When it started, it was a long, rectangular room with a couple wooden racks for records and CDs on a section of North Peters street that had very little going on. Twenty years later it’s a must-visit store for the legions of New Orleans music lovers around the world, but Barry Smith, owner of the [...]
The new Ani DiFranco record is the latest entry in DiFranco’s musical and lyrical view of the world and current events. Over the years, she has perfected her sound, and this record is a pristine example of that. Her guitar sounds tight chords with a heavy, yet not overwhelming emphasis on the lower range. Her [...]
The art of listening, whether on the bandstand or in daily life, is a highly underrated skill. As Kidd Jordan continues his formidable yet underappreciated career, his playing shows more and more how much he values listening to and complementing his fellow players. This has always been evident in his music, but now it has [...]
Ruthie Foster has a cult/fanatic following. People either have never heard of her or they think she has one of the best voices of our time. Her new CD Live at Antone’s shows why her voice has received such notice. It is husky and soulful but never overdone. She wails at the top of her [...]
Few people know that Sun Ra, besides being an avant-black futurist big band leader, was also a poet. He and his band would recite chants and poems during and between songs at performances, and now, thanks to Kicks Books—Norton Records’ publishing imprint—many of Ra’s works of words are collected in the appropriately titled This Planet [...]
For more than three decades, attorney Mary Howell has been at the frontlines of police misconduct and civil rights litigation in New Orleans. She has represented plaintiffs in the Algiers police rampage of 1980, the killing of Adolph Archie in 1990, and the execution of Kim Groves by order of policeman Len Davis in 1994. [...]
Son House has long been regarded as one of the most authentic Delta bluesmen. His music and performances were as intense as music gets, and his influence stretches from Robert Johnson to John Mooney, both of whom were his pupils. Daniel Beaumont’s book, Preachin’ the Blues: The Life and Times of Son House, is the [...]
At first this is a far cry from Mathus’ recordings with the Squirrel Nut Zippers. There was a tight stateliness to the Zippers, even when they were playing at their most fast and furious. On Mathus’ new record Confederate Buddha, the music is relaxed and playful. What both bands share is the seriousness with which [...]
Blues music can generally be divided into two categories. There are the rock-informed blues with polished, clichéd solos, going- through-the-motions vocals, and obnoxiously loud and pummeling versions of everything from “Sweet Home Chicago” to “Down-Home Blues” to “Mustang Sally.” Then there are the more idiosyncratic blues that are passionate, distorted, and raw. Kenny Brown’s new [...]
Jeremy Lyons, guitarist and leader of the greatly missed Deltabilly Boys, never thought he would end up playing with two of the surviving members of Morphine, the 1990s “low rock” trio of drum, saxophone and bass. “I had not heard Morphine before, but I had heard of them peripherally,” says Lyons over the phone from [...]
