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In 1971, at the same festival where Bill Monroe ended his long feud with Lester Flatt and again shared a stage with his old partner, John Hartford made his first bluegrass festival appearance. He brought with him a mangy band of veteran roister doisters: Norman Blake flatpicked, Vassar Clements sawed,

I still admire singer-guitarist Chris Whitley for following up his mostly acoustic debut, Living With The Law, with a white-noise album loud enough to make Sonic Youth wear earplugs. But it couldn't have been good for his career. Whitley, a skinny hunk type whose first single, 1991'

When first hearing that there would be no chainsaw mayhem on the new Angry Johnny album (the previous one, Hankenstein, had two separate songs about chainsaw murders), I feared the Angry one might be trying to clean up his cruddy act. Doesn't Angry realize that when chainsaws are

Townes Van Zandt's legacy cuts quite a swath through contemporary singer-songwriters; his compositions are becoming standards, and his restless, lyrical spirit holds considerable sway. Chris Buhalis is a case in point: You get the sense that without Townes, this Michigan songwriter might be lost. His temperament never quite

Neither a solo artist nor a car dealership, Lou Ford is a Charlotte, North Carolina, quartet whose "So Far Gone" was arguably the highlight of the Revival compilation of Carolina-region roots bands. (For those who might care, the band is named after a character in a Jim Thompson

That Ward Dotson sure is a versatile son of a Gun Club. In addition to serving in the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce's swamp-bluesy outfit, Dotson co-founded the appealingly Stonesy Pontiac Brothers and played in both the Hello Strangers and girl-group revivalists the Pussywillows. His current project Liquor Giants,