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Geography and imagination are funny things. Ramblin' Jack Elliott lives in California, but he grew up in Brooklyn. Tom Russell grew up California, but he lives in Brooklyn (or he did for many years before a recent relocation to West Texas). And both fancy themselves cowboys. On the liner

More a documentary project than a musical recording, Last Rights features 10 Townes Van Zandt songs rendered solo acoustic, primarily as part of an interview session with Larry Monroe, a longtime DJ at KUT-FM in Austin. Interspersed between the musical performances are quotes from Van Zandt explaining the background

On the cover a boy sits on a diving board, watching a neon Ferris wheel lit up in a six-pointed Big Star. The allusion is subtle but well-made, for the tubed-out guitar hooks, the summer harmonies, the spiteless praise of youth, dreams and senses, both physical and

If Music Row is regularly to be chastised for abandoning country music's past -- and they should -- well, they should also be congratulated for occasionally getting it right. Sara Evans' debut isn't a big and important record, it's just a first-class example of

Midway through "Hot Rod Lincoln", the title track of Bill Kirchen's first solo live album, the former Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen axman takes the audience on a pedal-to-the-metal musical detour. Kirchen revs it up and passes a whole slew of

Tribute albums have become such an established genre that many record stores now organize them in their own separate department. I was in one used record store recently where the tribute section took up a quarter of the store. There's a good reason for that: Most tribute records