Tag Archives: Americana music

Eli West’s Tapered Point of Stone

The late great John Hartford’s legacy continues to resonate down the generations of American roots music. Washington State’s Eli West points to Hartford’s example of making collaborative music in his own fine new album Tapered Point of Stone. The music … Continue reading

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Melissa Carper’s Daddy’s Country Gold

Melissa Carper grew up listening to classic country music – Hank, Patsy, Johnny, Kitty, Loretta and the like – and the past few years she’s been making various kinds of Americana music herself. She and her girlfriend, fiddler Rebecca Patek, … Continue reading

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Vivian Leva & Riley Calcagno’s Vivian Leva & Riley Calcagno

Vivian Leva grew up in rural Appalachia outside Lexington, Virginia, but now the daughter of celebrated old-time musicians lives in Portland, Oregon, where she and her partner Riley Calcagno now live and make music. I predicted greater things coming on … Continue reading

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Yom’s Songs for the Old Man

I’m ambivalent about the way my music streaming service uses an algorithm to guess what kind of music I might like to hear next, but sometimes it comes up with a real winner. When it served up a track by … Continue reading

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Ryan Dugré’s Three Rivers

Brooklyn guitarist Ryan Dugré did an exercise in which he wrote a song a day in January 2019, as a way to move himself out of his usual songwriting comfort zone. The idea was to just get something down, an … Continue reading

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The Dolly Ranchers’ Escape Artist

Vocal harmony has always played a leading role in country music. Today’s alternative  country and country folk music continues to draw on that tradition, as we see in this recording from The Dolly Ranchers. This Santa Fe, New Mexico based … Continue reading

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Magnolia Sisters’ Après Faire le Boogie Woogie

On their third CD, Après Faire le Boogie Woogie, Louisiana’s Magnolia Sisters have cooked up a winner that pays tribute to their Cajun and Creole musical roots with an attitude that’s thoroughly modern. The three original Sisters, Ann Savoy, Jane … Continue reading

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Little Pink’s 12 Birds and Mary Prankster’s Tell Your Friends

Little Pink and Mary Prankster hail from the neighboring cities of Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Md., respectively. Both fall loosely into the alternative country camp, though at different ends of the spectrum, and both closed out 2002 with strong, if … Continue reading

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Justin Moses’ Fall Like Rain

Highly respected bluegrass picker Justin Moses steps into the limelight with his first full-length project under his own name, and Fall Like Rain is an auspicious debut. Moses is a prodigious talent in many, many ways: he can play seemingly … Continue reading

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Taco Tapes’ Trad is Rad

We all have our own ways of coping with the isolation, privation and anxiety of this extraordinary year-plus of pandemic and political upheaval. One thing I’m seeing a lot of is a return to the comfort of our musical roots. … Continue reading

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