In My Life: Caroline Herring, Judy Collins, Joan Baez and the Eternal Return
Half a dozen albums that I had ordered from my local record store came in last week, and Caroline Herring’s “Golden Apples of the Sun” was among them. I knew the song from an album by Judy Collins with the same title and was looking forward to hearing her
Great Producers: T Bone Burnett
In my opinion, the producer is the most under-acknowledged person involved with an album. Perhaps they bring this upon themselves, because like a referee or an umpire, one should not notice them if they do a good job. Yet when one person is responsible for dozens of great albums,
The No Depression Community's Top 20 Albums of the Decade
Coming up with this community's Top 20 Albums of the Decade was a little more complicated than compiling the communal votes for the Best of 2009. Most of you agreed on artists whose albums had helped define the decade, but there was much less agreement about specific albums
Song of the Decade – Josh Ritter's Thin Blue Flame
There are a zillion posts and articles out there expounding on the best this and that of the decade, and personally I don't give two wits about most of it. But I do feel it's necessary to offer my two cents on Song of the Decade.
E.C. Ball's Gift to A Frowning World
It's now a commonplace that geography is destiny. If stolid mountains and excitable weather can mock mere politics and war, then surely they can imbue a man with an interior geography, a sense of his own purpose and place. E.C. Ball was a man of a particular
Scowlin' with Dexter Romweber
If rockabilly had things like elder statesmen, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better candidate than Chapel Hill, North Carolina's Dexter Romweber. With deeper, more thorough roots than The Cramps’ Lux Interior — and all-around superior musicianship than the cheeky Brian Setzers of the world — Romweber