Twangville

A music blog featuring Alt-Country, Americana, Indie, Rock, Folk & Blues. Est. 2005.

Billy Strings – Turmoil & Tinfoil

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There’s a saying most of you are familiar with, “like catching lightning in a bottle.”  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.  Hence the reason most jam bands, and many others frankly, never have much of […]

Three Diamonds In the Rough

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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

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Here at Twangville we spend pretty much all our time listening to and reviewing the latest Americana and roots music.  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

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The dictionary defines polyglot as someone who speaks many different languages.  As evidenced by his latest album, Ben Sollee is a musical polyglot.  Featuring his latest band, Kentucky Native, Ben covers many of the cultural music influences that became the folk music of Appalachia, and eventually bluegrass.  He then overlaid that with the jazz influences […]

Jenny Parrott – When I Come Down

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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 […]

Gerry Spehar – I Hold Gravity

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Distances in western America can be vast.  You have to decide on a philosophy: are you about the journey or the destination.  Focus on the goal and you can embrace the trance of picket fence telephone poles and the sporadic interruption of small towns.  A day, two, three and you’re there with no trauma beyond […]

Slaid Cleaves – Ghost On the Car Radio

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I first saw Slaid Cleaves back in the 90’s at the Cactus Cafe in Austin.  That’s back when Grif was still booking the acts and it was a live music institution going back to Dylan and Baez in the 60’s.  I remember being blown away by the richness of the stories Slaid sang about.  Not just the […]

Rachel Baiman – Shame

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Woody Guthrie famously wrote “This Machine Kills Fascists” on his guitar. He and his protege, Pete Seeger, composed and sang protest songs that wore their emotions on their sleeve.  There’s not much confusion about Woody’s views in This Land Is Your Land.  And don’t get me started about Old Man Trump.  The other kind of […]