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Grant Alden

Steve Earle - El Corazon

Artists tend to work over safety nets that appear suspiciously like a charred mattress, hose-soaked at the edge of an unmowed lawn, a crowd on the corner standing and pointing. Reasons to fail, these are. Reasons to quit, to borrow from Willie Nelson. Excuses. There's safety in that,

Bobby Bare Jr. - All in the Bare family

Bobby Bare Jr. was just 7 years old, but he remembers the last night the Ryman Auditorium hosted the Grand Ole Opry: "It was dark, and there were tons of people everywhere." He was onstage, singing his duet, "Daddy What If," with his father. They'

J.J. Cale - Anyway The Wind Blows (2-CD Set)

Without J.J. Cale's songs and laconic guitar style, it's hard to imagine Eric Clapton having had much of a career in the '70s, and perhaps Mark Knopfler after him. "Cocaine", "After Midnight" and "Living On Tulsa Time" (the

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: