Honky-tonk is alive and well and living inside of Dallas Wayne, and he lets it out to roam the prairie on this exemplary new album. Wayne, now based in Texas, went back to his hometown of Springfield, Missouri, to record. And Springfield is no ordinary hometown — it’s also home to one of the finest [...]

Fred Eaglesmith and producer Scott Merritt must’ve been listening to a lot of Daniel Lanois and Bob Dylan — and Dusty Springfield — lately. With its ambient mood and obtuse instrumentation, Dusty is a drastic departure from Eaglesmith’s rock ‘n’ bluegrass sound, which will make this a very difficult album for some, like one of [...]

Over eighteen albums, balladeer Tom Russell has written lasting songs that have been recorded by everyone from Johnny Cash to Doug Sahm, and sung them in a smooth, cleanly enunciated baritone that make even his collections of songs by others compelling. He’s been devoted to all things Americana, shown especially on theme albums about cowboy [...]

Within the musical world of the unsinkable Johnny Dowd, you have to laugh to keep from crying. Take the sad, first-person narrative of “Wedding Dress”, in which a young man recounts his sexual confusion — how he loved to play dress-up in mommy’s clothes until the day his butcher father took him to work “to [...]

The son of Columbia A&R legend John Hammond Sr. (whose signings included Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen), John Hammond Jr. caught a fast track to fame in the NYC folk/blues scene of the early 1960s, landing a record contract just three years after first picking up a guitar. Hammond’s early recordings were marred [...]

Surely it hasn’t escaped notice that we are enjoying a rare and multi-generational bluegrass renaissance. It is easy to take for granted that the next album from, say, Alison Krauss or Nickel Creek or the Del McCoury Band will be of this same high caliber, but one should never lose sight of the transitory magic [...]

When last heard from, Marianne Faithfull was playing the devil in Robert Wilson’s stage version of The Black Rider, making Faustian bargains with unsuspecting mortals. You could call that typecasting, given Faithfull’s image of wizened decadence. On the other hand, you can imagine Faithfull herself making a perverse deal with some nameless underworld figure to [...]

Being a folkie ain’t easy. You demand the attention of your audience so you can play songs you may or may not have written, and in exchange, if you perform them honestly enough, you leave listeners with the impression they’re yours regardless. That’s the pleasure and the mystery of Delirium Tremoloes, the umpteenth album by [...]

Of the many things about Jack Logan that continue to impress, one of the most admirable is that his clubhouse approach to writing and recording has never become a gimmick. Beginning with 1993′s Bulk, the two-disc collection that landed him prominently in the pages of Rolling Stone and elsewhere (he was even profiled on “The [...]

Most often what we’re seeking in music is inspiration — that spark of being brought to life by a sound, a lyric, a song. Ben Lee’s new record has it from the very start of the opening track, when a simple guitar riff hops aboard a soft wash of keyboards to create a background that [...]