Author: Grant Alden
Bound - Book Review from Issue #65 Sep-Oct 2006
Will The Circle Be Unbroken: Country Music In America
About once a decade, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum seems to produce a fresh, lavishly illustrated history of the music. Yes, they are coffee table books, but this one aspires to rather more: It asks to be read. Particularly this one. The title is particularly apt, for the main chapters of this [...]
Bound - Book Review from Issue #64 July-Aug 2006
Honky-Tonk Heroes & Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers Of Country & Western Music
Funny things happen when you add children to your lives. If you’re a music critic, for example, suddenly you start keeping the childrens’ albums that come in the mail, and hope your little one is drawn to the same sounds you are (though we do seem to be enjoying a little children’s music renaissance). Something [...]
Hello Stranger - Editor's Note from Issue #64 July-Aug 2006
Hello Stranger from Issue #64
Apparently Dean Silverstone had sort of inherited the Seattle territory from his mentor, Harry Elliott, because that’s how we first met. His was a peculiar presence on Saturday afternoon TV, more middle school science teacher than carnival barker, an oddly restrained wrestling promoter sandwiched between the constantly feuding Lumberjack Luke and Paddy Ryan. It seems [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #63 May-June 2006
Jon Dee Graham – The hard balance of real life renders Jon Dee Graham’s body of work all the more impressive
Truth is, I have been writing this same story for ten years or more. It has been about Tom House and Mike Ireland, Chris Knight and Mary Gauthier and, even, Gillian Welch and Steve Earle. Especially Billy Joe Shaver. This is the story about not stopping. It is the story about voices which must be [...]
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #63 May-June 2006
Bettye LaVette – Child Of The Seventies
It is argued, in David Nathan’s liner notes and elsewhere, that if this 1973 Betty (she changed it to Bettye later) LaVette album, recorded at Muscle Shoals but shelved at the time, had seen release before now, she’d have been a star. Well, maybe. But what seems most clear is that she had a wonderful, [...]
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #63 May-June 2006
Johnny Cash – Personal File
Today Johnny Cash exists in our imagination largely as the young hellion of the 1950s and ’60s, or the grave and wise voice offered on his final American recordings. These recently unearthed tapes — very simply, Johnny Cash accompanying himself at his home studio on guitar — serve as a timely reminder that he was [...]
Bound - Book Review from Issue #63 May-June 2006
1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die
Even understanding and accepting that such books exist largely to frustrate the critics whose opinions weren’t polled, um, no. You don’t have to hear all these. 1001 Albums segregates its choices by decade, accompanying most with album artwork and an essay of varying length, though never very long. Apparently the choices were made by editor [...]
Bound - Book Review from Issue #62 Mar-Apr 2006
Steve Earle: Fearless Heart, Outlaw Poet
As much as I am drawn to Steve Earle’s music and re-spect the work he’s done this last decade to rebuild himself, it’s hard to guess why there need be a second biography on the heels of Lauren St John’s 2003 Hardcore Troubadour. Thing is, Earle is a difficult, complex and polarizing character, and he’s [...]
Town and Country - Shorter Artist Feature from Issue #62 Mar-Apr 2006
Gary Bennett – Second act, naturally
He knew it was a dream, for he’d nurtured it carefully all those years back home in Cougar, Washington, and then down the road in Portland, Oregon, where he tried it out onstage in some pretty bleak bars. But even a decade after BR5-49′s abrupt leap into the spotlight from the cramped stage of a [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #61 Jan-Feb 2006
Freakwater / Marah – The Dame (Lexington, KY)
Not so many years ago — or has it been? — great things were predicted for this Wednesday night’s co-headliners, both acts having once been favored by critics and Steve Earle (who ultimately did sign Marah to his label, and tried to enlist Freakwater). The audience — the big one everybody wants, that they seemed [...]
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