Bob Mercer and Todd Snider: Don't It Make You Wanna Smile?
On Todd Snider's latest record, The Storyteller, Snider tells how he temporarily became the lead singer of Memphis country cover band KK Rider back in the early 90's. Like the other stories on this live album, it's really funny. This story includes a velvet
Review of Nick Tosches: Jerry Lee's Dionysian HELLFIRE and the Raunchy History of COUNTRY
BOOK REVIEWS: Tosches, Nick. Hellfire. New York: Grove, 1982. and Tosches's Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock 'n' Roll. New York: Da Capo, 1984.
If you are interested in the history of American music--country, blues, hillbilly ballads, minstrelsy, jazz, rock and roll--and how they
The Trucker's Prayer
Ive been totally enchanted by this new album from one of my favorite singers, Leah Abramson. She brought an eerie, other-worldly sound to her old band The Crooked Jades, and just dropped an album, under the monikor The Abramson Singers, of sweetly sad indie folk from her home in
Levon Helm: Ain't In It For My Health (Film Review)
Last week at the Nashville Film Festival, I finally got a chance to check out Ain't In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm. I'd been excited to see this since I saw a short teaser-trailer for the film about a year ago.
The Lost Music of Marty Brown
I often have read about those who traveled around the country in the early and mid-twentieth century discovering great blues musicians and folk songs. The music was always there, but it might have dwelled in obscurity had the music not been recorded. Those tales seem to be stuck in
Book Review: Positively 4th Street, by David Hajdu
Originally published at Blogcritics.org.
Marking the tenth anniversary of its publication, Picador is issuing a new edition of David Hajdu's delicious portrait of the 60's folk scene as it was embodied in two of its greatest lights and two of its lesser luminaries -- Positively 4th