Cincinnati-based duo the Montvales talk about touring survival mechanisms, investing in one’s relationship with creativity, and the time that they were billed as a French-Appalachian folk group.
Monday Morning Video – Taylor Hollingsworth
Birmingham guitarist and singer-songwriter Taylor Hollingsworth has built a devoted following through his solo work and as a member of Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, earning acclaim for his cosmic fingerpicking and distinctive “folk-art-punk-blues” style. We caught Hollingsworth for the first time last year at a rocking solo show in Brooklyn, and we’ve […]
Now & Then: The Steel Wheels’ The Steel Wheels and the reach of Tomorrow the Green Grass
Some self-titled albums feel like a debut all over again. Others feel like a band planting a flag after years on the road. The Steel Wheels’ The Steel Wheels lands somewhere in between, sounding like a group confident enough to reintroduce itself without pretending it has become something entirely new. That makes The Jayhawks’ 1995 Tomorrow the Green Grass a useful “Then” match: another record by a roots-minded band that widened its reach without losing its center.
Readers’ Pick: The Steel Wheels – The Steel Wheels
You picked The Steel Wheels – The Steel Wheels as your favorite new release for the week of March 13, 2026.
Paula Boggs Band – Sumatra
I suppose it’s only natural that a musician from Seattle would use a region’s coffee as a metaphor for the style of one of their albums. Sumatran coffee is generally considered to be bold and full-bodied, with notes of earthiness, spice and chocolate. That’s actually not too bad of a one-line review for Paula Boggs […]
Andy Thomas – Highway Junkie
You know the saying: you gotta dance with the one who brung ya. Having spent years being the frontman and/or guitarist for a few outlaw honky tonk southern rock bands, that was the obvious choice of style for Andy Thomas’ newest record, Highway Junkie. As you might have intimated from the album’s title, he had […]
Tim Easton Finds Light on “fIREHORSE”
At nearly 60, Nashville-based singer-songwriter Tim Easton is still chasing songs the way he did as a restless young troubadour roaming Europe with a guitar case open on cobblestones. His 14th studio album, fIREHORSE, feels both hard-earned and freshly struck — a record that balances revolution and romance, one-chord blues and desert highways, personal reckoning […]
John Hollier on Band Dinners and Sorrow, The Band’s Spiritual Guide
Nashville’s John Hollier explains why he changes guitar strings after every show and why he disgrees with a mentor’s advice.
Monday Morning Video – John Moreland
Few artists mine the depths of emotion like John Moreland. “Break My Heart Sweetly”, from 2013’s In the Throes, is a prime example—raw and heartbreaking, capturing that brutal moment when you know exactly where a relationship is headed but can’t bear to reach the destination. Stark, beautiful, and deeply moving, it’s Moreland at his most […]
Now & Then: Reese McHenry’s Forever and the reach of Furnace Room Lullaby
Some records show up as a comeback, some as a coronation. Released posthumously, Forever arrives with a sadder kind of gravity, but it does not feel hushed or fragile from the outside. Even the title has a little swagger. So do the songs gathered under it. McHenry’s work always carried that useful contradiction, where the voice could sound world-weary and ready to laugh at the same time, and where a tune could feel lived-in without ever slumping into the sounds of a polite singer-songwriter.