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By now we're all aware of the profound role played by Bear Family in the documentation of vintage country music, and of the first-rate nature of their compilations when measured by recording quality, comprehensiveness, and annotations. But this may be their most important box set yet. The

Eliza Gilkyson has been making records for nearly two decades, but Hard Times In Babylon is a revelation, a bracing song cycle about the challenges of balancing art and eros. Like Lucinda Williams, she sings with a scratchy, wounded sensuality, suggesting a wise and generous soul beneath a rough and

Reputations can be hard to shake. Jerry Joseph, now based in Portland, Oregon, after bouncing around various western cities, sometimes is written off as a "hippie rocker" stemming from his days with jam band Little Women, or dismissed as noisy and raw from his more recent work with

There are basically two ways to review a covers record. You can listen to it as simply another new album by the artist under consideration, or you can examine each cover and compare/contrast it with the original version of the same song. Thumbing through my personal collection, I was

It makes more sense to think of Swag as a stellar ensemble cast than a supergroup -- say, the "Hill Street Blues" of pure pop. Among the gifted character actors who compose the lineup of this Nashville-headquartered side project are a pair of guys, Jerry Dale McFadden and

Remarkably, this album is about the only recorded document of the mid-'80s-to-mid-'90s version of the Tony Rice Unit. Led by the most influential bluegrass-based guitarist ever, that lineup -- Rice, brother Wyatt on second guitar, mandolinist Jimmy Gaudreau, and brothers Ronnie (bass) and Rickie