Several days after speaking with Kevn Kinney, I watched a storm roll across the mesas outside Taos, New Mexico. Purple lightning split the sky, eventually forcing Drivin N Cryin’s scheduled outdoor performance indoors. The band adjusted. Instead of the full-throttle rock show one might expect from a group that has spent nearly four decades making […]
Norwegian-Americana: Nashville on Her Mind, Norway in Her Bones
Before there was Tennessee, there was Stavanger. Before the highways, honky-tonks and imagined horizons of America, there was the Norwegian coastline—cold water, hard wind, immense mountains and a young girl searching for where she belonged. Maren Davidsen’s music exists in that distance between two worlds. A Norwegian singer-songwriter drawn to the emotional honesty of Americana, […]
Ruthie Foster: The Long Road to Saying Yes
Photo Courtesy Big Feat PR For Ruthie Foster, the road to music began with a child’s stubborn curiosity: sitting close to the television, trying to convince her siblings that the Grammy Awards mattered. She watched singers like Janis Ian and Roberta Flack step into the light and sensed something larger than fame. Music was not […]
Still in the Groove: Martha Reeves Keeps Searching
Photo courtesy Martha Reeves Martha Reeves has spent more than six decades giving people reasons to dance. Her voice powered Motown landmarks like “Dancing in the Street,” “Heat Wave,” “Jimmy Mack,” and “Nowhere to Run,” songs that still spill from radios and playlists with enough spark to lift a room. Now, as she approaches her […]
Samantha Fish and the Last Honest Noise
There was a time when live albums felt dangerous. Not polished. Not corrected by committee. Dangerous. You could hear the room breathing. You could hear amplifiers misbehaving and drummers pushing a little too hard. Sometimes the singer missed a note. Sometimes the singer found one nobody knew existed until that exact second. A live record […]
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 […]
Charlie Musselwhite and the Long Memory of the Blues
In Clarksdale, Mississippi, where the Delta air hangs thick and the ghosts don’t bother hiding, Charlie Musselwhite sits easy and watches it all come back around. “I’m in Clarksdale, Mississippi. This is where I live,” he says. “Clarksdale just keeps getting better… we really love living in the Delta.” That’s not nostalgia talking. Not quite. […]
Good Taste and Short Songs: Teddy Thompson on Influence, Restraint, and Never Be The Same
Teddy Thompson doesn’t talk about influence so much as drift—what finds its way in early, what stays, and what quietly shapes a life without ever announcing itself. On his new album Never Be The Same, Thompson returns to original material after a stretch of country covers records, this time working with producer David Mansfield. The […]
Built with an Old Hammer: Dale Watson’s Honky-Tonk Truth
Photo: Jacob Blinkentaff For Dale Watson, music started at home, not on a stage. It came from the next room, early in the morning, when his father picked up a guitar. “I would wake up to my dad playing,” Watson says. That introduction opened the door to a lifetime of listening. Records spun by George […]
John Gorka: Quiet Songs, Lasting Echoes
For more than four decades, John Gorka has occupied a distinctive place in American folk music: a songwriter whose work unfolds quietly but lingers deeply. His songs favor careful observation over spectacle, humor alongside gravity, and melodies that invite listeners closer rather than overwhelm them. It is a career built less on flash than on […]