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Peter Blackstock

Martin Zellar & The Hardways - Self-Titled

Perhaps my hopes are just too high for Martin Zellar, given that his former band the Gear Daddies seemed ultimately one of the best (if most underappreciated) bands the mid-late 80s Minneapolis scene produced. Lost in the shadow of their harder-edged brethren such as the Replacements, Husker Du and Soul

Jim Lauderdale - Persimmons

I'd like to think we're missing something, my co-editor and I, when it comes to Jim Lauderdale. Understand that the two of us quite often don't see eye to eye in our musical tastes, a divergence that hopefully helps bring a broader and more

Tim O'Brien - Red on Blonde / Tony Rice - Sings Gordon Lightfoot

Given that Bob Dylan's catalog has pretty much been interpreted to death by all manner of song stylists by now, an album of all-Dylan covers would seem a rather risky proposition, but Tim O'Brien proves more than up to the task with Red on Blonde. This

Hazeldine - "Tarmac" b/w "Apothecary"

You don't usually encounter such wonder from bands so young, bands just putting out their first single. More often than not, the 7-inch is a hint of greater things to come, or merely a sidelighting curiosity. But the two sides here are, quite frankly, two of the better

Jerry Douglas & Peter Rowan - Yonder

From bluegrass to Tex-Mex to rockabilly to reggae, Peter Rowan has moved in mysterious ways through a four-decade sojourn across all manner of musical landscapes. To these ears, however, he's at his best when he strips things down to a simple state of spare purity, allowing his high

Steve Earle - Can't Keep a Good Man Down

Steve Earle - Can't Keep a Good Man Down

I can still hear them blaring in the back of my mind, those gleaming brass trumpets and trombones, thrusting right and left, toward one end zone and then the other, as the University of Texas marching band zipped through "The Wabash Cannonball". Aside from "The Eyes of

Bodeans - Joe Dirt Car

Bursting out of Waukesha, WI in 1986 on the heels of the T Bone Burnett-produced Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams, the BoDeans sounded like a trap door out of new-wave hell, back into a no-frills nirvana where acoustic guitars, harmony vocals and catchy three-chord melodies were the golden