An intimate album. How intimate? Intimate in a Robert Johnson/Skip Spence way. Intimate in a “leave the sound of those dogs barking in the other room on the record” way. Intimate in a just-us-pals-playing-for-fun way.
Ex-Dashboard Saviors member Veal was part of Jack Logan’s Bulk team, appearing on that ‘94 album and co-writing a number of [...]

Versatility has always been a hallmark of Oklahoma’s Red Dirt Rangers, both in live shows and on disc; these five shitkickers — John Cooper, Kenny Earley, Ben Han, Bradley Piccolo and Bob Wiles — have even been known to perform children’s shows, exposing kids to the intimacies of Woody Guthrie and the mandolin. Rangers’ Command [...]

The songs collected on this second solo release from Oklahoma-born, NYC-based Bruce Henderson have a movie-scene quality, with his tales logging a lot of time in the land of metaphor and honeys. His compositions tend to be built around time-proven images and musty comparisons given new twists: “If wishes were wheels/beggars would ride/In Lincolns and [...]

The Ex-Husbands’ sophomore effort finds them sounding a bit stale. Which is not to say that their 1996 debut was particularly original or groundbreaking, but it got by on plenty of vim and vigor — just the sort of attitude you’d expect from a country band from New York City. And there were some pretty [...]

It’s unfortunate that one of rock’s most threadbare myths — “great art is produced through great personal pain” — is supported by so damn much compelling work. You don’t have to scratch far beyond the surface of this cliché to turn up a million examples of how substance abuse, personal trauma or mental illness have [...]

Cindy Bullens emerged in 1978 as something of a distaff Springsteen, fronting a rock band specializing in a dramatic, urban street mythos. Her muscular debut Desire Wire was a knockout, but its 1979 follow-up Steal The Night flagged noticeably, and Bullens pulled back to focus on songwriting and session work. She resurfaced with a tepid [...]

West Coast roots-music pioneers Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen join forces once again with bluegrass/new acoustic titans Tony Rice and Larry Rice for a follow-up to their 1996 debut Out Of The Woodwork. Perhaps as the result of some touring, the foursome emerges as a more cohesive band, in contrast to the “recorded event” feel [...]

Short, but sweet — yet not too sweet. The debut disc from Shannon Stephens clocks in at just over 15 minutes, its five songs sketching minimalist vignettes of love perilously dangling by a thread.
“The Way Relationships End Up” finds the singer pondering a rare moment of power over her boyfriend as he sleeps in the [...]

Deadlines know no justice. Listening to a post-newgrass folk Christmas album when it isn’t even fall yet shouldn’t work, not even remotely. That it does owes to this disc’s balance of mostly good, mostly unfamiliar contemporary material, a few wisely selected standards, and the robust, masterful playing and harmony singing of Laurie Lewis & Tom [...]