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No Depression has been the foremost journalistic authority on roots music for well over a decade, publishing 75 issues from 1995 to 2008. No Depression ceased publishing magazines in 2008 and took to the web. We have made the contents of those issues accessible online via this extensive archive and also feature a robust community website with blogs, photos, videos, music, news, discussion and more.

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Archives for 2009 » March

Record Review from web archive March 31, 2009

Flatlanders

We can glean at least two insights from the release of the third Flatlanders album of the millennium, following a hiatus of three decades. First, the Texas trio of buddies since boyhood has renewed its commitment to becoming more a band than a legend. Second, there is such a thing as quintessential Flatlanders music that [...]

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Live Reviews from web archive March 30, 2009

Foster & Lloyd

Talking with Bill Lloyd and Radney Foster before this much-anticipated reunion gig, the capper in a series of fund-raising shows for the Americana Music Association at the storied club, we were trying to scope out how long it has been since the innovative country duo had performed together like this. There had been, they recalled [...]

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Record Review from web archive March 27, 2009

Marianne Faithfull

NPR ran a feature a couple Sundays back on the new Marianne Faithfull record, playing snippets from a couple of songs in between interview segments. One week later, they read a purportedly representative letter of complaint, saying that Faithfull’s voice is something “nobody wants to hear on a Sunday morning.” Hard to believe 30 years [...]

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Record Review from web archive March 26, 2009

Sarah Borges & the Broken Singles

With her third album, Boston bar-band chanteuse Sarah Borges sounds like a work in progress. There’s nothing wrong with that: In gravitating from the frisky roots and country of her debut to an eclectic, guitar-driven pop-rock sound that sometimes recalls fellow Bostonian Jen Trynin, she has been honing her artistic voice the way all young [...]

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Record Review from web archive March 25, 2009

Nick Lowe

Quiet Please is, as it subtitle indicates, not Nick Lowe’s first Best Of (that’s 16 All Time Lowes), his biggest Best Of (The Doings), his most hits-packed Best Of (Basher), or his most rarities-filled Best Of (The Wilderness Years). But this two-disc collection is his most comprehensive Best Of, and, perhaps, his best Best Of. [...]

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Record Review from web archive March 24, 2009

Doug Sahm tribute

Tribute albums are inherently mixed bags, a challenge compounded when the subject is as much a myriad of musical possibility as the Texas Tornado. In his various incarnations, Doug Sahm embodied pretty much every musical strain of his native state – from Tex-Mex conjunto to garage-band psychedelia, from the purest country to the purest blues. [...]

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Live Reviews from web archive March 23, 2009

Bonnie “Prince” Billy / Begushkin

Bonnie “Prince” Billy, I forgive you. Before the commanding performance by Billy and band on a Monday night at the jam-packed Vaudeville Mews (capacity 230, but it seemed like every tattooed hipster in greater Des Moines was there), I’d occasionally found Will Oldham’s affections – the changes in billing from various incarnations of Palace to [...]

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Record Review from web archive March 22, 2009

Blackie & the Rodeo Kings

Is it permissible to have a mulligan in music? In casual golf, if you miss a shot you sometimes get a do-over, known as a mulligan. I ask because in September 2004 I said this about Blackie & the Rodeo Kings in The Washington Post: “. . . a band that was never intended to [...]

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Record Review from web archive March 19, 2009

Sometymes Why

Four years ago Aoife O’Donovan, Ruth Ungar Merenda, and Kristin Andreassen spent a dozen hours recording ten songs, and casually slipped them into the marketplace, housed in a lovely black and silver letterpress package, an edition of one thousand. It was and is a fetching record, both gloriously informal and gorgeously professional, for in their [...]

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Record Review from web archive March 17, 2009

John Wesley Harding

John Wesley Harding has long been one of our most literary singer-songwriter types and a true cineaste. After all, he’s had two novels published under his given name, Wesley Stace, with a third on the way, plus his first two full-length releases were named after Frank Capra movies and his third after Capra’s autobiography. Thus, [...]

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From the Blogs

  • A Tribute to The Doors Ray Manzarek 1939-2013
    "You don't make music for immortality, you make music for the moment, capturing the sheer joy of being alive on planet Earth... Everybody should live it that way."    Ray Manzarek   In the summer of 1967 The Doors played the Anaheim Convention Center. I was 12 years old. I was completely transfixed by the band. Having an older musician brother […]
  • Jim Lauderdale: Americana's Country Journeyman Returns to L.A.
    With a career as diverse as the emerging genre we call ‘Americana,’ Jim Lauderdale continues on the same track toward collaboration, generosity and an imagination fused with the influence of Country and Bluegrass traditions. His December, 2012 release with musical cohort, Buddy Miller, is a collection of songs, some covers and some originals, that focuses on […]
  • CD Reissue Review: Irma Thomas - In Between Tears (Fungus/Alive, 1973/2013)
    Irma Thomas' lost early-70s soul sides After relocating from New Orleans to Los Angeles, soul queen Irma Thomas largely disappeared from public view for a few years. But a series of singles produced by Jerry Williams (a.k.a. Swamp Dogg) on the indie Canyon, Roker and Fungus labels led to this eight-track release in 1973. Williams had proven himself… […]
  • CD Reissue Review: Eddy Arnold - Complete Original #1 Hits (RCA / Real Gone, 2013)
    All twenty-eight of Eddy Arnold's chart-topping singles For most artists, a twenty-eight track collection of their biggest chart hits would be a fair representation of their commercial success. In Eddy Arnold's case, twenty-eight #1 singles only very lightly skims the surface of nearly thirty-nine consecutive years of chart success that stretched… […]
  • Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell at Sage Gateshead
    What can I tell you? I’ve been a fan of Emmylou Harris since I first saw The Last Waltz at the cinema in 1979 and Rodney Crowell ever since a friend gave me a copy of Diamonds and Dirt on cassette as a birthday present. So, finally seeing not only one of them in concert, but both together had made me nervously excited for weeks in advance. If you don’t know […]
  • Great Escape, Brighton, UK - Day Three
    By day three I'm starting to flag, but Canada House at the Blind Tiger looks intriguing: a line-up sponsored by music organisations from three of the western provinces. I'm off to Alberta at the end of July, so this could be a good warm-up. 'We're here to show you that Western Canada is about more than just wheatfields, gravel roads and k […]

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