What I Learned from Chrissie Hynde
I was lucky to grow up in an era of real powerful frontwomen, so I had some examples to look to when I was ready to lead a band. There were the singers who fronted awesome bands, like Debbie Harry and Belinda Carlisle, but, oh, the ones who sang and
The 24 Most Underrated Merle Haggard Songs
Lists provide something to argue about, and that's what the internet is for, isn't it? With an artist as prolific as Merle Haggard, there will always be songs that touch someone more than most, or that never got the attention they deserved. Finding such songs turns
Lee Ann Womack Returns to the Roots She Never (Really) Left
On The Way I’m Livin’, her first album in six years, Lee Ann Womack comes upon the devil, shares a bottle with him (the first taste is free), then crashes to her knees in despair. A few songs later, she picks up a stranger in a bar. She attends
Paul Butterfield Should Be in the Rock Hall by Now
Martin Scorsese captured something of Paul Butterfield’s singular stature in the way he framed the harmonica player’s appearance in The Last Waltz. Following an interlude in which The Band recounts meeting Sonny Boy Williamson near the end of his life in Helena, Arkansas, the blues portion of the
River Crombie - Light Trails
I first became aware of River Crombie through a YouTube video where he covered John Martyn’s 1967 track “Ballad of an Elder Woman”. This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill cover performed by some guy down the street in his living room. This had a timeless quality and
Coltrane Comes Home, to Find His Deepest or His Most Far-Flung Self?
How far out did John Coltrane go at the end? Or how far inward, to the depths of the universal, Emersonian self most of us rarely touch? Was his quest fueled by mere artistic restlessness or by a sense of how to face, or embrace, his own impending mortality?
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