A lot of the albums I review are from artists still early in their arc. Part of that is to try to expose less well known acts, but some of it is because what new are you going to say about someone who has 20+ records out in the public for people to hear. So […]
Mayer’s Playlist for Fall 2024, Part 2
Behind The Eight/Count Your Blessings, Michael McDermott (from the Pauper Sky Records releases East Jesus and Lighthouse on the Shore) For nearly a decade, Michael McDermott has been on a creative tear, releasing more albums in that period than many artists create during their entire careers. And apparently he’s not interested in slowing down; rather, […]
Arlen Roth – Playing Out the String
With Arlen Roth, it’s all about the guitar. Having shared stage or studio with Bob Dylan, John Prine, Paul Butterfield, Loudon Wainwright III, Ry Cooder, Rory Block, Eric Andersen and many others, Roth has been long established as a “go to” session man or sideman on tour. Originally from New York City, Roth started a […]
Jeremy Dion – Bend In the Middle
It’s not unusual for musicians to have day jobs while they’re getting established, and frequently continuing it throughout their careers. You can read about many of them in our Why It Matters column. This is the first time, though, I’ve heard about the day job being a mental health therapist. Such is the case with […]
The W Lovers – For A Day Or A Lifetime
I’ve heard many chefs wax poetically about how their success came not from 10,000-hour-developed technique or an encyclopedic knowledge of the world’s cuisines, but rather from the restraint needed to let really good ingredients showcase themselves. I get that same sense of coaxing the beautiful out of the basics from the latest album from Seattle-based […]
Mayer’s Playlist for Fall 2024
Give It To Me One Last Time, Jeremie Albino (from the Easy Eye Sound release Our Time in the Sun) Canada’s Jeremie Albino traveled to Nashville to record an album steeped in Memphis and Muscle Shoals soul. In Nashville, Albino teamed with Dan Auerbach to create an outstanding album that has a retro feel without […]
Eric Bibb – In The Real World
Happy Halloween! All right, now that’s out of the way let me say that there are different kinds of blues musicians. There are blues rockers who make their reputations with searing guitar solos and there are blues bar bands who may be great musicians but whose focus is making sure you have a good time. […]
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 […]