Billy Joe Shaver’s Honky Tonk Hero makes it clear that the Texan has endured a remarkable life. Unfortunately, this slender volume tells too little of it. At 72 pages, it resembles a convincing book proposal more than a revealing autobiography. […]
When fiddler Art Stamper passed away on January 23 after a four-year battle with throat cancer, American string band music lost someone special — not just a great player, and not just one who embodied the link between old-time music […]
DOWN FROM FOGGY MOUNTAIN: 2005 is shaping up to be a busy year for EARL SCRUGGS. Columbia Legacy is reissuing his solo outing I Saw The Light With Some Help Of My Friends, along with two Flatt & Scruggs titles: […]
The musical bio-documentary is a form so often cookie-cutter and predictable now that suspicion of thanklessness sets in easily enough. The “Behind The Music” recipe — life screw-up and alleged redemption, with little attention to the actual music or its […]
I first met Vic Chesnutt in early 1991. He was coming through Austin, where I lived at the time, to play a show at the local alt-rock club, and I’d done a phone interview with him to preview the show […]
Music and politics: Beyond the election The ongoing debate between those in favor and those opposed to the expressed politics of ND and ND’s featured artists is engaging. But what are the real threats prompting such a passionate debate? I […]
1 Alison Krauss & Union Station, Lonely Runs Both Ways (Rounder) 2 Elliott Smith, From A Basement On The Hill (Anti-) 3 Tom Waits, Real Gone (Anti-) 4 Neko Case, The Tigers Have Spoken (Anti-) 5 Ray LaMontagne, Trouble (RCA) […]
Reissue reviews often raise as many questions as they answer as critics evaluate the merits of various titles and ponder why they turned out the way they did. The reissue business, more complex than most realize, is fraught with pitfalls. […]
“I remember thinking, ‘If I like this music, all my friends in school are going to think I’m weird. Do I really want to do that? To like weird shit?’ Of course, I did. And everything was fine. The world […]
It is the central paradox of rivers that the same body of water can as easily carry one away from home as toward it. Rivers can take a voyager into strange circumstances, or they may return the same journeyer as […]
