Truck drivin’ music has seen a semi-renaissance in recent years with Diesel Only’s wonderful Rig Rock trilogy and Dale Watson’s The Truckin’ Sessions. The Sovines, straight out of Columbus, Ohio, are another fine crew of gear-jammin’ enthusiasts, named in honor of one of the kings of big-rig twang, Red Sovine.
The focus here is cowpunk, but [...]

This business of latching onto a high-profile moniker is, at best, a double-edged sword. Names such as Elvis and Bocephus are as sure to grab initial attention as the attendant baggage is to draw confusion, brickbats and no small measure of resentment. Well, Hank Jr. was no more “The King” than this here King is [...]

Recalling the juked-up ’60s-era lyrical country of Johnny Paycheck or even the Byrds, Rex Hobart & his Misery Boys posture cosmic cowboys who can rock, but’d rather roll.
“I Always Cry At Weddings”, “Between A Rock And A Hard Place” and “I Walked In While He Was Changing Your Mind” speak in an idiom scarcely believable [...]

In the mid-’90s, Steve Tagliere’s L.A.-based, Replacements-inspired band Gingersol created a buzz, but music-biz disenchantment led him to take a step back. On the home-recorded Trust Myself, he vents his frustrations and self-reflections in a compelling set of musically spare, emotionally resonant songs.
As the title indicates, Tagliere has maintained cause for hope amidst disillusionment. On [...]

Channeling the influences of Lead Belly and Dock Boggs, Kelly Joe Phelps continues to create anew within the country blues idiom while staying true to its roots on Shine Eyed Mister Zen. Using an acoustic guitar the way most would play a dobro, Phelps produces a combination of percussive bass plucking alongside graceful slide work. [...]

It’s not at all surprising to learn that ex-Philadelphian Scott McClatchy was pals with the Del-Lords, the New York ’80s roots-rock band helmed by Eric Ambel and Scott Kempner, or that he recently played guitar for Dion. Indeed, on Blue Moon Revisited, McClatchy (now a New Yorker) delivers a thrilling slice of urban rock ‘n’ [...]

Bela Fleck says everything he plays is “colored by the bluegrass heartland,” which would seem a self-evident statement for a banjo player. But since the early 1990s, Fleck and his band, the Flecktones, have repeatedly taken the banjo to uncharted realms, from Chick Corea-inspired chord-change exercises to performing with the Boston Symphony.
On his new release, [...]

On his latest offering, Boston’s Todd Thibaud steps beyond the folksy acoustic roots he established with the Courage Brothers to deliver a solid, muscular with tight arrangements, swirling guitar-hook choruses, and lyrics that ring with equal doses of vigilance, attitude and remorse.
Sonically speaking, Thibaud’s territory is somewhere in the “electro-melodic-jangly-guitar-pop” range reminiscent of Tom Petty [...]

For the harmonica-racked singer-songwriter, no word rings more like a death knell than earnest. And yet to recognize the power behind early Dylan, Ochs or Guthrie is also to recognize their ardent and earnest spirits.
Stephan Smith knows his Ochs and denim-Dylan well. He describes himself as a “hip-hop country klezmer bushman man”; more simply, he’s [...]

Over the past few years, far too many outfits have attempted to weld an aggressive, rock ‘n’ roll attitude to bluegrass, with the failure rate high enough to make one wonder if such a graft is just not in the cards. Either it was dilettante punks who saw the country venue as a fair place [...]