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Henry Carrigan

ALBUM REVIEW: Vivid Characters Make for Memorable Songs on Rod Picott’s ‘Paper Hearts and Broken Arrows’

ALBUM REVIEW: Vivid Characters Make for Memorable Songs on Rod Picott’s ‘Paper Hearts and Broken Arrows’

Rod Picott is one of our too-little-known songwriting treasures. Like Hemingway, he peers into the jangly tentativeness of the relationships between men and women. Like Harry Crews, he captures the spectral gothic shadows that haunt rural settings. Like Townes Van Zandt, Picott tells riveting tales about memorable characters — the moonshiner,

ALBUM REVIEW: Mary Gauthier Bears Witness to Love’s Power on ‘Dark Enough to See the World’

ALBUM REVIEW: Mary Gauthier Bears Witness to Love’s Power on ‘Dark Enough to See the World’

“Fall Apart World,” the track that opens Mary Gauthier’s new album, Dark Enough to See the Stars, might just be a perfect song. Danny Mitchell’s lush piano notes float over his soaring B3 strains, laying a shimmering bed for Juan Solorzano’s vibrato lead runs on the bridges,

THE READING ROOM: Doobie Brothers Memoir Is Just Alright

THE READING ROOM: Doobie Brothers Memoir Is Just Alright

Old rockers never die, nor do they fade away; they write their memoirs. Or, in the case of Long Train Runnin’: Our Story of The Doobie Brothers (St. Martin’s), band founders Tom Johnston and Pat Simmons tell their stories to writer Chris Epting to produce an oral history. It’

ALBUM REVIEW: Courtney Jaye Shares a Bold Spiritual Vision on ‘Hymns and Hallelucinations’

ALBUM REVIEW: Courtney Jaye Shares a Bold Spiritual Vision on ‘Hymns and Hallelucinations’

Gentle guitars eddy under Courtney Jaye’s soaring vocals on “The Kingdom is Inside of Me,” the opening track of Hymns and Hallelucinations, her stunning new album. Climbing from a soothing lullaby to a resounding operatic embrace of the darkness and light of the soul, the song serves as invocation

ALBUM REVIEW: Magic in the Making as Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Does Dylan

ALBUM REVIEW: Magic in the Making as Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Does Dylan

The title of Dirt Does Dylan tells you everything you need to know: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band makes more than a little magic covering the songs of Bob Dylan. Dylan and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band have shaped the music we now call Americana more than any other artists

ALBUM REVIEW: On ‘Moving Through America,’ Steve Forbert Seeks the Extraordinary in the Ordinary

ALBUM REVIEW: On ‘Moving Through America,’ Steve Forbert Seeks the Extraordinary in the Ordinary

Steve Forbert remains the great American troubadour, crisscrossing the country, guitar slung over his back and harmonica rack over his shoulders, celebrating the colorful diversity of life along America’s highways and byways. The swaggering title track of Forbert’s new album, Moving Through America, mimics the road tripping of

THE READING ROOM: ‘The Dylan Tapes’ Resurrects Early Interviews With and About Bob Dylan

THE READING ROOM: ‘The Dylan Tapes’ Resurrects Early Interviews With and About Bob Dylan

This year we’ll have at least three books about Bob Dylan, one by the inscrutable Nobel Prize winner himself. We’ll have to wait until November for Dylan’s own The Philosophy of Modern Song (ND story) and October for cultural critic Greil Marcus’ Folk Music: A Bob Dylan