Gabe Lee arrived at New York City’s Cafe Wha? this past weekend with more than songs. What he put together was a one-man Off-Broadway show — stories and music woven together into a look at what it’s like to chase songs — and a songwriting career — in Nashville. The pain was real, the humor […]
Now & Then: Whitehorse’s All I Want Is All of It and the reach of Barton Hollow
Whitehorse have always made tension sound like a room two people refuse to leave. On All I Want Is All of It, Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland return to early folk-rock romanticism with the mileage of a long musical and marital partnership, recorded with a ragged, farmhouse-studio looseness that lets the floorboards speak up too. The “Then” that helps frame it is The Civil Wars’ Barton Hollow, a 2011 touchstone for modern male-female roots duos built on intimacy, friction, and the dangerous sport of singing very close together.
Readers’ Pick: Whitehorse – All I Want Is All of It
You picked Whitehorse – All I Want Is All of It as your favorite new release for the week of May 8, 2026.
Steep Canyon Rangers – Next Act
You’ve no doubt heard the saying, popularized by author Thomas Wolfe, “you can’t go home again.” There are an endless number of dissections about what that really means, but the gist is that nostalgia has colored memories enough that the home you remember wasn’t exactly like that. So it was with some curiosity I listened […]
Justin Osborne from Susto on Tour Van Preferences and Keeping an Open Mind
Singer-songwriter Justin Osborne, from Susto and Susto Stringband, talks about the greatest source of joy in him musical journey and what happened at his first gig.
Monday Morning Video – Joe Strummer
Joe Strummer never stopped being Joe Strummer. Long after the Clash, long after the revolution was supposed to have been televised and filed away, he kept showing up — in dive bars, on festival stages, at record stores in lower Manhattan — still swinging. This 2001 clip finds him in a New York record store […]
Now & Then: Hiss Golden Messenger’s I’m People and the reach of Veedon Fleece
A good Hiss Golden Messenger record does not arrive like a statement from a mountaintop. It pulls up beside you at a gas station, coffee gone cold, with a half-finished thought about mercy, children, money, God, and whether the map is helping. I’m People fits that line perfectly: a road record with home on its mind, full of M.C. Taylor’s worn-in gospel of doubt and persistence. For a “Then,” Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece makes the sharper companion, not because Taylor sounds like Morrison, but because both albums use travel as a way to measure the soul’s weather.
Readers’ Pick: Hiss Golden Messenger – I’m People
You picked Hiss Golden Messenger – I’m People as your favorite new release for the week of April 24, 2026.
Reckless Kelly – Alternate Routes
Thirty years ago in a wide-spot-in-the-road Idaho town 300 miles west of Yellowstone, Willy and Cody Braun formed their first band. As the sons and grandsons of professional musicians, their knowledge about how to do that was ahead of most of their garage band peers. One of their first decisions was to relocate to Austin. […]
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 […]