Posts by Doug Collette

[rating=8.00] After the seminal alt-country/Americana band Uncle Tupelo dissolved following the ironically-titled (?) Anodyne of 1993, co-founder Jay Farrar (READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH JAY) established Son Volt as a means to continue  the pioneering of American roots music. The  well-prepared and stylish twentieth anniversary package of their debut album from Rhino Records, Trace, both extends […]

[rating=9.00] As the first notes of “Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks” pan back and forth in the stereo spectrum, this four CD set cull from the latest Grateful Dead archive gargantua, Thirty Trips Around the Sun, gets off to a rousing start. The lone studio track (appearing on a gold 7-in vinyl 45 in […]

Jay Farrar talks like his best songs sound; understated, wholly without ambivalence, with nary a wasted word. He did use the words “liberating” and “inspiring” more than once in this interview, but that should come as no surprise, because, since the demise of Uncle Tupelo, the seminal alt-country band Farrar co-led with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, […]

[rating=7.00] With #392: The EP Collection, Marshall Crenshaw proves he’s as pragmatic as he is self-effacing. The man who brought us an album entitled I’ve Suffered for My Art, Now It’s your Turn has collected on a single CD all the tracks released on vinyl EP’s between 2013 and 2015, plus two previously-unreleased bonus cuts […]

It’s a mistake to presume Dave Mason is simply trading on his early (aborted) membership in the hallowed British band by calling his current routing – 1967-2015 World Tour ‘Traffic Jam’. With shows like the one he played in Barre VT October 3rd, the guitarist/songwriter is not only doing justice to the legacy of that […]

[rating=8.00] In their decade together, The Wood Brothers have never made a bad record. Quite the contrary as each successive release has found them offering more finely-crafted material produced with a proportionately elevated sophistication. Paradise is another extension of that evolution. And not just in the studio environs either. The Wood Brothers’ live shows in […]

Compared to the splendidly comprehensive scholarship that is the four-CD hardbound set, Five Guys Walk Into a Bar from 2004,  the five-disc box You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything (1970-1975), (released at least in part to coincide with a benefit reunion of the surviving members) is a magnificent curio. The story of the […]

[rating=9.00] One of the great joys of a new Los Lobos album—and there are many—is the sense of anticipation for the unexpected. For the records from this great band from east LA take many forms including the narratives-in-song such as The Town and The City, a (relatively) straightforward collection of originals like This Time and. […]

Inclement weather has rarely plagued the Grand Point North Festival, but the precipitation that fell Sunday September 13 made it all the more fortunate that the bill contained some of the more arresting and varied artists on the roster. Mist was in the air from about 4pm on Saturday and the foreboding skies across Lake […]

Its seeds originally sown within the annual Lake Champlain Maritime Festival, Vermont’s own chanteuse of rock Grace Potter and her Grand Point North festival, now in its fifth year, has turned into one of the bonafide highlights of the city of Burlington’s vibrant music scene, so much so that it rivals in prominence its early […]