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Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives / Mavis Staples - Damrosch Park Bandshell (New York, NY)

The pairing of Marty Stuart and Mavis Staples at the Roots of American Music Festival at Lincoln Center made for a sweet Sunday night service. During her opening set, Staples invited Stuart to join her on the first song Pops Staples taught his children, "Will The Circle Be Unbroken&

Sally Spring - Americana Before Its Time

Blessed with hindsight, you could easily consider the music that Sally Spring was making in the '70s to be what's known these days as Americana. Her 1978 album Bird sported contributions from a guitarist and a bassist who were longtime Doc Watson sidemen; string support featured fiddle,

Grandpa, Granny, and Hee Haw

In 1971, CBS executive Fred Silverman made headlines with what became known as his "Rural Purge" when he canceled nine television shows (including The Beverly Hillbillies, Mayberry RFD, and Green Acres) -- not because they weren't successful, but because they skewed to a rural audience, which

Paul Westerberg - "Open Season" Soundtrack

Throughout Paul Westerberg's career as frontman for garage-pop band the Replacements and then as a solo artist, a sense of childlike fun has more than occasionally infused his songwriting. It should come as no surprise, then, that Westerberg, who has also been a dad for a few years

Chris Smither - Leave The Light On

Chris Smither has said he accumulates phrases, musical and lyrical, over time, and slowly pieces them together into the immaculately shaped conceptions for which he is known. Perhaps this accounts for the fact that this is just his twelfth album in a career that dates to 1970. Leave The Light

Amos Lee - Supply And Demand

Amos Lee has a great bluesy name, excellent taste in hats, and a warm soulful voice that lends itself nicely to his R&B-inflected folk-pop. That's the good news. The less good news, for him anyway, is that he's treading boards worn more than smooth

Be Good Tanyas - Hello Love

It feels like three very long years since the release of the Be Good Tanyas' last album, the brilliant Chinatown. Upon reconvening after a hiatus, the trio of Frazey Ford, Trish Klein and Samanth Parton reputedly recorded many songs over the course of a year before settling on the