Steve Leftridge

Willie Nelson—Lost Highway—Lost Highway—2009 Keeping up with Willie Nelson albums has always been a chore. Up until about '93, though, Willie was “only” churning out an album or two a year, besides truck-stop mix-tapes, and you pretty much knew which of those you were supposed to

Shawn Colvin—Live—Nonesuch—2009 Shawn Colvin is complicated. She's moody, strong, impulsive, courageous, paranoid, self-possessed, depressed. And that's all just in the first song. This new live solo-acoustic recording opens with “Polaroids,” the track that also led off Fat City, her 1992 sophomore LP, and

The Bottle Rockets—Lean Forward—Bloodshot—2009 The Bottle Rockets, the pride of Festus, Missouri, are back with Lean Forward, out August 11th, their first album since 2006's Zoysia, and their third album on the Bloodshot label. The album also marks the return of producer Eric “Roscoe” Ambel,

Bryan Sutton (and Friends)—Almost Live—Sugar Hill—2009 Bluegrass musicians and aficionados love to designate the pantheon of the world's finest pickers, those uncontested champs of their instruments, masters like Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, and Jerry Douglas. In the Tellurides and Merlefests of the last five years,