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Grant Alden

Phil Ochs - No More Songs (3-CD Set)

Midway through Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's "Chicago", the battle hymn of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, just at the point where they're singing "We can change the world/Rear-range the world," the singer's voice cracks. And with it, my

Willie Nelson - Yesterdays Wine

Back at the end of the 50s, about when I was being conceived or born or something, Willie Nelson sold the rights to a song called Family Bible for $50. That was his first break in country music; a singer named Claude Gray made Family Bible a top-10 hit, and

Son Volt - Straightaways

Jay Farrar's voice hits like raw coffee on an empty stomach. It cuts into things -- the night usually -- with plain force and unkind certainty. He does not write songs to put you at your ease, and if perchance they inspire in the listener an impulse to

Ernest Tubb: The Texas Troubadour

Truth is, I know next to nothing about Ernest Tubb. I should, of course, and so the arrival of this 456-page opus from Ronnie Pugh, who spends his days as head of reference at the Country Music Foundation, seemed a good start. Ernest Tubb is all that last sentence suggests:

Lincoln '65 - "Dreams" b/w "Jellyfish"

Pity there are no credits on the sleeve, for this is as fine an intro as you could hope for. Alternating male and female vocalists offer two gentle songs somekinda kin to Tarnation and Mazzy Star if maybe the Cowboy Junkies were backing. Not finished, of course but one hell

Seldom Scene - Dream Scene / Sam Bush - Glamour & Grits

This is overdue, and maybe he'll never see it, but I owe a lot to a long-retired Seattle DJ and (I think, still) Pioneer Square bouncer named Tiny Freeman. He had a Sunday night bluegrass show on KRAB-FM, a community radio station (pre-college radio) that later sold its

Johnny Cash - Unchained

Johnny Cash - Unchained

If there's a voice that spans the imagined gulf between country music and rock, it belongs to Johnny Cash. Not because he started out at Sun Records, roomed with Waylon, married June Carter, booked rock stars on his variety show, crossed between radio formats like a mountain goat