Listen! If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. Yeah, the title of this compilation is a mouthful, but it’s fitting as it also takes a lot of words to adequately describe what constitutes roots music. Or, in the case of this CD, a lot of songs18 to be exact, […]
Rick Cornell
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The ArtsCenter’s fifth American Roots Series
While not exactly bar-fight fodder, the question “What is roots music?” can still spark lively discussions. The Carrboro ArtsCenter‘s American Roots Serieswhich begins its fifth season under the passionate oversight of Tess Mangum Ocaña Fridaysuggests that the answer requires a big tent. Sprawling even, as in it needs to be able to shelter blues, bluegrass, […]
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Jason Isbells Dress Blues
Listen! Download Jason Isbell’s “Dress Blues” (MP3, 3.7 MB) or stream it below. If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. The instant Jason Isbell hit town with Outfit and Decoration Day on the Drive-By Truckers Decoration Day album, it was clear that he was a gifted songwriter. His fellow […]
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Old roots, new branches
Listen! If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. A long weekend in late April brought Alison Krauss, Tony Rice, Del McCoury, Elvis Costello and over 100 other bands to Wilkesboro this year, where they shared the grounds of a community college with beloved patriarch Doc Watson. For the last […]
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Straight 8s
Listen! If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. Rockabilly’s reputation is built on a primal sound that’s equal parts raw energy, skittering guitar, accelerated-heartthump rhythm and the clinking of longneck beer bottles. It’s the musical equivalent of a high-speed chase, albeit one that lasts only a few miles. On […]
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A fan remembers David Enloe, 1956-2007
In the early ’90sand by many accounts, in years priorDavid Enloe and the rest of the Woods owned The Brewery, and they owned Saturday night. Over the last week, much has been written about David, who passed away early Tuesday from complications related to liver disease and who would have turned 51 on Christmas Day, […]
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Remembering alt.country’s big 1996 showcase
Please forgive this recollection, as it comes through the haze formed by many draft beers, a cloud of music-club cigarette smoke and near whiteout snow conditions that swept through North Carolina on Saturday, Feb. 3, 1996, the second day of the first Honky-Tonk-arama. When I got home from Local 506 that night nearly a dozen […]
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Tift Merritt
One question keeps bubbling up during the first half of Tift Merritt’s Austin City Limits performance, which first aired in January 2006 as part of a split episode with fellow Triangle expatriate Ryan Adams: Was the crowd given a mid-grade animal tranquilizer before she started playing? Not that you’d expect the communal cabaret of an […]
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Todd Snider’s “East Nashville Skyline”
Listen! If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. “Our skyline, it ain’t very high, but we love it. It says ‘Discount Cigarettes, Liquor and Wine.’ I think our neighborhood is a lot like our skyline. We’ve got great news, and we’re shouting it from the highest rooftop we got.” […]
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Carolina Funk: Funk 45s from the Atlantic Coast
Listen! If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. Not to get too deep hereafter all, depth of groove tends to trump depth of message in funk musicbut when is a CD more than a CD? When it’s also a history lesson, a photo archive, a journey from South Carolina’s […]