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Kentucky has long held a special allure for folk song scholars, collectors of hillbilly 78s, revivalists and other aficionados of old-time music. It's a near-mythical place in the minds of these folks, a place where fact and legend often overlap. It's a plain fact, however, that

Winner of the distinguished W.C. Handy Best New Artist blues award in 2002, Otis Taylor certainly deserved the recognition, though he was hardly new. A seasoned bluesman whose career dates back to the 1960s, Taylor became discouraged with the business and gave it up for antiquing in the late

Hotel Vast Horizon begins with a breath, the briefest of exhalations, a sigh almost. A snare drum stirs. And Chris Whitley takes his post as a tour guide into the "New Lost World". Whitley can rock, sure, but at his best he's a master of mood

John Mellencamp fought authority, authority usually won. Still, Mellencamp was one of the few truly popular musical artists to protest George W. Bush's appointment to the presidency and the (then) gathering clouds of war with Iraq. "To Washington", a song Mellencamp made available for free download

It may be that the greatest challenge an artist faces in the arc of a career is deciding when it's time to change direction. The great ones seem to seize that moment. In the rock era, hallmarks remain the Beatles and Bob Dylan, both of whom established themselves

Autobiography typically has no place in a record review, but let's make an exception here. There's no point in trying to sequester my evaluation of Rank And File's music from memories that are now (gulp!) twenty years old. The time was 1983. The place