The Black Lillies' "Hard to Please"
Cruz Contreras had just written “Hard to Please,” the song that would eventually become the title track for the Black Lillies’ fourth studio album, when he asked his son, Cash, to give it a listen.
“I had originally written it on guitar with this sort of Bob Dylan folk approach,
December's Child At 72: Keith Richards' Roots Are Showing
They come on late at night. You see them all sitting in a row onstage as they do their celebrity rat pack roasts packaged and available on dvd. As Sammy Davis and Don Rickles stand up to deliver one punchline after another, their friend, the singer and actor Dean Martin,
Stephen Stills: Sparkle and Fade, and Sparkle Again
Stephen Stills was once my favorite musician. That was long ago.
I was a little too young to appreciate his first acclaimed group, Buffalo Springfield, but I loved what he delivered in Crosby, Stills and Nash and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the late 1960s and early '70s.
Dwight Yoakam Ends 2015 Strong In Ventura, with Brian Whelan Opening
For his sustained excellence as a songwriter and as a bandleader, there is no other musician touring now like Dwight Yoakam. He has released two records in the last three years that sound as innovative and distinct from contemporary country music as his debut did from Nashville's mainstream
Joan Shelley's "Over and Even"
It was a cold November afternoon when I called Kentucky songwriter Joan Shelley, and she was out walking her dog. I could practically hear the crisp winter air around her, and she was slightly breathless from the cold.
I was tasked with telling “her story,” but in the first few
The Unapologetic Apology of Stephen Kellogg: "The Last Man Standing"
This past May, in advance of his new concept album South, West, North, East, Stephen Kellogg played shows in Boston, New York, and Chicago, made up of "just songs [he'd] never played off an album that [wasn’t] out yet." Kellogg had already recorded the album,