Category Archives: Music

Vic Chesnutt’s Silver Lake

Vic Chesnutt is a Southern singer-songwriter who’s more respected by other musicians than by the marketplace or the public. Partially paralyzed since a drunken-driving accident at the age of 18, he’s put out a series of albums with songs that … Continue reading

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The Richard Thompson Band’s Ducknapped! and Richard Thompson’s 1000 Years of Popular Music

To counter widespread bootlegging of his music, Richard Thompson decided to from time to time issue “unofficial” live recordings. With the birth of his official website “Beesweb” and a label of the same name, the number of these releases has … Continue reading

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Wicked Tinkers at the Portland Scottish Highland Games

Hot sun, cold beer, bagpipes, drums, didgeridoos, and four wildly funny, talented, sexy men in kilts … OK, maybe that’s not your idea of Heaven, but I’ve seen the Wicked Tinkers so I know better. The Tinkers are: award-winning piper … Continue reading

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Tori Amos’s Tales of a Librarian

Daniel James Wood wrote this review. Tales Of A Librarian is the CliffsNotes version of Tori Amos’s decade-long career — a career that, in addition to being broadly represented on the album, is also depicted bravely and unflinchingly, warts and … Continue reading

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Darrell Scott’s Family Tree

Brendan Foreman wrote this review. Rarely does an album cover come as teeming with subtexts as that on Darrell Scott’s newest release Family Tree (his second after Aloha from Nashville released by Sugar Hill). A picture of his son in … Continue reading

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eastmountainsouth’s eastmountainsouth

The young folk-pop duo eastmountainsouth debuts as one of the first releases on the new DreamWorks label, signed by legendary musician Robbie Robertson and produced by legendary knobsman Mitchell Froom. Whether they’ll live up to the obviously high expectations placed … Continue reading

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The Brooklyn Cowboys’ Dodging Bullets

The Brooklyn Cowboys aren’t really what you’d call a supergroup. The Cowboys instead are mostly a bunch of established session players and side players who’ve gotten together to pool their considerable talents at making country-rock music. Among them, the Cowboys … Continue reading

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The Gibson Brothers’ Bona Fide

The Gibson Brothers, Eric and Leigh, hail from upstate New York, and they play a brand of bluegrass that’s influenced by New England folk music as much as by Appalachian string bands. They have top-notch picking (Leigh on guitar, Eric … Continue reading

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Ozzie Kotani’s To Honor A Queen: the Music of Lili’uokalani, and Led Kaapana & Bob Brozman’s In the Saddle

Legend has it that Spanish and Mexican cowboys brought acoustic guitars to the Hawaiian Islands in the 1800s. The native Hawaiians acquired some of these guitars and developed uniquely inventive techniques for playing them. Influenced by their own traditional chants … Continue reading

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Chuck Brodsky’s The Baseball Ballads

Jealous lovers with guns. Racism. Illicit drugs. The pain and confusion of growing up. And … spies? All of these, except perhaps the last, are typical fodder for American singer-songwriters. But this isn’t a typical record of folk songs. Troubador … Continue reading

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