There’s a reason why Robbie Robertson dubbed Van Morrison “The Belfast Cowboy.” For four decades, the Irish soul balladeer has drunk deep from the well of the American South, inspired by the same potent brew of gospel, blues and country that fueled his hero, Ray Charles. So it’s hardly a great leap of faith for [...]
The Gourds are to Austin what the Morning 40 Federation is to New Orleans – a hellbent krewe of carnival hucksters and word-besotted street punks who play sloppy-smart party music that the Gourds’ Kevin Russell rightly calls “red-eyed soul.” But, where M40 writes paeans to the to the gritty charms of the once-and-future Ninth Ward, [...]
There something bracing about good old-fashioned, straight-ahead, Rolling Stones-style rock, and this young Raleigh, North Carolina outfit has it in spades. The band tips its hand on the first track, “She’s Like a Song,” which was made to be blasted at 80 m.p.h. in an Oldsmobile Cutlass headed nowhere and everywhere: “If she’s like a [...]
Chris Whitley always played as if his life depended on it. Sometimes, as in his 2004 manifesto War Crime Blues, the emotion was so raw you could practically taste the blood on the strings of his National steel guitar. Other times it was more of a throbbing ache, as in this year’s Soft Dangerous Shores, [...]
The very first piece of mail I received when I came home to New Orleans after two long months away was the new subdudes album. Talk about good omens! Recorded pre-Katrina at Dockside Studios near Lafayette, the album’s title refers to the physical location where the ’dudes laid down ten soulful tracks with blues legend [...]
“I’ve committed well spent days driving parts of Highway 61 from New Orleans to Minneapolis,” says Jay Farrar. He roars up “Afterglow 61” again on Okemah and the Melody of Riot, the first new Son Volt album in seven years and one of Farrar’s best. Though he’s fronting a new Son Volt lineup at House [...]
Ryan Adams is feeling good these days and that’s not a bad thing. God knows he earned Cold Roses’ “Easy Plateau” after crawling through Love Is Hell Pt. 1 and Love Is Hell Pt. 2 on the heels of his swaggering 2003 rave-up Rock N Roll. Was I hoping Cold Roses would be a sly [...]
