told us at one evening session, is to “promote, celebrate and develop Cape Breton’s living Celtic culture.” However, it has also…

Let's see...we have individual lists for best albums, favorite albums, top 10 from the frequent contributor's and the reader's top 50. We don't have anything for producers, engineers or guitar techs. And we missed an opportunity to come up with the best banner ads that Kyla sold this year, although I'll nominate the in-house pitch to buy the No Depression posters which are all really quite nice.…

WARNING: This episode is NSFW or kid friendly because of language used. It’s last episode of 2012! Or even the last one EVER if the Mayan calendar is correct! This episode has A LOT of talking in it, as do most episodes co-hosted by my wife. We talk about best and worst presents received, horrible Christmas songs, and the presents we never got when we were kids. Also, we switch back and forth between traditional and modern Christmas/Holiday music. Happy Holidays.

Download this episode…

I’m a semi-professional music reviewer with an internet radio show and I receive between 6 and 10 albums every month; with the exception of a couple of absolute stinkers, this has been an amazing year for Americana and Roots music; so selecting a Top 10 was really difficult.

For this request I didn’t refer to my notes until number 8 on the list; and that was only to differentiate between 5 competing albums. The Graham Parker and the Rumour album didn’t arrive until…

This is Ed, not Bruce. I just wanted to take a moment before I share Springsteen's words with you to say that I've been thinking a lot about the upcoming election here in the US. Yesterday after the second presidential debate, I was inspired to put down my own thoughts, but I backed off because this is really just a music site, although politics certainly seep into the posts from time to time. On the other hand, No Depression is also a community. And a world community at that,…

What I really wanted to call this post, but it was too long to fit in the above space and kind of presumptive with a touch o' the mean spirit, was this: "Why Steve Earle has become the person that has fulfilled our generation's desire of what we had hoped for from Bob Dylan". This thought came to me last night in Englewood New Jersey, sitting between my fifteen year old son and my forty-one year old nephew. They were the two youngest people in a sparse and not quite half-filled…

Making his third visit to the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival, Amos Lee was on his way to another workmanlike performance as the closing act on a fun-filled Saturday. The Philly steak, rattle and soul brother already had the sold-out crowd on his side, and everyone would have gone home thoroughly entertained, satisfied and, quite possibly, even inspired.

Then Lee introduced Bella Betts to the stage, and…

On episode 96 of the Americana Music Show,  Joel DaSilva tells the story of how he snuck into bars as a kid to see blues legends like Buddy Guy, his transition from rockabilly to blues, and how he managed to include his father on the CD.

Listen Now.

Americana Music Show…

Please make welcome, Mr Otis Gibbs from Wanamaker, Indiana’ said Mr Otis Gibbs as he made a return to this venue and opened his show on America’s Independence Day.  He said that he had celebrated this popular holiday by having stewed tomatoes for breakfast!

Expecting the set list to focus quite heavily on his most recent album HARDER THAN HAMMERED HELL, it was a little surprising to note that less than a handful of songs from it were featured (Second Best, Never Enough, Detroit Steel…

I first started going to live gigs in my early teens. I was underage. I lied about my date of birth so that I could become a member of Friars, a music club based in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire. Life membership was 25p. I still have my member’s card. Wild Turkey in June 1971 was the first live band I saw and some forty one years later I am still occupying live music venues but not pretending to be older than I am!

In my early concert going years one of the bands I saw was…

Twenty-two years ago this month the body of guitarist Jackson Whitman was found in a dark alley by a very drunk man who literally stumbled and fell on top of him. The man's last name (if I remember to spell it correctly) was Timmons and he too was living in South Nashville trying to earn a dollar or two as a session…

For as long as I can remember, I have always been someone who has been CONSUMED by music. By "consumed", I, like many of you, listen to A LOT of music every year. And in addition to listening to lots of music, I, like many of you, think a lot about music. I'm sure that we can all agree that this usually leads to all of us discussing the music that excites us, borrowing and lending of albums, practicing and playing an instrument, and even spending some time reading…

Hi Gill. Thanks so much for taking the time to participate in this interview. I'd like to begin by discussing your early work, and then we can work our way through your musical trajectory, and end with your current work.

My goal is to discuss the span of your musical career, including your early work with The Kitchen Syncopators, your experiences as a member of Old Crow Medicine Show, and then we can take some time to really dig into your own albums and…

Can you discuss your early interests in music, leading up to your own discovery of Mississippi John Hurt?

Dr. Philip Ratcliffe: I was born close to Liverpool, England, in 1943. Much of my time was swallowed up by an interest verging on obsession with New Orleans jazz and folk blues. Before rock ’n’ roll, swing bands and crooners dominated the charts; and apart from old records of Jelly Roll Morton, Kid Ory, Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five, etc., I was…