Author: Bill Friskics-Warren
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #13 Jan-Feb 1998
Sacred Steel: Traditional Sacred African-American Steel Guitar Music In Florida
Most people associate the sound of a crying steel guitar with honky-tonk Saturday nights, not with Sunday services at the House of God. Yet as this amazing collection of contemporary field recordings attests, the instrument plays a central role in the worship life of many Holiness-Pentecostal churches. Sacred Steel features five of Florida’s finest African-American [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #13 Jan-Feb 1998
Derailers – Continental Club (Austin, TX)
So what if the Derailers look and sound like Buck Owens & his Buckaroos, circa 1965. The Derailers write nearly all of their material (most of it first-rate), have an unwavering honky-tonk ethic, and finally boast a rhythm section that can put their mix of California and Texas twang over live. If that’s not enough, [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #12 Nov-Dec 1997
Tomi Lunsford – High Ground
Tomi Lunsford’s father Jim played fiddle with such country and bluegrass legends as Bob Wills, Reno & Smiley and Roy Acuff. Her great uncle, Bascom Lamar Lunsford — widely known as the “Minstrel of the Appalachians” — wrote “I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground” and “Old Mountain Dew”. This legacy, coupled with [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #12 Nov-Dec 1997
Cornershop – When I Was Born For The 7th Time
Funky beats, Punjabi pop, Velvets-inspired rhythm guitar — textbook alt-country this ain’t. Then again, one could note how Tjinder Singh’s vocals exude the same smoky warmth as Bob Dylan’s on Nashville Skyline. Or how Anthony Saffery’s sitar evokes Sneeky Pete’s freaky steel on the Flying Burrito Brothers’ Gilded Palace Of Sin. Or even that Tarnation’s [...]
Town and Country - Shorter Artist Feature from Issue #12 Nov-Dec 1997
Bo Ramsey – Feelin’ groove-y
Repetition and monotony aren’t necessarily the same thing. Monotony is always tedious; repetition, however, accounts for some of life’s most moving experiences. Whether it’s dancing, daily meditation or good sex — or, for that matter, a committed long-term relationship — there’s no substitute for abandoning oneself to a deep, abiding groove. Judging by the vamping [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #11 Sept-Oct 1997
Buddy Miller – Poison Love
Steve Earle calls Buddy Miller’s 1995 debut Your Love and Other Lies the country record of the decade, and I believe him. Yet it wasn’t until I heard Miller’s new album, Poison Love — and specifically, his cover of Otis Redding’s 1965 hit “That’s How Strong My Love Is” — that I finally put my [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #11 Sept-Oct 1997
Robbie Fulks – Leaving NashVegas
Well I came down to Nashville in 1993 ‘Cause my friend Jimmy said Nashville Had money growin’ right on the trees So I thought I’d go pick some And I don’t mean musicalese Now it’s three years later And I’m wonderin’ where I went wrong I shook a lot of hands, ate a lotta lunch [...]
Town and Country - Shorter Artist Feature from Issue #11 Sept-Oct 1997
Kevin Gordon – He can’t get no
Kevin Gordon couldn’t be more at home with his musical roots. The West Monroe, Louisiana, native inhabits the swamp blues, honky-tonk and rockabilly he heard growing up in the ’60s with the unassuming ease of a performer twice his age. The roots that lend Gordon’s music its tension are, rather, social and historical. On Illinois [...]
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #10 July-Aug 1997
Freakwater – Dancing Under Water
Perhaps no body of literature sustains as tragic a view of human existence as the Appalachian ballads of murder and ill-fated love collected by Francis Child during the 19th century. Freakwater, the Louisville string band fronted by Catherine Irwin and Janet Bean, drinks as deeply of that fount of tragedy as anybody making records today. [...]
Town and Country - Shorter Artist Feature from Issue #9 May-June 1997
Tom House – A poet’s tears, a drunken smile
Nashville’s Working Stiff Jamboree has been attracting poets, songwriters and disaffiliated left-wingers to Springwater, a local bar, for over a decade now. It’s a resolutely democratic affair; the microphone in the back room of the bar is open to anyone with nerve enough to take it. No one screens anybody’s material. What matters inside these [...]
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