Category Archives: Music

Che Apalache’s Rearrange My Heart

Bluegrass fiddler and singer Joe Troop has come of age at just the ripe moment. Growing up a queer young man in the North Carolina Piedmont, in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, Troop eventually felt unwelcome in his home … Continue reading

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H.C. Slim’s Sings

Rock critic Griel Marcus famously referred to the tunes preserved on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music as remnants of the “old weird America.” By that token, the songs laid down here by H.C. Slim may someday be thought … Continue reading

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Jake Xerxes Fussell’s Out of Sight

Jake Xerxes Fussell’s previous recording What in the Natural World was one of my favorites of 2017, and on Out of Sight he has upped his game considerably. A native of the South and longtime student of its folk art … Continue reading

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An American Forrest’s O Bronder, Donder Yonder?

Yonder, yonder, yonder. It’s a word you don’t hear much these days except in the poetry of cowboys or from the Shakespearean stage. Forrest Van Tuyl, who performs as An American Forrest, is a young cowboy poet and horse wrangler … Continue reading

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Michele Rabbia, Gianluca Petrella, Eivind Aarset’s Lost River

By turns ambient, majestic, contemplative, evocative, even at times unsettling, Lost River by the new trio of drummer Michele Rabbia, guitarist Eivind Aarset and trombonist Gianluca Petrella is a sonic hall of wonders. The album’s 10 tracks, mostly in the … Continue reading

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Various artists’ Jazz Fest: The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is one of the pre-eminent music festivals in the United States. Held annually in the Crescent City since 1969, after a few fits and starts earlier in the decade, it celebrates New Orleans … Continue reading

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Kelly Hunt’s Even The Sparrow

“That banjo has stories,” Kelly Hunt says of the instrument on which she accompanies herself on her lovely debut album Even The Sparrow. “I wish I knew them all.” Hunt seems destined to add plenty of her own stories to … Continue reading

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What’s New for the 21st of April: Joni Mitchell sings of Coyote, Corridos from the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands, Tex-Mex Celtic music (!), live music from Calexico, R. Carlos Nakai, a bevy of novels set in the desert Southwest USA and other things for your consideration…

What draws a Green Man into the desert? Melodies, bones, and ghosts, I’d say. We go on these pilgrimages from time to time, searching for our heart’s home, and often it’s the border country of the American West that calls. … Continue reading

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Bill Frisell & Thomas Morgan’s Epistrophy

All jazz music can be described as an exploration, of course. At its best, the musicians whether solo or in an ensemble can be heard as they improvise, listening to and playing off of each othera s they go, never … Continue reading

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Field Medic’s Fade Into the Dawn

In case you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to be a semi-unknown singer-songwriter on tour, playing the role of the opener that nobody came to hear, you can hear it and feel it in the opening track and second … Continue reading

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