ALBUM REVIEW: Yarn Channels Live Roots-Rock Energy Into ‘Born, Blessed, Grateful & Alive’
Yarn’s latest, Born, Blessed, Grateful & Alive, opens with grand, sweeping blues rock and an imperative: get off that screen and join the party. The music, the message to “Turn Off the News,” neither are all that radical, but that’s not the point. It feels good — full stop.
ALBUM REVIEW: Charlie Overbey, With Friends, Shapes His Own Sound on ‘In Good Company’
Charlie Overbey has had a fistful of labels hung on him over his career: Cowpunker, rocker, outlaw countryman, Americanan, and even hatmaker. But Overbey opens his latest, In Good Company, with “Punk Rock Spy,” containing his own descriptor: "The punk rock spy in the house of the honky tonk
ALBUM REVIEW: American Aquarium Takes Stock and Rocks Out on ‘The Fear of Standing Still’
For the last two decades, American Aquarium frontman BJ Barham has seemingly willed his band to survive. Armed with an incisive pen and a love for Whiskeytown and Drive-by Truckers on one hand and Springsteen and Petty on the other, he gradually steered the rotating cast of his outfit from
THROUGH THE LENS: WoodyFest and Briggs Farm Blues Festival
This week the column returns to festival coverage by featuring the Briggs Farm Blues Festival, which took place July 11-13 in Briggsville, Pennsylvania, and the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival (WoodyFest), July 10-14 in Guthrie’s hometown, Okemah, Oklahoma.
Briggs Farm Blues Festival 2024
Now in its 27th year, the Briggs
FRESH TRACK: Yarn – 'Traveling Kind'
We had already recorded most of what would become the new album when I wrote "Traveling Kind." I thought the record needed a tune with a JJ Cale type feel. To me JJ Cale is perfect for a road trip; it feels like traveling music. So what else
CROWDFUNDING RADAR: Roots Music Projects in Many Forms
While I strive to feature a variety of projects in this space, in the end it usually comes down to artists promoting a new album. That's the core of Kickstarter and Indiegogo's music crowdfunding platform. But this month I'm doing something a bit different,