Byrds - The Preflyte Sessions
Pieced together from work tapes and demos made with Jim Dickson at Sam Cooke's World Pacific Studios in 1964, this is the most complete portrait yet of the band that would become the Byrds. Musicians and hard-core Byrd watchers have prized long-out-of-print vinyl releases
Uncle Tupelo - 89-93: An Anthology
More than a decade, now, since an old friend at Waterloo Records started raving about a new album they'd just gotten at the store. Roscoe was probably the world's biggest Replacements fan (that was his bootleg cassette they swiped and disseminated as The Shit Hits The
Michelle Shocked - Deep Natural
In 1993, on the very day Michelle Shocked went to record the follow-up to Arkansas Traveler, her record label imprisoned her artistically. She says they refused to issue a check for recording expenses, told her they wouldn't promote her catalog, and restricted her from recording on her
Mickey Newbury - A Long Road Home
"Do you still have your dreams?"
Mickey Newbury drops this question about halfway through his new album's title track, one of two songs on the disc that clock in on the long side of ten minutes. Newbury has sketched plenty of three-minute vignettes ripe for
John Cohen – The Image Of American Music
John Cohen is best-known as an original member of the New Lost City Ramblers, founders of the modern old-time music movement, with whom he has sung and played string instruments since 1958. Cohen helped bring such legends as Clarence “Tom” Ashley and Dock Boggs north to revitalize their
"Love and Theft" The Veiled but Tangled Roots of Jimmie Rodgers and Tommy Johnson
Most people tend to view blues and country music as the province, by turns, of black and white cultures. Nothing wrong with that, really; with few exceptions, the greatest blues singers have been African-American, while the best honky-tonkers have been of European descent. And there's no