by Tom Johnson Following her fantastic 2000 release Red Dirt Girl, this found the angelic-voiced Emmylou Harris continuing down the path she started with Daniel Lanois on the equally fantastic but slightly more stunning 1995 album Wrecking Ball, and that’s just fine with me. Once a country-goddess, Harris has incorporatedRead More

The story of how country folk/Americana performer Andy Budd came to make this record is uniquely American. A car dealer by day, Budd always wanted to be a country singer. With support from his family and staff, that dream was made real You May Also Like: Richard Turgeon, “Car Crash”Read More

This week, Boston’s Berklee College of Music hosted the Rethink Music Convention. The official conference subtitle was “Creativity, Commerce, and Policy in the 21st Century.” An NPR segment on the conference featured a terrific quote You May Also Like: Matthew Shipp, Mat Maneri – ‘Conference of the Mat/ts’ (2018) RodRead More

On this special edition of Something Else! Reviews’ One Track Mind, we hand the reins over to keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, who rose to fame as a composer and sideman alongside Eric Clapton and George Harrison. You May Also Like: ‘All Things Must Pass Away: Harrison, Clapton, and Other Assorted LoveRead More

by Mark Saleski In the recent Southern Music issue of the Oxford American, musician John Engle speaks of “The Vastness,” the idea that the world’s store of knowledge is so vast that “if you tried to take it all on at once it would crush you.” It’s true. And thereRead More

by Mark Saleski Sometimes, the history of music is full of surprises. Another way of looking at it: I’m surprised by my own ignorance. When I think of the South and old-time music, the blues, whites, and blacks, I tend to think of the musics as being mostly separated, withRead More

by Nick DeRiso An album about dreams reclaimed, Murray Flint’s The Journey traces his own road back from painfully debilitating tendonitis. After nearly a decade away from the guitar, the Olympia, Wash., resident discovered a finger-style approach long associated with Merle Travis. This technique simultaneously sounds more complex, since theRead More

by Mark Saleski For many years, I was very comfortable with the statement: “I hate country music.” It was easy to say because there was so much evidence all around: Garth Brooks, Toby Keith, Faith Hill and all of that — it was really just pop music with belt buckles,Read More

by Nick DeRiso From the South, but not really, Diana Jones sings with an unforgettable, old-time lonesomeness — like a late-arriving featured act at an old Carter Family jubilee. She then expands on the familiar bluegrass vocabulary with a character-driven, literary touch, nowhere to better effect than on the newRead More

by Nick DeRiso  Sammy Kershaw has always come off as a working-man’s country star. It’s no put on. He arrived for a scheduled interview having just finished mowing his own grass, weed eating and all. “I love physical work,” says Kershaw, a Louisiana-born son of a farmer, a former WalRead More