On June 11th, we’ll gather at Lucinda’s in New York City’s East Village for Welfare Music: A Tribute to the Bottle Rockets. We asked some of the artists joining us that night to reflect on the band’s legacy. Here’s what they had to say. GET TICKETS GET TICKETS
Eilen Jewell Steps Off the Road, But Not Out of the Song
Photo credit: Damu Malik After two decades of nearly continuous touring, folk-Americana singer-songwriter Eilen Jewell is stepping away from the road—not as an ending, she insists, but as a recalibration. Her “indefinite hiatus” from touring marks a deliberate pause in a life shaped by motion, performance, and the steady accumulation of miles across continents. Yet […]
Now & Then: Joshua Ray Walker’s Ain’t Dead Yet and the reach of Guitar Town
Joshua Ray Walker’s Ain’t Dead Yet and Steve Earle’s Guitar Town are separated by four decades, but they share a clear country music lineage. Both albums come from writers who use traditional country materials without treating them as fixed rules. Earle’s 1986 debut helped open space for country records with tougher guitars, direct storytelling, and singer-songwriter focus. Walker’s new album works in that same lane, with a more personal and present-tense sense of survival.
John R. Miller – The Great Unknowing
Way back in my youth there was a TV show called The A-Team. In it, the commander of the band of misfits exclaims, “I love it when a plan comes together,” after some hare-brained, seat-of-the-pants scheme turns out for the good. I think John R. Miller must have uttered something similar when he finished recording […]
David G. Smith Song Premiere – Green Fire
There’s a long history of social activism by folk musicians dating back at least 100 years and most probably a lot longer than that. In many cases the participation is in events organized by others. With Iowan David G. Smith, however, he puts the active in activism. He schedules about 20% of his gigs in […]
Now & Then: The Deslondes’ Don’t Let It Die: Vol. 1 and the reach of The Blasters’ American Music
The Deslondes’ Don’t Let It Die: Vol. 1 is a covers album with a clear purpose: to show where the band comes from and who they listen to. The record draws from country, soul, R&B, swamp pop, and roots music, with songs associated with artists including Swamp Dogg, Johnny Cash, Clifton Chenier, Shelby Lynne, Pat Reedy, and The Kernal. For a “Then” comparison, The Blasters’ 1980 debut American Music is a strong match. It is also a roots-minded record built from older American styles, balancing original songs with covers that show the band’s musical foundation.
Moonlight Mile – Northern Lights
Socrates said, “to know thyself is the beginning of wisdom”, and Ben Franklin said, “there are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.” Between them they underscore the fact that self-awareness is a difficult journey, and not one that everybody chooses to take. Kentucky-based singer/songwriter Jonathan Pennington, who goes by […]
Now & Then: Ryan Bingham & The Texas Gentlemen’s They Call Us The Lucky Ones and the reach of Doug Sahm and Band
Texas music has always had a loose gate policy. Country can walk in with muddy boots, blues can grab the good chair, and somebody will eventually find an accordion. Ryan Bingham & The Texas Gentlemen’s They Call Us The Lucky Onesfits the house-party tradition: a road-worn singer stepping into a band that knows when to lean hard and when to let the dust hang in the air. Its clearest ancestor is Doug Sahm’s 1973 solo debut Doug Sahm and Band, the big-hearted Atlantic Records record that treated Texas roots music like a borderless language.
Nathan Evans Fox – Heirloom
Songwriter icon Harlan Howard came to love country music as a kid listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio. When he came up with the phrase, “three chords and the truth”, the truth he was referring to was that life in rural America was hard. World War II was over, but prosperity was […]
Now & Then: Whitehorse’s All I Want Is All of It and the reach of Barton Hollow
Whitehorse have always made tension sound like a room two people refuse to leave. On All I Want Is All of It, Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland return to early folk-rock romanticism with the mileage of a long musical and marital partnership, recorded with a ragged, farmhouse-studio looseness that lets the floorboards speak up too. The “Then” that helps frame it is The Civil Wars’ Barton Hollow, a 2011 touchstone for modern male-female roots duos built on intimacy, friction, and the dangerous sport of singing very close together.