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Gene Vincent - The Road Is Rocky: The Complete Studio Masters 1956-1971

Gene Vincent as a father of roots-rock? Those aren't the terms in which he's usually discussed, but a look at his whole body of work from the perspective of 2005 sheds new light. Meticulously engineered and all-encompassing, this completist extravaganza brings together everything the big-beat rockabilly

Ry Cooder - Chavez Ravine

Everyone has a Chavez Ravine, if you live long enough to remember a place that only exists in the here and now as a memory. There are several in my life: a bucolic swimming hole that was paved over to be a parking lot, a rugged hillside topped with oaks

Bob Dylan / Merle Haggard / Amos Lee - Chiles Center, (Portland, OR)

I go to see Bob Dylan perform every chance I get. If Picasso were going to paint tonight in the public square and I could get a ticket to watch, I wouldn't miss that either. Dylan shows are idiosyncratic, spontaneous and far more adventurous than those of most

John Darnielle - Where the truth lies

"I mostly feel honored to have been able to do for somebody else what music's always done for me: held my hand when I was walking down dark alleys and couldn't see my way out." "People used to assume I was some crazed

Amos Lee - Storied soul

"The worst thing for an artist to have done to you," Amos Lee submits, "is to be tagged as something, or not something. Or for a human being to be, for that matter -- unless you want to do it for yourself." He's clearly

Sammi Smith: 1943 to 2005

For a time in the 1970s, it seemed Sammi Smith might join her friends Waylon and Willie in the Outlaw ranks and become one of the few females of the clan. Tragically, it never quite happened. Jewel Fay Smith's family hailed from Oklahoma, but she was born in

South San Gabriel - The Carlton Chronicles: Not Until The Operation's Through

In terms of channeling ambition into strange nooks and crannies, Will Oldham and Conor Oberst might have nothing on Will Johnson. As with those other eccentrics, Johnson's prolific songwriting spills over from his main band (Centro-matic) into side projects. But neither Oldham nor Oberst has recorded an entire