Steve Earle - Transcendental Blues
Depending on how you keep track -- that is, depending on how tight you want to wear your documentarian-geek beanie -- Transcendental Blues is Steve Earle's tenth album. Beginning in 1986, he blew the doors off Nashville with Guitar Town, blew their cover with Exit 0, and blew town
Harry Smith - Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, Volume Four
Indulging his discursive wont, Greil Marcus breaks from Invisible Republic's examination of Dylan's storied Basement Tapes to excavate the remains of a forgotten frontier town, Smithville. Peopled by card sharks and confidence men, vengeful lovers and bewildered cuckolds, bombastic holy men and salt-of-the-earth
Bottle Rockets - Lakeside Lounge (Raleigh, NC)
Three guys half an arena away -- one behind a small fortress of keyboards, one riding a revolving drum set, and one standing on an Oriental rug -- and two cannons. That sums up my first-ever concert: Emerson, Lake & Palmer on the "Pirates" tour. Twenty-five years later
Last Days At Lounge Ax - Lounge Ax (Chicago, IL)
When Lounge Ax shut its doors in the wee hours of January 16, a chapter in Chicago rock history ended. The scruffy-as-it-was-legendary club on the city's North Side carved its niche in the indie-rock '80s and nurtured Windy City bohemians through the
Willa Mae Buckner - Requiem for a snake lady
In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where more than a few people own decorative license plates reading "Tobacco Pays My Bills", you can take the Waughtown Street exit and then maneuver toward the Alvarado Joyeria. That's a jewelry store, and that's where you turn on
Osborne Brothers - A high lead, a long run
"We were getting to the age to where we could tell who was playing what and how and why. Bobby and I, we really started to hone in on that harmony thing. Because I could look at him and I knew what he was doing, and he could do