Over the years, releasing a live album has been a bit of a double-edged sword. Back in the day it gave bands who excelled in front of an audience a chance to show that off. Unfortunately, the sound quality coming off the sound boards back then was suspect, and sometimes just plain bad. Technology has […]
The Palomino Club
If the Ryman is the mother church of country music, North Hollywood’s Palomino was its tent revival/medicine show cousin–a lot more raucous, less bound to tradition, but with no less passion about its spiritual foundation. I had the good fortune last week to attend a private screening of the soon-to-be-released documentary, simply called The Palomino, […]
Fruit Bats – The Landfill
If you’ve lived in the Midwestern United States you’re undoubtedly familiar with the trope about the highest elevation point being the nearby interstate highway overpass. Fruit Bats’ front man Eric D. Johnson realized that near larger towns and cities, those structures were surpassed by another manmade edifice of sorts, the landfill. Standing on these mountains […]
Trever M. Keith – We Drank From a Poisoned Well
One of the popular plot lines in a number of current TV shows is about someone with a regular life who, it turns out, was trained as an assassin/spy/renegade. Then their memory was wiped so they could live a normal life until some trigger brings back the badass. There’s some parallel to that in musician […]
David Serby – Broken Heart in a Honky Tonk
I love a good title. Not those rage-triggering, click-bait things you see on social media, but a well-conceived summary of what the article is about. Or the rare occasion when judging a book by its cover is justified. That’s just what you get from LA singer-songwriter David Serby’s latest album, Broken Heart in a Honky […]
Clay DuBose – Father Time & Mother Nature
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” I’m pretty sure the original intent of that comment was directed to relationships. I’ve observed it to be true about almost anything someone is passionate about, though. Step away from it for a while, and when you come back you rediscover what attracted you in the first place along […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]