The late Townes Van Zandt was a songwriter who inspired others that practice the craft to the heights of praise, with Steve Earle’s offer to testify on Bob Dylan’s coffee table the most often cited. Van Zandt no doubt also inspired, and continues to inspire, bouts of self-doubt in those same people because, aw shit, […]
Rick Cornell
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Solomon Burke
The tremendous, triumphant voice of Solomon Burke embodies so much: Philly and Muscle Shoals; the pulpit and the stage; soul and country and rock and gospel. On Don’t Give Up on Me, Burke’s highest profile offering in at least 20 years, a storied collection of writers have provided the words for that voice to carry. […]
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The Shames
You could get away with calling Live (v.) Along bedroom music, but not because it sounds like Barry White. Clay Merritt, working as a one-man Shames, captured Live‘s contents while staying in a friend’s guest room, a space whose amenities included not only a pullout sofa but also a digital eight-track recorder. (Merritt has since […]
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Hotter’n a Two Dollar Pistol
In the early ’90s, John Howie began preaching the gospel of country music in the Triangle, both from behind the counter of the gone-but-not-forgotten Poindexter Records on Durham’s Ninth Street and behind the mic on the Sunday morning radio show “Heartaches and Hangovers,” which aired on Duke’s WXDU. When Howie wasn’t pointing you toward the […]
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Bobby Bare Jr.
“I’m torn/Torn like a bullet through my teeth,” sings Bobby Bare Jr. in his meandering voice, extending syllables and presenting his idea of a chorus. The line makes me think of a guy I used to see on ABC’s Wide World of Sports when I was a kid, a man who could catch a bullet […]
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Chuck Prophet
When Chuck Prophet released The Hurting Business in 2000, he joined the genre-blurring likes of Joe Henry and Jeb Loy Nichols. Then again, Prophet had never been what you’d call a purist. Green On Red, the band he co-led with Dan Stuart, blended Stonesy raunch, folk rock, and country & desert. And while it was […]
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Glory Fountain
The Beauty of 23 was really supposed to be a different album. This second outing from distinguished vets Lynn Blakey and John Chumbris (she: Tres Chicas, Let’s Active, Holiday, and Oh-OK; he: Slickee Boys, the Chris Stamey-led Alaska, The Pinetops) was intended to be a quieter, more atmospheric affair than their collected-demos debut Blame Love. […]
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Heeding the Call
Hell yeah, Buck Owens used to annoy me. I was an 8-year-old watching Hee Haw every Saturday night at 7 p.m., and he was the guy picking and grinning. However, what really got on my nerves was the way the camera would cut to a guffawing Owens after a skit as if he were a […]
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Lonesome Bob
Everything about Lonesome Bob–Robert Chaney until a nickname overthrew his real name–is writ large. He’s a bulky man with a room-filling, lonesome bear of a voice. His songs are huge; five of the tunes on this sophomore release are over five minutes long. And in those songs, his emotions are big, like on the at-loose-ends […]
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Damien Jurado and Gathered in Song and Rosie Thomas
It makes sense to talk about these two Sub Pop artists together, having first encountered Rosie Thomas singing on Damien Jurado’s 2000 release, Ghost of David. That disc was a rather stark affair, with Jurado accompanied on several songs by just acoustic strumming and/or a piano that seemed to be drifting in through a next-door […]