Johnny Cash - Unchained
If there's a voice that spans the imagined gulf between country music and rock, it belongs to Johnny Cash. Not because he started out at Sun Records, roomed with Waylon, married June Carter, booked rock stars on his variety show, crossed between radio formats like a mountain goat
Wayne Hancock - Thunderstorms and Neon Signs
It's inevitable that within the span of that same breath that first mentions Wayne Hancock, you'll also hear "...sounds like Hank Williams." It's true. Looking like a character from a John Steinbeck novel, Wayne Hancock invites comparisons to country pioneers.
The simple
The Velvet Underground - Peel Slowly and See (5-disc set)
For those who might wonder what place the Velvet Underground in a country-oriented magazine, the answer is in the music.
Would "Pale Blue Eyes" sound foreign in the hands of George Jones or Lefty Frizzell? Absolutely not. A good part of Lou Reed's songwriting, subjects notwithstanding,
Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant - Stratosphere Boogie: The Flaming Guitars of Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant / Jimmie Rivers and the Cherokees - Brisbane Bop, Western Swing: 1961-64
In just a few carefully crafted studio sessions in the early 1950s, Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant transformed western swing with an infusion of jazz and a rejection of traditional pace and structure. Their brilliant defining work paved the way for gutty practitioners like Jimmie Rivers, who, over the following
Sparklehorse - Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot
Unheralded, this disc made its way to my stereo by coincidence and has held it captive for a week now. From the first strains of "Homecoming Queen" it is apparent there is something different about this band. What begins as a gently picked acoustic song becomes creepier with
Neal Casal - Fade Away Diamond Time
I can't help but think that Neal Casal is one of those guys who spent most of his youth pretty much to himself, holed up in his bedroom in the lush green environs of rural west New Jersey (far removed from the industrial wasteland a short drive east