From the Blogs

• Roger Knox: Stranger in My Land (Bloodshot, 2013)
  Moving and socially significant Australian country music Though country music is most typically associated with the Southern United States, it's impact has been felt all around the world. In addition to Nashville and Texas exports, a strong but little-known strain developed among Australian aboriginals in the second half of the twentieth century.… […]
• The Great Escape, Brighton, 2013: day two
  It was definitely Billy Bragg's day, with a strong contender for performance of the year, not just of TGE. In comparison with the other stuff I saw, it's a bit like wondering how the rest got on when Mo Farah turned up for the dads' race at sports day... It was probably the fifth or sixth time I've seen Billy over the last 25 years or so […]
• Brittany Holljes on the Origins of Delta Rae and Her Healthy Fleetwood Mac Obsession
  Delta Rae might sound like the down-home name of a backwoods country singer but it’s really just Greek to Brittany Holljes. “I think there are a lot of ‘Delta’ bands out there, too, so we kind of get that ... people get confused,” said Holljes, the whip-smart singer of the North Carolina-based sextet (like Deborah Harry used to say about Blondie, Delta Rae i […]
• Crowd-sourcing to crowd-pleasing: The rise of Kat Edmonson
  If Kat Edmonson ever becomes a household name, she can put it down not just to her talent as a jazz singer, but to some decidedly modern financing as well. The 29-year-old Texan, an old-school chanteuse with a contemporary lilt, has funded production of her second album via a community workshop and through… […]
• When to get your ass saved and when to drown
  How does the co-writing song process differ from the alone songwriting process you just wrote about? Co-writing is quite different from writing alone. When I'm working on something alone I have complete freedom. Freedom to experiment, to make mistakes, to try things I'm quite sure won't work and the freedom to reconstruct whatever has come bef […]
• CD Review - Fiddleworms "See The Light"
  The ambitious new album See The Light, from Alabama quintet Fiddleworms is a cavalcade of styles with literally a parade of guest musicians including the University of North Alabama marching Band. The eleven original tracks are interspersed with snippets of radio sound effects and spoken word segments that flow from jazzy blues to stomping country rock fusio […]