Noah Berlatsky

Personal and professional partners Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have been performing minimal, slowed down, dreamy lonesome country folk for some three decades now. The main thing that’s changed since Welch’s string of classic albums — Revival (1995) through The Harrow and the Harvest (2011) — is that the duo

Like Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Alison Krauss, and Iris DeMent before them, the Nashville-based duo Paper Wings mixes coffeehouse folk with old-time and bluegrass — the haunting self-reflective introspection of Joni Mitchell and the haunting high lonesome sound of Bill Monroe. The exact proportion of Mitchell to Monroe can vary from

Woody Guthrie’s grandchildren Abe and Annie show up on a couple of tracks on Black Legacy Project, Vol. 1, and that’s a good indication of this album’s roots and approach. The Black Legacy Project was inspired by the Black Lives Matters protests of 2020, but in its

Ketch Secor’s Old Crow Medicine Show started out as a hip retro stringband/bluegrass amalgam, playing traditional music with a reverent irreverence, and/or an irreverent reverence, depending on which side of the holler you were staring down. That was 25 years ago, though, and the band is now

Lots of starry-eyed dreamers over the years have hoped that music would be their path to fame and fortune. But heading into the fifth decade of his career, Dale Watson has learned better. Thus the title of his latest album, Starvation Box — a jaded appellation for the guitar, coined by

Bobbie Lee Nelson is one of the great unheralded legends of country music. Her piano-playing — ranging from yearning contemplation to honky-tonk barrelhouse — provided the backbone for her brother Willie's band on classic tracks like "Always On My Mind" and "Red-Headed Stranger." She overcame ugly