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A Mark Eitzel gig can be the equivalent of a slow-motion car crash, painful to watch but impossible to look away. One performance I saw deteriorated into a heated war of words between the mightily pissed-off troubadour and some drunken hecklers. I wanted to walk out but couldn't,

A blast from the past kick-starts Deepcut To Nowhere, as stinging guitar lines and organ fills punctuate Graham Parker's snarling vocals on the apocalyptic opening track "Dark Days". Parker hits the ground running with the same soulful brew of gritty R&B and pub rock

Over a recording career that dates to 1990 and now spans nine full-length albums, the gleeful gadfly of Athens has proven himself both a songwriter of immense talent and a slave to a particularly restive muse. These traits have yielded a handful of minor masterpieces -- darkly comic records that

"We will sell no wine before its time," Orson Welles once proclaimed in a commercial.  J. J. Cale appears to have adopted a similar attitude toward live recordings. Thirty years after the release of Naturally, his debut album, the 62-year-old singer-songwriter has issued his first live album. Drawn

Nanci Griffith doesn't quite cut it as an adult-contemporary star, and that's no insult. Certainly, she possesses some of the necessary qualities: adept backing musicians, tasteful production and arrangements, and an immediately pleasant and memorable voice. Like the majority of her recent output, any song from

During his 30 years and counting as a professional musician, Nick Lowe has never shied away from blurring boundaries or bouncing around the musical landscape. With Brinsley Schwarz -- the guitarist and the eponymous band -- he blended rock, country, R&B, New Orleans music, and soul to create