Tim O’Brien’s recordings are always musical journeys. Traveler — the first O’Brien album to put a tight focus on his fine songwriting since 1997’s When No One’s Around — focuses on movement and exploration, and what may or may not be not revealed along the way.
On average, we take 10,000 steps a day. Some simply [...]

It is easy to have your own sound on guitar – just play what you feel. So why do most guitarists sound like carbons of other guitarists? They work very hard at it, sitting in their rooms for days copying famous licks, gaining pre-sold acceptance.
Jim Campilongo obviously put in serious listening time, but [...]

In the late 1980s, during one of North Carolina’s periodic rock downswings, local music heads enjoyed a concurrent upturn on the blues scene. You couldn’t turn a street festival corner without running into a rediscovered veteran like Algie Mae Hinton, Skeeter Brandon and Big Boy Henry, or younger acolytes such as Mike “Lightnin’” Wells [...]

This debut from Justin Lute, one-time frontguy of Columbus, Ohio, band the Southern Diplomats, echoes the sounds of vintage honky-tonk and early rock, a mix that doesn’t quite turn into rockabilly in Lute’s hands. Think of it as a wisely proportioned blend of Buddy Holly, Buddy Knox, and Buddy Miller.
Adventures of Lori Lu is too [...]

When pop group Manhattan Transfer veered toward modern jazz in 1971, Hoboken saddle tramp Gene Pistilli parted ways with them, veering instead toward Nashville “to chase Bob Wills.” He’d already had a successful songwriting career with hits like the 1967 Spanky & Our Gang smash “Sunday Will Never Be The Same”; once in Nashville, Pistilli [...]

The pair of openers, “Are You Coming Or Going?” and “The Day Before I Found Her”, pretty much typify the intent here – cascading, chiming guitar figures and sweet stinging leads propelling George Usher’s euphoniously arty popcraft. The former member of Beat Rodeo and the Schramms has a pure pop heart, but much like [...]

Brooklyn native and Cambridge, Massachusetts, habitué Kris Delmhorst heads south for influences on her third album. To shape this musical journey, Delmhorst follows the wake and wane of a hurricane, tracing the rising tempest, its ensuing calm, and the deluge of the aftermath as a format for these country, bluegrass, gospel and western swing [...]

Onstage, Kristie Stremel cuts a compelling figure – long and leggy with low-slung guitar, cowboy hat tilted back, leaning into each song, she sports the air of a true believer. It’s the sort of stance that steals the hearts of men and women alike.
The Kansas native owns a big, passionate voice that thrives on [...]

Blessed with a beguiling, childlike voice that suits perfectly her diaryesque ruminations, Tywanna Jo Baskette unfurls a facility for sketch-style songwriting that brings to mind other talented savants such as Daniel Johnston and, more recently, Devendra Banhart.
Framed by skeletal arrangements and sparse instrumentation, Baskette’s tunes zigzag between lo-fi bedroom-tape snippets (“The Name Song”, “Everything Is [...]