One of the endearing things about bluegrass and folk music is the tradition of doing versions of songs that have been in the collective consciousness of the musical community since the 19th century, or even longer. Â No one remembers, or perhaps ever even knew, who wrote them. Â But groups take them, make them their own, […]
Sweetwater String Band – At Night
From the first notes of the bow bouncing on the strings of the cello, you can tell this is going to be a different take on what you probably thought of as a string band. Â The instruments Sweetwater String Band uses are 3/4 of a traditional quartet; guitar, mandolin, bass. Â But instead of the fiddle, […]
Americana Music Fest 2017, Shawn’s Picks
As you’ve figured out by now, this week is about our coverage of the Americana Music Festival in Nashville. Â Here’s a rundown of the best sets I saw during the week. It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll, But I Like It: Yeah it’s Nashville, and yeah it was an Americana festival, but there was no shortage […]
Americana Music Awards, 2017 Edition
Once again the Americana Music Festival took over most of the well-known clubs in Nashville for the third week in September. Â As always it was anchored by the Americana Music Awards show at the fabulous Ryman Auditorium. Â We’ll post our full coverage of the event over the next few days, and to kick it off, […]
Billy Strings – Turmoil & Tinfoil
There’s a saying most of you are familiar with, “like catching lightning in a bottle.” Â In the music business it’s not unusual to hear that applied to the idea of catching a band’s live performance energy & style in the studio. Â Hence the reason most jam bands, and many others frankly, never have much of […]
Ryan Koenig – ‘Strugglin’ With A Lot’ Song Premiere
Like the bee that pollinates just about all the produce we eat, I love it when a musician works with a lot of different genres. Â The epitome of that may just be Ryan Koening, who does everything from roots rock as a sideman to Pokey LaFarge, to blues with the Rum Drum Ramblers, to old […]
Three Diamonds In the Rough
A few weeks ago I wrote about a movie that explores the issues around how streaming has changed the economics of the music business.  The result of that plus nearly free compute power, is it’s now cheap enough to make a record that musicians can choose to make an album in support of other projects and priorities.  Here […]
The Shopkeeper
Here at Twangville we spend pretty much all our time listening to and reviewing the latest Americana and roots music. Â We spend very little time talking about how it gets created in the first place, and how the music industry makes a living from genres that don’t attract the business machine that feeds, and feeds […]
Ben Sollee and Kentucky Native
The dictionary defines polyglot as someone who speaks many different languages. Â As evidenced by his latest album, Ben Sollee is a musical polyglot. Â Featuring his latest band, Kentucky Native, Ben covers many of the cultural music influences that became the folk music of Appalachia, and eventually bluegrass. Â He then overlaid that with the jazz influences […]
Jenny Parrott – When I Come Down
Back in the day there was a clear distinction between the sound of a “demo” record and one that the label produced to be released to the public.  Demos were recorded with nothing but a tape machine and a couple of mics and cost virtually nothing to produce.  Records themselves cost a lot of money to […]