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Steve Earle calls Buddy Miller's 1995 debut Your Love and Other Lies the country record of the decade, and I believe him. Yet it wasn't until I heard Miller's new album, Poison Love -- and specifically, his cover of Otis Redding's 1965

While most American record companies seem content to let languish in their vaults countless classic performances from even the most well-known country legends, the British label Krazy Kat has once again dug up some long-buried musical treasures and compiled them on a couple of fascinating new collections. Jitterbug Jive features

An unkempt romantic streak runs through the last two decades' worth of Texas songwriting, identifiable by its occasionally bombastic representations of violence and its more pervasive attempts at inflating even trenchantly average characters to the status of archetypes. As a lyrical tendency, it least serves those who insist on

On the surface, the solo debut by Jon Dee Graham is certain to conjure comparisons with early Springsteen and later Tom Waits -- if one can imagine either of those urban artists transported to the border culture of the Tex-Mex cantina. Beneath the surface, however, is where the richness of

By wedding old-school country melodies and lyrics to the dance rhythms and textures of modern electronica, Greg Garing has managed to create one of the most innovative country-flavored albums in quite some time. Garing brings plenty of rock-solid country credibility to the project. He played fiddle with Peter Rowan and

Listening to blues guitarist Kelly Joe Phelps' Roll Away The Stone is almost like eavesdropping; you're a fly on the wall of his Vancouver, Washington, home where he recorded the album on a four-track, accompanied only by his guitar. Phelps began his musical career playing jazz, and