Beth Orton - No more an orphan girl
Beth Orton is the most genial kind of diffident interview subject: She dislikes the process, but entertains every question, and will readily cop to that fact that, even when the subject is herself, she doesn't have all the answers.
"I feel people's disappointment is palpable
Amy Rigby - 18 Again: An Anthology
Whatever the medium -- literature, film, music -- it's rare enough for an artist to forge a truly distinct, expansive voice, a personal style at once immediately recognizable and endlessly flexible. Rarer still, to discover this gift in one's late 30s, a period viewed all too typically by
Fred Neil - Bleecker & Macdougal
He's the answer to the question, "Who wrote for Buddy Holly, was backed up live by Bob Dylan, and recorded with Gram Parsons?" The late Fred Neil was a unique figure, associated, as the title of this reissued 1965 Elektra LP suggests, with the '60s
International Submarine Band - Safe At Home
Gram Parsons imagined a countercultural fusion of country, soul and rock 'n' roll he called Cosmic American Music, but ultimately his approach to making records was too haphazard and intuitive for a vision as grand and calculated as all that. Wedding the vulnerability of "Dark End Of
John Hartford - Looks At Life/Earthwords & Music/The Love Album/Housing Project/John Hartford/Iron Mountain Depot/Radio John
The cover of John Hartford's first album for RCA had both "folk" and "country" on it, just below the label's logo -- a tangible sign of the confusion that must have reigned in the marketing department. You can almost feel the head-scratching:
Marah - Float Away With The Friday Night Gods
It was Sunday morning at South By Southwest in Austin. I was eating breakfast with my kid sister when Peter Jesperson stopped by our table to rave about Marah's gig the night before. For years the former manager of the Replacements (now a New West Records VP) had