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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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Author: Daniel Durchholz

Record Review from web archive January 16, 2009

Mad Buffalo

In the world of Mad Buffalo’s Randy Riviere, people come and go, but it’s the land that endures. That shouldn’t be a surprise to those who know the singer-songwriter’s backstory, which involves work as an environmentalist and conservationist with a master’s degree in wildlife biology. On Wilderness, Riviere’s third effort under the Mad Buffalo rubric, [...]

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Live Reviews from web archive November 24, 2008

Punch Brothers

When Chris Thile said goodbye to Nickel Creek last year, it was hard to know exactly what the mandolin virtuoso had in mind for his next move. But it was fair to expect that it would be something ambitious. Thile, after all, has been defying convention since he was a pre-teen mandolin champion, later leading [...]

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Record Review from web archive November 20, 2008

Joey + Rory

Despite the illusion that all TV talent shows pluck contestants off the couch and thrust them into the spotlight, Joey Martin Feek and Rory Lee Feek were kicking around Nashville for more than a decade before being “discovered” by CMT’s Can You Duet. Though the married couple didn’t win and they actually hadn’t previously performed [...]

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Record Review from web archive November 14, 2008

Brad Paisley

Brad Paisley has collected his share of CMA and ACM male vocalist awards, including one just this week. But he’s also a fine guitar player, having scored a Best Country Instrumental Grammy for “Throttleneck” from his 2007 album 5th Gear. Paisley is among a select few mainstream country artists (Vince Gill, Keith Urban) who are [...]

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Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #73 Jan-Feb 2008

Neil Young / Pegi Young – Fox Theater (St. Louis, MO)

“When you’ve sung a song so many times, you have to take care of it,” Neil Young explained to the capacity crowd. A fan had just wrecked Young’s concentration during “After The Gold Rush”, yelling “Neil for president!” and causing him to stop and then struggle through the rest of the song. “If you sing [...]

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Waxed - Record Review from Issue #72 Nov-Dec 2007

Mark Knopfler – Kill to Get Crimson

Because he writes mostly character-driven songs, it’s difficult to know just how much Mark Knopfler imbues a painter who lusts after more vivid colors in “Let It All Go” with his own attitudes and attributes. Yet it’s easy to read into the song’s bitter lyrics a distaste for his own profession, or rather what it [...]

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Waxed - Record Review from Issue #71 Sep-Oct 2007

Ann Wilson – Hope & Glory

Despite having numerous gold and platinum albums to her name, is it possible Ann Wilson is an underrated singer? It would seem so. As the powerhouse vocalist of Heart, Wilson, along with her sister Nancy, helped clear the path for a generation of female rockers to come. But by the time the Lilith Fair was [...]

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Waxed - Record Review from Issue #70 July-August 2007

Amy Allison – Everything And Nothing Too

Had Amy Allison been born a few decades earlier, she’d have been a perfect frontperson for a girl group. Her nasal croon — an acquired taste, to be sure — longs to be swathed in Wall-of-Sound-style arrangements as her lyrics catalogue every romantic slight and count every tear that falls. The production isn’t quite that [...]

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Waxed - Record Review from Issue #68 Mar-Apr 2007

Martin Sexton – Seeds

Given that it’s been more than six years since the release of the last Martin Sexton album (save for a 2005 Christmas collection), Seeds feels at first a little slight, filled with songs about contentment, kicking back, and the ability to fail upward. Lucky for Sexton, though, that even trifles such as “Happy”, “Goin’ To [...]

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Waxed - Record Review from Issue #67 Jan-Feb 2007

John Gorka – Writing In The Margins

“Sing like there’s no tomorrow,” John Gorka implores/instructs on “Broken Place”. He’d do well to heed his own advice. His fine baritone vocals have won him many fans, and his subtle observations of life’s small moments have led artists such as Mary Chapin Carpenter, Nanci Griffith and Maura O’Connell to cover his songs. But over [...]

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From the Blogs

  • 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 […]
  • Interview with Raul Malo from the Mavericks
    May 2013 There are very few singers or bands that have a 100% distinctive Trademark sound; but The Mavericks achieved that very early in their career and in the UK you still can’t go to a Wedding without being corralled onto the dance-floor as soon as you hear the opening bars to Dance The Night Away. After breaking up in 2004 lead singer and songwriter, Rau […]
  • The Great Escape, Brighton, 2013: day one
    So, here we are again, tramping the streets of Brighton, squeezing into someunfeasibly small spaces to see bands we've never heard of... I'd been feeling somewhat underexcited by this year's Great Escape because it the only one of hundreds of names on the bill that I knew I liked was Billy Bragg, who appears at the Dome tonight. But a quick bu […]

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