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Armed with one of the best voices in music, Maria McKee's career has been a confounding and confusing series of starts and stops, beginning with her impressive debut with her old band Lone Justice and ending, during the last few years, with big hits overseas but little impact

Following the commercial success of their 1994 release, "What A Crying Shame", the Mavericks embarked on a tour which seemingly touched every corner of the country.  It was during those live shows where drummer Paul Deakin's steady thrashing and Nick Kane's blistering guitar solos

I can't help but think that Neal Casal is one of those guys who spent most of his youth pretty much to himself, holed up in his bedroom in the lush green environs of rural west New Jersey (far removed from the industrial wasteland a short drive east

Unheralded, this disc made its way to my stereo by coincidence and has held it captive for a week now. From the first strains of "Homecoming Queen" it is apparent there is something different about this band. What begins as a gently picked acoustic song becomes creepier with

In just a few carefully crafted studio sessions in the early 1950s, Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant transformed western swing with an infusion of jazz and a rejection of traditional pace and structure.  Their brilliant defining work paved the way for gutty practitioners like Jimmie Rivers, who, over the following

For those who might wonder what place the Velvet Underground in a country-oriented magazine, the answer is in the music. Would "Pale Blue Eyes" sound foreign in the hands of George Jones or Lefty Frizzell? Absolutely not. A good part of Lou Reed's songwriting, subjects notwithstanding,