I have to confess that I’ve been absolutely side swiped by ‘Love Has Come For You.’  I guess that’s what happens sometimes when your expectations are low.  I also have to confess that I’ve never been a fan of Steve Martin’s films. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I just don’t find him that funny.  On top of that, it’s tempting to write off artists who jump genres and dismiss them as dilettantes.  Saying that, I realize that Mr. Martin began his…

If you judged Mali by its music, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was the most peaceful and happy place on earth.  A few months ago, I reviewed Ballake Sissoko’s meditative and beautiful, ‘At Peace’ whose heartbreaking kora and cello odes remain at the very top of my list of the best new compositions of 2013. 

In the same way that Sissoko’s music bridged the gap between cultures by experimenting with the structures of western…

It’s the day after Super Sunday and along with the coma inducing deep fried snacks, there was the equally (spiritually) unhealthy half time musical entertainment to contend with.  Whatever the value for artists in terms of exposure, Super Sunday half time is an unforgiving time slot, and over the years bands as seasoned as The Rolling Stones and Prince have done their best to give a little oomph to such a commercialized mainstream event with mixed results.  With…

Mali’s broken heart strings played for the world to hear

During the worst days of the region’s civil war, a lone cello player named Vedran Smailovic offered his music to the chill morning air as families, commuters and hungry people in search of food rushed by him on the…

Better late than never.  An official live set from Miles Davis’ ‘lost band’

“I took the band out on the road; Wayne, Dave, Chick, and Jack DeJohnette were now my working band. Man, I wish this band had been recorded live because it was really a bad motherfucker. I think Chick Corea and a few other people recorded some of our performances live, but Columbia missed out on the whole fucking thing.”- Miles Davis to Quincy Troupe in Miles,…

Lee Harvey Osmond – The Folk Sinner

Julie Doiron – so many days

The weather outside’s been awful, dark and hurting for weeks now.  I’ve had to walk away from the leak in the basement, the car engine’s knocking and the tires are held together by a thread.  Still, I’ve been driving around a lot because hanging around the house too much reminds me of all our money troubles, the boxed up office downstairs and all the things I should be trying to do…

After more than 40 years in the music business, the Canadian blues icon has recorded ‘I Hear The Wind In The Wires’ – and it may be the best record of his career

by Douglas Heselgrave 

“I’ve thought about this a lot, and for instance, I think you could take a Percy Sledge tune – any one of them – remove the organ and put in a steel guitar and it’d be flat out country!” 

Jim Byrnes belongs to a vanishing profession.  Storytellers and entertainers have…

Two new CDs from Germany and the Central Asian Silk Road challenge our ideas of what ‘roots music’ is

REQUIEM FOR A PINK MOON – an Elizabethan tribute to Nick Drake

By Joel Frederiksen

During his short lifetime, the British singer and songwriter, Nick Drake – like his contemporary Jimi Hendrix – only recorded three studio albums and also like the guitarist his music has become more and more influential as time has passed. 

While he was alive,…

We Walk The Line – A celebration of the music of Johnny Cash – Various Artists

The Greatest: Number Ones, Country Classics, Gospel Songs and Duets - Johnny Cash

Reviews by Douglas Heselgrave

Considering the paces Johnny Cash put his body through for the first half of his life, it’s amazing he held out as long as he did.  But, if he’d managed to keep ducking and diving out of the clutches of the hands of fate and delayed his last judgment a little bit…

"Woody is just Woody. Thousands of people do not know he has any other name. He is just a voice and a guitar. He sings the songs of a people and I suspect that he is, in a way, that people. Harsh voiced and nasal, his guitar hanging like a tire iron on a rusty rim, there is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings. But there is something more important for those who will listen. There is the will of a people to endure and fight…

 Tim O’Brien, Tara Linhardt, Danny Knicely, Abigail Washburn, Tony Trischka, Buddhiman Gandharba, Jagat B. Gandharba and many more…..

