James McMurtry - Saint Mary Of The Woods
James McMurtry has made his name -- and the part he inherited hasn't hurt him -- as a wordsmith, a sketcher of characters and teller of stories. The music to which these have been set hasn't generated much comment over the course of his first five
Gourds / Kev Russell's Junker / Clocker Redbury & Dusty Slosinger
Let me drop my critical guise for a moment and talk straight from the heart: I love the Gourds. This Austin combo is all about serious fun. They have livelier music than your favorite bar band and more memorable lines than a lounge lizard, and they keep getting better. Their
Steve Earle - Jerusalem
As is characteristic of much that Steve Earle has ever created, and much that's American, his new album Jerusalem begins with images of inescapable destruction and death ("Every tower ever built tumbles"), and ends, nevertheless, with an optimistic vision of peace where there has been no
Ozark Mountain Daredevils - The Car Over The Lake Album
Don't buy The Car Over The Lake Album if you're looking to make any sense out of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. What on earth were these guys thinking back in 1975, when they followed the Top 5 rock radio success of "Jackie Blue" with
Glen Campbell - Rhinestone Cowboy/Bloodline: The Lambert & Potter Sessions, 1975-1976
Glen Campbell's Rhinestone Cowboy and Bloodline, originally released by Capitol in 1975 and '76, respectively, represent both a highpoint for countrypolitan and the beginning of the genre's sad, slow, painful decline. You could say something similar about the roles they played within Campbell's
Allison Moorer - Miss Fortune
It's no wonder Allison Moorer tagged along with producer Tony Brown when he left MCA Nashville to launch the putatively hipper Universal South imprint. Moorer made two albums of consummately soulful music under Brown's watch at MCA, but even though "A Soft Place To Fall&