Before recording The Long Road to You, Casey Kelly and Leslie Ellis’ debut as Kelly & Ellis, the husband-and-wife duo had each scored a stream of accomplishments, including country hits, a showstopper from the musical CATS, and a contribution to the Academy Award-winning film Titanic.
“I found it really freeing, to be able to think about these things as characters instead of as myself,” says Warren, talking by phone just before hitting the road with the Indigo Girls.
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The holiday season has inspired thousands of artists, from Will Ackerman and Elvis to John Prine and Emmylou Harris, to record their seasonal favorites, novelty songs, and everything in between (have you heard the Christmas Jug Band’s “Daddy’s Drinking Up Our Christmas”?). Many of us have a favorite set of…
Tracked at a secluded wind-and-solar powered cabin on an uninhabited Washington State island in the dead of winter...
It’s a treasure trove of cool folk-blues and hellfire spirituals.
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Album focuses on simple, direct folk versions that hew close to the heart of these tunes.
Live Book is a must not only for Andy McKee fans, but those who love the diverse sounds of the acoustic guitar presented with a sonic storyteller’s brilliance.
It’s been nearly 55 years since two of the folk revival’s best guitarists, Jim Kweskin and Geoff Muldaur, first played together. Now they've reunited on Penny's Farm, a collection of American roots classics.
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They’re not trying to recapture these Flatt and Scruggs songs, they’re trying to keep them alive
Snider is still brilliantly unpredictable, still sharp as a broken bottle.
These early versions, appearing as kind-hearted sketches and confessionals filtered through a perpetual outsider’s spyglass, are no less solid than their better-known variants.
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Midway through At Home and in Nashville, Andy Ferrell sashays out onto the dance floor with the jostling “Nobody to Answer To” and declares it’s time to move on.
Layered, textured tunes, some sparsely arranged with little more than solo acoustic guitar, retain the flavor of roots music
With the inviting sentiment, “walking side by side, hand in hand,” Eric Bibb kicks off The Happiest Man in the World, and it’s the key to why his latest collection works so well.
For this first album as a duo, they’re collaborating as songwriters
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Though their roots lie in hoot-and-holler bluegrass and folk, the Avett Brothers also embraced big guitar rock early in their career. Both strains of raising Cain thread through their latest, True Sadness. With thundering drums, rubbery bass, and Seth Avett’s cyclical acoustic guitar, opener “Ain’t No Man” is hand-waving gospel…
You and I, a cache of recently discovered demos by Jeff Buckley, offers a tantalizing glimpse into the artist’s subconscious.
Their first album in 11 years is at least as good as anything they’ve ever done, and probably better.
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In McCoury’s hands, these songs sound like they were born to be bluegrass.
Briskly galloping out of the gate, the title track of Ryan Shupe’s self-released eighth album, We Rode On, announces the former country-chart-topper’s transition to alternative artist. This collection is bright clangoring pop-rock, focused on moving forward, but it’s grounded in the building blocks of Shupe’s bluegrass past—his earnest everyman vocals…
Sultans of String succeeds brilliantly, thinking like classical musicians and listening like jazzmen
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Three songs into the 13-track Montage of Heck, a compilation of raw, lo-fi home demos and other recordings Kurt Cobain made, is a happy little acoustic instrumental titled, appropriately, “Happy Guitar.” Its Gypsy-jazz chording and fingerpicking reveal a perhaps unexpected fascination the late Nirvana front man seemed to have had…
On "You’re Dreaming," the Cactus Blossoms revitalize music from the dawn of rock and country for a contemporary audience, and celebrate an era before genre boundaries calcified, and when possibilities seemed endless.
by Mark Kemp Forty-five years ago, the Allman Brothers Band went acoustic. Sure, Idlewild South was only the group’s second album, but from Duane Allman’s joyous strumming that kick-starts “Revival” to his ominous acoustic riff that drives the mournful “Midnight Rider,” the record was quite a departure from the sustained…
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"I like the idea of slow evolution and practice, the way the Japanese revere their masters and pass their technique down to subsequent generations,” says singer-songwriter James Taylor, whose recently released hit album, Before This World (Concord), marks the second-longest wait between an artist’s debut on the Billboard charts and the coveted No. 1 spot.
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