ALBUM REVIEW: Kid Ramos' 'Strange Things Happening' is a Raucous Good Time
Kid Ramos usually doesn't work in such celestial surroundings. He and his guitar are more at home dealing with down to earth matters. Ramos was the guitar voice in the James Harman band as well as Room Full Of Blues before his lead guitar stint with the Fabulous
ALBUM REVIEW: Lola Kirke's 'Trailblazer' Blends Down Home Country and Rock 'N Roll
This has been a good year for Lola Kirke. In January, she released her memoir Wild West Village (Simon & Schuster), and she appeared in the movie Sinners, which hits IMAX theaters in April. And this week, Kirke released her third full-length album, Trailblazer, a swirling blend of country and
Sister Rosetta Tharpe & Me: Remembering Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s Profound Effect on Music on Her 110th Birthday
Sister Rosetta Tharpe is like a golden thread woven through a colorful tapestry of music history. In her own right, as one of gospel’s first major superstars in the 1930s and 1940s, her music stands alone and glimmers like gold dust sprinkled on everything that follows. Tharpe, a Black,
THE READING ROOM: Mike Campbell’s ‘Heartbreaker: A Memoir’
These days, most music memoirs tend to be bleary-eyed and bloated chronicles in which artists recount who-slept-with-whom and tote up the quantity of the most mind-expanding, or mind-numbing, drugs swallowed or injected on tour. There’s a requisite tale of childhood, sometimes amidst ragged poverty and uncaring parents and sometimes
ALBUM REVIEW: Bobby Rush and Kenny Wayne Shepherd Cross Generational Gap on the Lively ‘Young Fashioned Ways’
Bobby Rush has been singing the blues and reigning as King of the Chitlin’ Circuit longer than most of us have been alive. The nonagenarian remains a potent artist, maintaining a touring schedule and recording output more befitting someone half his age. That industriousness and vitality makes his latest album
ALBUM REVIEW: Kinky Friedman Makes Elegiac Exit With 'Poet of Motel 6'
Kinky Friedman’s posthumous album opens with the title song, “Poet of Motel 6,” a tribute to a fellow late legend of the Texas troubadour tradition, Billy Joe Shaver. “He’d stay up all night/ He would drink and he would fight/ Ah, but every song he’d write was