“You don’t have to stand in the doorway — there’s no earthquake,” quipped Blazers guitarist Manuel Gonzalez to two wallflowers who had crammed themselves in a jamb. Not an earthquake, but certainly a post-flood heat wave, as the warehouse doors were thrown open and the air-conditioning was on the blink at the homey Gallista Gallery, [...]

When a Reprise label source was quoted in Rolling Stone as saying Wilco’s new album, Yankee Foxtrot Hotel, was “the side of the road, instead of the middle of the road,” one could imagine Jeff Tweedy thinking, “let us go and stand awhile, we wanna be alone.” Yet on this unseasonably cool and misty Texas [...]

“Can I get a page number?!” bellowed David Rawlings with all the sweaty fervor of a Pentecostal preacher at a tent revival. “128!” barked a man from the bar. Rawlings obediently opened the Bob Dylan songbook, thumbed to that page, placed the hefty tome on the music stand and lay a small chain in the [...]

Former Columbia Records chief Don Law rejected Ray Price 20 times before finally signing him in 1951. Nearly a half-century later, the country crooner had no problem hooking the 500 folks at the Little Nashville Opry and reeling them in one-by-one. Unveiling an 11-piece band, which included pedal steel, piano and a violin quartet, Price [...]

Perhaps it was the intoxicating effects of the laughing gas, or maybe the tour bus has carbon monoxide buildup, but Loretta Lynn seemed punchy, even recklessly zany at her second of two sold-out shows at the Little Nashville Opry. “My tooth broke off today and I put it in a box of Tic-Tacs until I [...]