Everyone is someone’s monster. That’s the premise of New Orleans musical duo Kimberly Kaye and Michael Cerveris, and their band Loose Cattle, on their new album. Although it could have been the theme for a Halloween release, the pair focused not on the monsters but on how people deal with them and, sadly, how society […]
Teddy and the Rough Riders – Down Home
If you’ve been to Nashville recently you know the city has grown like a weed. Whether you’re in the music industry, the medical industry, or the bachelorette party industry, everyone is from somewhere else. Everyone, that is, except Teddy and the Rough Riders front men, Jack Quiggins and Ryan Jennings. They actually grew up just […]
Garrett Owen – Memoriam
The words “surprising” and “folk music” rarely appear together in the same sentence. There are plenty of good reasons for that. Perhaps the most common is just that people like what’s familiar. Most artists are trying, at some level, to perform music their fans like. So picking up where you left off the last time […]
Long Prairie – By Sunrise
Movies made the transition to color from black-and-white along about the time of The Wizard of Oz, held back only by the economics in the years of the Depression. Photography, on the other hand, maintains a vibrant vein of black-and-white artistry to this day. Monochrome enhances the effect of light and shadow without the distraction […]
Amy Speace – The American Dream
In this year of election divisiveness perhaps no topic separates people more than what it means to live the American dream. When I saw the title of Amy Speace’s latest album, I wondered how she was going to address the issue. Instead of painting a picture of what it is, Speace instead offers vignettes of […]
New Earth Farmers – The Sky From the Underground
Paul Knowles and Nicole Storto first came to my attention a decade plus ago as Mars Arizona, a folk music duo. The pair morphed into New American Farmers, a Northern California Americana/roots band. From there they became New Earth Farmers, leaving most of the twang and acoustic arrangements behind. The first NEF album featured a […]
John Calvin Song Premiere – Our Souls Have Broken Chains
Singer-songwriter John Calvin was raised an Army brat, moving every few years. That constant upheaval taught him an appreciation for diversity and a tolerance for letting things play out. He has a new record coming out in January, Greener Fields & Fairer Seas, that reflects those values as well as his belief that dark clouds […]
An Interview With Kevin Gordon
One of the universal truths about the writers at Twangville is that we always look forward to the next Kevin Gordon album. And no visit to Nashville is really complete without hearing him play. So we hit the daily double this year at AmericanaFest because we had multiple opportunities to see him live, and his […]
India Ramey – Baptized By the Blaze
The best new-to-me act I saw a couple of weeks ago in Nashville at AmericanaFest was East Nashvillian India Ramey. Her music is a throwback combination of Bakersfield twang, New Jersey attitude, and Appalachian harmony. She threw in a little spaghetti-western flair and two-step rhythm on her recently released album, Baptized By the Blaze. The […]
AmericanaFest 2024 – Shawn’s Favorites
Like a smaller, more focused SXSW, AmericanaFest is part industry conference, part music festival, and part social event. Although it’s a much smaller event, you still have to accept you’re not going to be able to see everyone you want. The official count was about 250 artists, but there were dozens of events that weren’t […]