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Joe Henry - Tiny Voices

Let's see now, how long has it been since alt-country was claiming Joe Henry as one of its next great things? Would you believe a full decade ago, when he was hooking up with the Jayhawks on Short Man's Room and Kindness Of The World and

Jay Bennett / Edward Burch - Palace 1919

Palace 1919 contains largely acoustic versions of songs from Jay Bennett & Edward Burch's 2002 debut The Palace At 4 A.M. (Part I), an album that, in the first place, not enough people got to hear. The whole affair has been curiously packaged to look like John

Mojave 3 - Spoon And Rafter

Despite a tendency among writers to view this UK combo's moniker as shorthand -- "'Mojave': open spaces, solitude, country-rock; OK, got it!" -- there were enough manifestations of Giant Sand, Neil Young and Gram Parsons on the band's first three albums to

Blind Lemon Jefferson: His Life, His Death, And His Legacy

Blind Lemon Jefferson remains a shadowy figure. As with Charley Patton, only one photograph of him exists. Like Robert Johnson, he died under mysterious circumstances, found frozen to death on a Chicago street in 1929. With his mixture of blues and spirituals delivered in a thin, piercing voice, Jefferson had

Earl Scruggs / Doc Watson / Ricky Skaggs - The Three Pickers

Count this recording of a December 2002 North Carolina concert as one of the dividends of O Brother, Where Art Thou? Without that soundtrack's reach into the PBS audience -- the show is being broadcast on the network's "Great Performances" series, and there'

Rank and File - The Slash Years

Autobiography typically has no place in a record review, but let's make an exception here. There's no point in trying to sequester my evaluation of Rank And File's music from memories that are now (gulp!) twenty years old. The time was 1983. The place

John Mellencamp - Trouble No More

John Mellencamp fought authority, authority usually won. Still, Mellencamp was one of the few truly popular musical artists to protest George W. Bush's appointment to the presidency and the (then) gathering clouds of war with Iraq. "To Washington", a song Mellencamp made available for free download