Emmylou Harris. Ryan Adams. Some variation of the phrase “second fiddle.” Thanks, I wanted to get those three things out of the way, all apparently mandatory in a review of Caitlin Cary’s full-length debut, so we can focus on the important stuff: namely, that the wide-ranging While You Weren’t Looking is a monument to Cary’s […]
Rick Cornell
Posted inMusic
High-tech Hillbillies
The Shiners are a bona fide “hillbilly” (their preferred term) music collective, a rural-route Continental Drifters. Just take a look at the CD-tray picture included with the Richmond, Va., band’s debut, Bonnie Blue. It shows the seven Shiners clutching, among other things, a banjo, a fiddle and a washboard and looking like they just wandered […]
Posted inNews
Josh Ritter
Josh Ritter is one of those old-soul young guys that are keeping the folk and rustic-rock train rolling in this post-postpunk world. Or maybe, as the front cover of Golden Age of Radio suggests, his preferred mode of travel is by bus. For sure, Ritter’s songs sound like they were inspired by a fistful of […]
Posted inNews
Endless Party
“I’ve been a big fan of Americana since it was ‘called’ Bruce Springsteen.” So said my friend Eddie recently by way of introduction to a group of fans of music that’s known as Americana or alt-country or a half-dozen other names. In addition to being a snappy little intro, Eddie’s line spoke to the slippery […]
Posted inMusic
Hoedown in Guitartown
Now in its seventh year, The Brewery’s annual S.P.I.T.T.L.E. Fest has survived a rather unappetizing name, the blizzard of 2000, and that ‘rasslin’-guy emcee. The brainchild of Greg Mosorjak, the club’s booking agent, S.P.I.T.T.L.E. spotlights artists that take the words country, rock, bluegrass, roots and punk and combines them two, three, sometimes four at a […]
Posted inNews
Kelly Hogan
In this age of tribute albums and record re-creations, if anyone ever decides to sponsor a rerecording of Dusty in Memphis, let me respectfully suggest signing up Kelly Hogan (Jody Grind frontwoman, before that band’s tragic end, as well as a former Rock*A*Teen) for the title role. Hogan has said that Because It Feel Good, […]
Posted inMusic
Cocked and Loaded
Not to get all New Agey on you–with the exception of Jimmie Dale Gilmore, mysticism and Country & Western go together like tofu and truckstops–but there’s definitely an aura surrounding Tift Merritt. She has the reluctant luminescence of a late-’50s budding Opry star and a voice to match, enough so that you suspect that at […]
Posted inNews
The Feargall Family, featuring Reverend Roq & JC
You can’t judge a book by its cover, especially a holy looking one. The front of The Feargall Family, Featuring Reverend ROQ & JC, features the good rev resembling a cross between a minister–albeit the kind of clergyman who’s skimming off the top of the collection plate to keep his El Camino gassed up–and a […]
Posted inNews
Charles Douglas
Carrboro, already a pretty damn musical place, got a little more tuneful recently with the arrival of Charles Douglas, by way of Dayton, Ohio, and several other points north. Under the name Alex McAulay, Douglas was half of the adamantly eclectic off-beat-pop duo Vegetarian Meat whose sole release, Let’s Pet, was one of those critically […]
Posted inMusic
Close to the Bone
Matthew Ryan left the Philadelphia area in 1993 and ended up in Nashville–without a good story (it’s not like Steve Earle spoke to him through a corner-tavern jukebox, commanding him to “Go South, young man”) or even a good answer to the question of why he ended up there. Sure, Ryan’s dad was in Nashville, […]