Grant Britt

Jimmy Hall always sounds like he's about to bust wide open, the music bottled up in him struggling so hard to get out that he can barely contain it. It's like he's in church worshiping a rock-and-roll god, raising all kinds of hell in

Shemekia Copeland has never had any trouble being heard. With her blast furnace, in-your-face delivery, she gets her message across loud and clear. Although she's usually tagged as a blues singer, Copeland transcends that label with a mix of styles including gospel, rock, blues, soul, and, on her

Lee Bains has gone folky on his latest release, Old-Time Folks, but he ain't no easygoing troubadour. His lyrics resonate with folk-flavored protest themes, but his delivery system is nowhere near the stool-perching acoustic pundits of yore. The Alabama native's music has been labeled Southern punk

Once upon a time in Raleigh, North Carolina, for about 10 bucks total, you could get the best sandwich in town and a dose of red-hot rockin’ honky-tonk courtesy of Kenny Roby. Like a punky John Prine, Roby rocked the joint with folky country-flavored yee-haw music with an alt label

Ben Harper is a master of trickeration. That's the term gospel icons The Dixie Hummingbirds used to describe what their lead singer Ira Tucker did: in-your-face showmanship that soul men lifted right out of church, the gospel aspects of the music trying to bust out and leap across