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Grant Alden

Lyle Lovett & His Large Band - It's Not Big It's Large

He has a nice voice, Lyle Lovett does. This is both obvious and taken for granted: His is a friendly, intimate, familiar instrument, a firm, dry handshake that chooses rarely to reveal its full strength. Well, of course. He's traipsed on the edge of various kinds of stardom

Chris Knight - The Trailer Tapes

Somehow along about 1992, Chris Knight decided that the thing to do with the songs he'd been writing was to drive down to Nashville from Slaughters, Kentucky, where he worked as a strip mine reclamation inspector, and play them at the Bluebird Cafe. It worked, more or less.

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown - Down South In The Bayou Country

The 1960s were unkind to Gatemouth Brown. The blues being revived weren't his kind of big-band postwar boogie, and a brief stay in Nashville confirmed only that the door had been closed right behind Charley Pride. So he settled first in Bogota, Colombia; then Denver, Colorado; and then,

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

Even understanding and accepting that such books exist largely to frustrate the critics whose opinions werent polled, um, no. You dont have to hear all these. 1001 Albums segregates its choices by decade, accompanying most with album artwork and an essay of varying length, though never very long. Apparently the

Marty Stuart - Badlands: Ballads Of The Lakota

Almost certainly Marty Stuart could party like it was 1999 forever and make enough money to support his photography habit. That the once-mainstream country star is choosing instead to explore a wide variety of musical ambitions -- gospel, bluegrass, and now something close to political folk music -- reveals a

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown: 1924 to 2005

This magazine exists largely to draw attention to undervalued artists, and yet in ten years we have managed to devote only one feature and a few small reviews to Gatemouth Brown, who died September 10 at age 81. He should have been on our cover at some point, and I

Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - Jacksonville City Nights

Reviewing Whiskeytown's Strangers Almanac for a larger magazine many years ago, I argued that if alternative country music were to produce a Kurt Cobain, Ryan Adams would be it. I was mostly wrong, so far. There was a dark clarity to Cobain's work and a crispness,