Rodney Hayden has everything it takes to be a mainstream country music star. He’s got neotenous good looks, a beautiful country voice comparable to Mark Chesnutt or George Strait, and he’s got a great story of how he was discovered. When he was 17, Hayden sent a demo tape to Robert Earl Keen, one of [...]

We all have skilled friends willing to lend a hand — to fix a computer glitch or check under the hood, that sort of thing. But what if you write songs, and you happen to know some of the biggest names in rock and country music? That’s the case with Mark Seliger, renowned entertainment photographer [...]

The Spanish-speaking Southwest is replete with dichos — proverbs — that touch on all aspects of the human condition. One popular dicho, which has many similar iterations, states: “La oracion del padre el hijo la reza.” Or, for the español-impaired: “The son repeats his father’s prayer.” We gringos tend to put it more prosaically: Like [...]

Shake Patrick Park’s hand and you’ll likely notice his most peculiar feature — claws. You might not feel them, per se — two years of wearing them has perhaps taught the Los Angeles musician a thing or two about finesse — but you’ll likely see them coming. They’re somewhat menacing — five white, pointy things [...]

Randy Weeks lives in Santa Monica, four blocks from the Pacific Ocean. Not in some fancy beach house, mind you: “I live in a little shack that they used to keep rakes in but is now fixed up, and myself, about seven guitars and my girlfriend have somehow squeezed into it,” he says. Still, the [...]

In sorrow she can lure you where she wants you Inside your own self-pity there you swim In sinking down to drown her voice still haunts you And only with your laughter can you win – Joni Mitchell, “Roses Blue” It’s fitting Rosie Thomas borrowed a line from that song on Joni Mitchell’s 1969 album [...]

During the summer of 1991 Steve Turner played guitar in the best band in the world. He’s still a member in good standing of Mudhoney, but the band at whom the word grunge was first thrown ceased to be critic’s darlings long ago, and never mind that they released their finest album just last year, [...]

When she first heard the quirky harmonies and jagged rhythms of Joni Mitchell’s Blue in a college dorm room, Valorie Miller knew she was hearing something special. She just didn’t realize it was the key turning in the door to her future. Years later, pushed into the solo slot opening for renowned North Carolina songwriter [...]

Having lost a year of his life there, Jamie Perry will argue that no place on earth is as hellishly strange as Nashville, Tennessee. Convinced he’d have no trouble making it as a songwriter, the Canadian artist moved to the country music capital in 1990 at age 19. Through family connections, he landed a job [...]

Imagine spending your life as an author, publishing well-received but obscure murder mysteries. Then one day, you do some comic books as a lark. It turns out you’re really good at comic books, but it’s just a fun and not-too-serious hobby — until one of those comic books unexpectedly turns up on The New York [...]