Merle Travis is a guitar god. In our age of hype, that term has been as liberally applied as hot sauce on a Texas taco. However, in the pantheon of pickers, Merle Travis is Zeus. Furthermore, if Merle Travis had […]
Merle Travis is a guitar god. In our age of hype, that term has been as liberally applied as hot sauce on a Texas taco. However, in the pantheon of pickers, Merle Travis is Zeus. Furthermore, if Merle Travis had […]
Despite its title, this isn’t Marshall Crenshaw’s 447th album. In fact, it’s only his tenth, and his first studio project in three years. But Number 447 finds Crenshaw continuing to refine the masterful pop songwriting that made his 1982 self-titled […]
Describing Fred Eaglesmith’s musical style is like wrestling an eel; just when you think you have it pinned down, it slips from your grasp. But it’s precisely this elusiveness that makes 50-Odd Dollars so compelling. Experimenting with different sonic effects […]
This swell 20-track collection opens with “Frettin’ Fingers”, an instrumental hot rod that features electric guitarist Jimmy Bryant starting things up like some long lost Dick Dale cut, then flooring it through an impossibly breakneck, whirling-dervish, how-does-he-do-that melody that’s damn […]
One of the titans of trucker-country, Dick Curless was a curious bird: a proud but broken man; a high school dropout who could convey loneliness and regret with all-too-real eloquence; a Yank from Fort Fairfield, Maine, who used words like […]
With the success of Charley Pride, major labels were, however briefly, emboldened to look for black country talent. Stoney Edwards was all three, a multi-ethnic artist whose resume included bootlegging, major health problems, and a lifetime of hard, honest work. […]
Million-selling country singer Dottie West started out without much chance for the good life. Born in McMinnville, Tennessee, she was raised in an intensely abusive household, but her good-for-nothing father did manage to give her one gift in life: Music, […]
Whether you remember Lorne Greene as Ben Cartwright from Bonanza or as Commander Adama from Battlestar Galactica, one thing remains recognizable: his voice. Booming, rugged and manly in the truest TV sense, Greene had some success as a recording artist […]
Merle Haggard’s tributes to Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills are well-known to contemporary fans, but few know that in 1971 Haggard recorded another one, an album he called “a sort of tribute to an old friend of mine, who is […]
Sonny James is the epitome of what many people hate about country music’s Nashville Sound era, and it’s easy to hear why. Whereas the performances of great country crooners such as Eddy Arnold, ’60s-era Ray Price and Jim Reeves are […]
FRESH TRACK: Steven Keene – ‘This World Is Your World’Check it out
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