Review by Douglas Heselgrave

Globalization has a lot to answer for.  Walking in downtown Vancouver the other day, I could have bought Mexican sushi or Ukrainian/Pakistani Perogie pakoras to munch on while watching Korean break-dancers spin to South American hip hop music.  If you live anywhere near a big city, I’m sure…

Review by Douglas Heselgrave 

I get so much mail every day that sometimes when I hear the postman coming, I want to run in the other direction.  I’ve got stacks of CDs that arrived months ago that I haven’t even opened yet, and a rubber bucket full of padded envelopes and boxes whose contents are a total mystery to me.  So, it takes a lot to get my attention, and the enormous box that was delivered by Fedex just the other day did just that. 

I knew that the Paul Simon…

By Douglas Heselgrave

It’s the middle of the afternoon and for the past few hours Willie Nelson has been talking to reporters about his new album, ‘Heroes.’  For a writer, it’s not the ideal situation, and as I bided my time in the middle of the queue, I worried that by the time it was my turn to speak to Willie, he’d be burned out and his answers would be perfunctory and clichéd. But, I couldn’t have been more wrong, and I went away from our conversation realizing…

By Doug Heselgrave

Staring Contest by Reid Jamieson

I’ve been completely sideswiped by Reid Jamieson and the songs on his new record and I’m trying to figure out why.  I’m pretty crusty when it comes to music and songs that are sung as beautifully as he sings them are often enough to send me running in the opposite direction.  But, I keep coming back to listen again to the Vancouver native’s third album and frankly, it sounds better every time I hear…

 just talked with Willie Nelson. I was curious about his most recent single.



Me: So, what would happen if I rolled you up and smoked you when you died - like in the song. What kind of high would I get?





Willie: Well, I don't know, but I'd go out and get a shot pretty quick after that. There's no telling what you'd catch!

Full interview coming…

Review by Douglas Heselgrave With Lukas Nelson, Snoop Dog, Merle Haggard, Ray Price, Billy Joe Shaver, Jamey Johnson, Kris Kristofferson, Sheryl Crow and more

Heroes are harder than ever to come by in today’s world.  And though it’s not immediately clear who or what the title of Willie Nelson’s newest album is referring to, there’s a certain sense of wistful nostalgia permeating the record that expresses a yearning for bygone days when simply rolling up…

By Douglas Heselgrave

Over the course of nine albums beginning with his 1994 debut, ‘Lead Me On’ and culminating with his daring 2008 instrumental opus, ‘Western Bell,’ the Pacific Northwest singer and songwriter Kelly Joe Phelps has written and performed some of the most compelling slide guitar based music ever recorded.  Moving through the blues, country and folk genres into personal songwriting and finally into John Fahey influenced experimental music, Phelps has…

Review by Douglas Heselgrave

This one has been a long time coming.  Since the last Dead tour in 2009, Mickey Hart has been maintaining a fairly low profile, which isn’t to say that he’s been kicking back on a beach or drifting away at home doing nothing. Like a true mad scientist, he has been exploring new vistas, conversing with NASA about sonic vibrations in space, looking at the stars and listening to the sounds that the images in his telescope draw him towards. …

Review by Douglas Heselgrave

Zakir Hussain should need no introduction.  As the world’s greatest living master of the Indian tabla, he has spent decades tirelessly touring the globe and exposing audiences to the ancient percussive traditions of South Asia.  Hussain first came to prominence in the west in the late sixties when his father Ustad Alla Rakha, Ravi Shankar’s tabla accompanist brought him to California to stay with the Grateful Dead drummer, Mickey…

Review by Douglas Heselgrave

Nothing wasted, everything gained on The Promise of the Real’s second full length album

No one will ever accuse Lukas Nelson of taking the easy way out or following the path of least resistance.  Anyone who’s taken the time to follow his musical development over the last four or five years knows that Lukas can pretty much do whatever he wants musically.  He’s a natural singer with an innate sense of phrasing that…