BONUS TRACKS: Honoring What John Prine and Levon Helm Gave Us, and Celebrating LGBTQ+ Music and History
The family of the late, great John Prine has announced a weeklong series of concerts and events in his honor this fall. You Got Gold: Celebrating the Life & Songs of John Prine will take place at multiple locations in Nashville Oct. 3-10, wrapping up on what would have been
THE READING ROOM: Artists Reflect on Mickey Newbury’s Songwriting and Career
“Mickey Newbury simply sang with soul ablaze. After all, the long-time Nashville-based singer, a criminally overlooked artist during his lifetime but his generation’s most successful songwriter, owned an otherworldly tenor demanding fire from deepest depths.”
So writes Brian T. Atkinson in his captivating new oral history, Looks Like Rain:
Shannon McNally Tunes into an Outlaw Frequency for ‘The Waylon Sessions’
For Shannon McNally, it was one thing to think about making her next album a Waylon Jennings tribute, but another thing entirely to actually move forward with the plan. Few figures in the history of country music loom larger than that of the outlaw country legend who died in 2002.
ROOTS IN THE ARCHIVE: How Cowboy Culture Found Its Way Into New England Poetry
Nothing says “Americana” like cowboy culture, and we’ve got a rich vein of it at the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. We have cowboy songs galore from Texas, documentation of buckaroo life in Nevada, and other cowboy material from throughout the West.
As a staff member
Chrissie Hynde Finds Something New in Overlooked Dylan Songs
A mini-genre of music has emerged in recent years: Bob Dylan tribute records from excellent female singers. Joan Osborne, Bettye LaVette, and Emma Swift have all made great contributions since 2017, but Chrissie Hynde, with her new album, Standing in the Doorway: Chrissie Hynde Sings Bob Dylan, may have achieved
Mdou Moctar’s Virtuosic and Thoughtful ‘Afrique Victime’
Those even loosely familiar with the contemporary musical traditions of Western Africa might already know of Mdou Moctar. The story of the virtuosic, millennial guitarist from Niger is well-told at this point: Music from his first album in 2008 was gaining traction underground in the Sahel (the climate region between