‘Oh, I cut my hair?’ questioned Ron Sexsmith during his first headlining appearance at this prestigious venue, but a fan had actually shouted out to him ‘I’m glad you’re here!’ That summed up perfectly the sentiments of the rest of tonight’s audience, which included Sexsmith’s parents who had travelled from Canada to see their son perform. 

I sat in the Stalls and the people around me were so attentive throughout and like me, hung on every note of this twenty-eight-song show. In the…

When the Country Music Association made the decision that network tv time was too valuable a commodity to devote to the Country Music Hall of Fame Inductees, something had to be done. After all, the men and women being inducted into the Hall are the foundation of the genre, architects of the sound and innovators in what is largely considered to be America’s most listened to format of music. Rather than accept being taken off the CMA Awards as a demotion, Elizabeth Thiels, Kyle Young and the…

This week marks the release of two spectacular recordings of very different breadth and scope celebrating the 50th Anniversary of New Orleans' Preservation Hall: The Preservation Hall 50th Anniversary Collection box set and the live album St. Peter & 57th St.

The Preservation Hall 50th Anniversary Collection is an expansive 4-CD, 58-track box set spanning the history of The Preservation Hall Jazz Band since 1962. This incredible box set traces the…

Hank Cochran:

Living On A Song

Nashville Film Festival

People are bitching about the demise of country music, but they’re missing the point. At a time when everybody is overly styled, making the rounds and doing the marketing, they missed the point of what made the oeuvre great: people lived hard, put their hearts out there and harvested the pain and the passion with a ruthlessness that often left ravaged relationships in their wake.

Not that it’s about strafing…

Orchestral sounds are all the rage with indie-rock bands these days, and do not think that veteran alternative rockers Death Cab for Cutie would miss out on that trend--Ben Gibbard and Co. have just begun a tour that will highlight their music to date, with the support of Magik*Magik Orchestra. The San Francisco-based orchestra played on their latest album Codes and Keys (released last Spring), and join them on this newly kicked off tour, which brought the band…

This week featured album on The Health & Happiness Hour is Hillfolk Noir - Radio Hour . Playlist below also available our Concert Special for the week, with Kuschty Rye 

(Des Horsfall & Andy Mckerlie) +  and Erin Hall-Gardiner recorded on 27th March and 25th March  2012 in Dingwall at The Greenhouse.

In these days of Linda Chorneys and Lana Del Rays, it's getting increasingly difficult to deal with the criteria used to nominate someone, and in which category even, whether for halls of fame or for the likes of the Grammy Awards. There are clearly ways to "play the system" if indeed there still exists a system to be played. You have to know your way around the Casino.

And when it comes to "lifetime achievement awards," which would also include induction into halls of fame,…

January 2012

By: Dan King

Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Del McCoury Band - American Legacies 

Record Label: McCoury Music

Release Date: April 12, 2011   

Collaboration. The dictionary defines it as people from different origins working together toward a common goal.

Collaboration is what made America great. On “American Legacies,” The Preservation Hall Jazz Band and…

Matt Jennings blew through L.A. this last week, opening for Bombino at The Mint, and it was remarkable. Remarkable, I say! I've loved Matt's music and its international flavors for years (He's from Minnesota too. We pretty much all get each other ...), and it's about time you all get to know and love it too.…

Nomination Proposal to the CMA to Induct Gram Parsons Into the Country Music Hall of Fame; Reprinted on His 65th Birthday



(submitted as hard copy with List of Supporters to CMA, 9/19/08, on the 35th anniversary of Gram's death and available updated to them now 24/7 online)



Based on the criteria established and promulgated by the Country Music

Association in regard to an individual's nomination for induction into the

Country Music Hall of Fame…

I discovered Austin Lucas a couple years ago, but I had yet to see him live. When I heard he was going to be at the intimately set Blue Moon Café in Shepherdstown, WV, with his brilliantly talented back-up band The Bold Party and opening acts Matt Kline (of The Fox…

73rd National Folk Festival Announces Third Round of Performing Artists

The 73rd National Folk Festival is excited to announce eight more performing artists, among the 30 groups that will appear on stages throughout Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park at this free-to-the-public festival Sept. 2-4. This event is the longest running celebration of traditional music and arts in the nation and will call Nashville home through…

Women Who Rock Exhibition

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Cleveland, Ohio

13 May 2011

When Ronnie Spector sings, hearts – almost half a century later – still jump. That voice, so raw and wide open, bristling with desire and even a hint of desperation, says as much about adolescence coming into flower as any textbook ever written.

It is that brandishment of both wanting, while being the embodiment of being the object of lust, that has always made rock &…

Matraca Berg

Harvest Nashville's Lost Soul, Family Farmer's Truth + Grief as a Thing of Beauty

Dreaming in Fields, Falling + Chasing The Angels

I shouldn’t be writing this. It’s not right.

You see, I first met Matraca Berg -- as Delbert McClinton wrote – in a warehouse in West L.A. She was, at 26, a wildly accomplished songwriter with several #1s, including her first written at 18 with no less than the legendary Bobby Braddock. She was on the verge of her…

I LOVE - Tom T Hall's SONGS OF FOX HOLLOW

Various

Red Beet

When a journalist takes a fancy to or strikes up a friendship with an artist, the paranoid scream "conflict of interest," a tragedy since the best and most incisive writing comes from trust, understanding, context and proximity. Few critics enjoy the precious relationship that The Tennessean's Peter Cooper -- himself a neophyte recording artist of some wit and skill -- enjoys with Tom T.…

This entry was originally posted with more links on Country Fried Rock.

There's not much to do in Lubbock, Texas, if you can't drive yet and you want to stay out of trouble, except play the guitar. So, the bored teenage Ace Hightower started writing songs. He wasn't much of a singer at the time, but wrote prolifically.  His singing was…

Hungrytown

Any Forgotten Thing

Listen Here! Records

With their new album – their second credited to their combined moniker of Hungrytown – husband/wife duo Rebecca Hall and Ken Anderson continue to make modern folk songs that bow entirely to age-old mores. Sweet sentiments, lithe arrangements and beguiling harmonies kindle a sense of lofty nostalgia and homegrown circumspect, with enough wide-eyed innocence to mute any hint of pretension. Precious but…