Jamie Hartford - What About Yes
Serviceable is one of those adjectives that I would imagine musicians loathe to see attached to their work; it's a word that wouldn't necessarily be taken as a slight until applied to artistry. A couple notches above pedestrian, a few below formidable, and saved for productions
Tommy Keene - Isolation Party
Whether it was intended to be autobiographical in context or not, as a longtime Keene fan, I felt a poignant twinge when I first heard "Never Really Been Gone", track four on Isolation Party, in which he sings: "There was a time that I felt so jaded/
Hangdogs - East Of Yesterday
Let's just cut to the chase: East Of Yesterday is one heck of a good record. Sweet melodies, rockin' guitars, irresistible hooks, twangy steel and fiddle, knowing lyrics, and straight-ahead singing combine to form a string of fine songs propelled by a great sound.
Hailing from
Nick Lowe - Dig My Mood
Back in 1995, when Nick Lowe was promoting his last superb album, The Impossible Bird, he was asked during a taping of NPR's "Fresh Air" program if he felt his current songs carried less irony than his previous works. Amid some laughter, he responded that while
Tammy Wynette - D-I-V-O-R-C-E / George Jones & Tammy Wynette - Golden Ring
According to her autobiography Stand By Your Man, Tammy Wynette was in the middle of a fight with her then second husband, Don Chapel, one August night in 1968 when a recently divorced George Jones showed up unexpectedly at their door. George and Tammy didn't know each other
Marty Robbins - Marty After Midnight
Few country performers -- few performers, period -- have been blessed with the kind of talent and taste that Marty Robbins had. He could do it all, and thus never saw any reason why he shouldn't. Robbins recorded honky-tonk and postwar country, teen-dream pop, western, rockabilly, Nashville Sound,