On his third full-length recording for Alligator, Osborne has hit the jackpot. While his songwriting has always been precise, soulful, and detailed, he nails every song here with a straightforwardness. Lyrically, the themes can be dark, but also seem hopeful. Musically, his mix of rock, soul, grunge, and blues recalls days when rock’s best singer/songwriters […]
The Band’s double-LP Rock of Ages was released in August 1972, their first live collection – as well as their last before they disbanded with 1978’s The Last Waltz. As phenomenal as their finale show was, guest stars and all, the earlier collection captured them at a creative peak and was a much more characteristic […]
Recharging their batteries, staving off writer’s block, getting back to their roots – countless musicians have an album of covers in their catalogs. Hardly controversial, unless it’s Bob Dylan. When he released 1970’s Self Portrait, fans and especially critics concentrated more on why he made the move, instead of how well he pulled it off. […]
There are rock reunions, and then there are rock reunions. Some shine (the Zombies, the Rascals), others tarnish (Police, the post-Morrison, Densmore-less Doors). But blink and you might have missed one of the most important reunions, at least in terms of roots rock – that of Barrence Whitfield and the Savages. With guitarist Peter Greenberg […]
The latest from Lawrence Juber will befuddle guitarists who struggle simply to work up solo versions of songs in standard tuning. Here, Juber has compiled 14 songs for solo guitar – some standards, some more current, and several originals – and plays them all in DADGAD tuning. And each and every one of them is […]
Pokey LaFarge’s retro vision – rooted in bluegrass, blues, jazz, jug band, pre-World War II country (especially Jimmie Rodgers) and ’30s Western swing – was gaining attention before he played mandolin on Jack White’s Blunderbuss album. The St. Louis-based LaFarge and His South City Three opened for White on his subsequent tour. Now he’s back […]
When Alan Jackson announced a bluegrass album produced by Alison Krauss in 2006, the result was Like Red On A Rose. On it, Jackson sang not straight-ahead bluegrass, but the sorts of dark – and sometimes pretentious – Americana ballads that are Krauss’ specialty. It was a rare miss for Jackson. Instead of earning usual […]
When one thinks of the Folk Boom of the late ’50s and early ’60s, the place that first comes to mind is New York City. Sure, Los Angeles had the Ash Grove, Chicago the Gate of Horn, but New York had Gerde’s Folk City, the Gaslight, Night Owl Café, the Bitter End, and of course […]
The Coal Men – guitarist Dave Coleman and drummer Dave Ray – boast a cowboy romanticism that comes alive on their fourth album, Escalator. Coleman wrote or co-wrote all of the songs on Escalator with Ray, bassist Jay Hitchcock, or other collaborators, creating a definite band identity linking each cut. “Midnight You” and “Lonoke, Arkansas” […]
Sheryl Crow’s gone country. That’s the line on Feels Like Home, the popular singersongwriter’s eighth studio album. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. Crow moved to Nashville a decade ago and now counts some of the genre’s biggest stars among her friends and neighbors. And country is as hot as ever at the cash register. […]
