Land of the Rising Sound
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following article appeared in our Spring 2016: Roots & Branches issue of No Depression in print. Its author, Denis Gainty, was working on a book about the history of bluegrass music in Japan, and contributed another related article to our forthcoming Summer 2017 issue. When
Sharing Supper with John Platt
Although I don't know John Platt, I came across his name while reading up on a new artist I like, Bill Scorzari, and there was a quote from him. The shared interest in an artist was good enough for me to contact him for this column.
Bill Frater:
Dangermuffin’s “Heritage,” Laidback, Yet Soaring: Born of the Sea, Awash in Mythic Passion
“To have a song mean something for somebody is the epitome of the best possible thing you want as an artist,” says Dan Lotti, lead singer-guitarist in the rangy, laid-back, then swept-up-high band Dangermuffin. They are as hard to label as their name is to define.
Four Decades after Forming, Magic Music Makes Debut Album
As John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” and Coors beer alerted the rest of the country to the glories of Colorado in the 1970s, a band of hippie musicians called Magic Music left the Centennial State to make its mark nationwide.
The group, which began playing music together while living
In honor of the Irish holiday, the memory of Van Morrison's great Irish record
Something in the wind from the brooding clouds sent a shiver of melodic memory through me this afternoon. It's St. Patrick's Day and the song in the air seemed to nudge me with quiet insistence, as if to say, "How often 'tis, old lad,
John Oates' Change of Seasons
In his often entertaining, sometimes flat-as-pavement new memoir, Change of Seasons, John Oates energetically delivers a portrait of an artist as a man in search, superficially at least, of himself. Oates displays his typical manic energy in these pages as he jumps from his childhood and youth in