Photograph by Spencer Tweedy Over the course of a remarkable career, both with her family band the Staple Singers and as a solo artist, gospel-soul icon Mavis Staples has bravely explored the frustrations, sorrows and then joys of the African-American freedom fight. But, lest we forget, she can still rockRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Missoula, Montana’s own Nathaniel Smith has had a career as a jazz drummer and composer that took him from a mountain valley in the Rockies eastward to Appleton, Wisconsin’s Lawrence University (where Smith got to perform with the visiting Dave Holland and Maria Schneider), briefly westRead More