Steely Dan was my kudzu band, growing with me as I grew up in the ’70s and always seeming to find ways to wrap itself around parts of my life. Of course, growing up in a small town in upstate New York a suburb of a suburb of Binghamton, with a population of about 500 […]
Rick Cornell
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The Red Clay Ramblers keep it lively and alive
From the very beginning and through the years, across defections and factions and permanent losses, the Red Clay Ramblers have always excelled at looking back. But it’s not that the Red Clay Ramblers live in the past. It’s that they bring the past to life. “It’s something of an Americana music tour,” says piano player […]
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Kenny Roby’s “Foot Soldier”
Listen up! or stream it below. If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. Kenny Roby’s most recent release, 2006’s The Mercy Filter, found despair, disease and decay passing through its 13 songs, countered by relief, recovery and rebirth. There were breakups and breakdowns and searches for identity, strength and […]
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Track: Bowerbirds’ “Northern Lights”
‘Northern Lights,” in Bowerbirds nature-speak, is like a bouquet of fireflies on a still, moonless night for those who are pro-Martin Stephenson, pro-love song, and pro-Band. In 1990, post-punk Scottish singer-songwriter Stephenson recorded ‘Big North Lights,” a gentle stream of a tune that pivoted on the line ‘Northern lights are humble lights my friend.” Until […]
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Eilen Jewell’s favorite rock songs
On 2005’s Boundary County and its 2007 follow-up, Letter from Sinners & Strangers, Boston singer Eilen Jewell offered a sound and approach that recalled Emmylou Harris at her most retro, John Prine at his most folk-ish, and Bessie Smith, well, just being Bessie Smith. Vintage was the order of the day, and when Jewell sang […]
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The Gaslight Anthem’s “Miles Davis & the Cool”
Listen up! or stream it below. If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. The Gaslight Anthem’s The ’59 Sound, with its songs of first loves and first losses, can make an old man 23 again. And with a musical backdrop built on Springsteen-style drama-rock but also beholden to punk […]
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Surveying both ends of the Mammoth Records catalog
Sure, it was a self-centered concern, but it was the first one that entered my mind: As the smashing, unprecedented success of the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ Hot, released by Carrboro’s Mammoth Records in 1996, became evident, I remember thinking, “Cool. That means Mammoth can keep releasing Joe Henry records.” Hot burned through the charts one […]
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Watson & Roy’s Lullabies & Family Songs
Being invited into the home of someone you hardly know can be a bit uncomfortable. With Lullabies & Family Songs (an album that couldn’t be titled anything else), Rob Watson and Mike Roy offer that kind of invitation. The duo, who co-leads the roots-gospel outfit The Whistlestop, takes an interesting approach to dealing with that […]
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Ken Friedman gathers a third volume of N.C. nuggets
Officially, Ken Friedman is the Director of Molecular Genetics for Laboratory Corporation of America, a Burlington, N.C.-based network of international medical labs with 28,000 employees. But in his words, he’s just “a music geek.” In the early ’80s, Friedmanat that time, the man behind Anarchy in the PM, a popular radio show on University of […]
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Tim Duffy of Music Maker Relief Foundation
Ask Tim Duffy about the origins of Music Maker Relief Foundation, the benevolent musicians’ assistance organization he’s overseen for 15 years now, and receive a story that feels half Southern mythology and half stark reality, stocked with characters that could come from The Band’s “The Weight.” “When I met Guitar Gabriel, I was 25 years […]