Archive: 2020

EJ Marais has announced the release of his debut LP CUTS, out August 28th Via La Castanya. EJ Marais was born in Brighton and currently lives in Barcelona, where he has begun to carve out his career and the crew of collaborators that feature on CUTS. Basque saxophonist Haizea Martiartu appears as a Kenny G to EJ’s […]

This past May Cass McCombs released the new single “The Wine of Lebanon” in partnership with Universal Audio. Today he has shared a new video for the track. Filmed in January, prior to the current shelter-in-place orders, McCombs visited the resting places of the respected and influential artists Ritchie Valens, Etta James, Merle Haggard, Darby Crash and more. Watch […]

Jeff Tweedy has announced his inspiring new book, How To Write One Song, out October 13th via Dutton, and available for pre-order now. It’s the follow-up to Tweedy’s bestselling 2019 memoir, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), which was widely praised as an illuminating, moving “uniquely raw rock autobiography” (Rolling Stone). In How To Write One Song, Tweedy […]

For nearly two decades, there was no documentation that the final work recorded by folk-rock duo Billy Pilgrim existed. The master tapes burned in a fire in late 2000 at Nickel & Dime Studio near Decatur, Ga. One copy remained, and from it, about 500 CDs were pressed and sold at a 2001 performance at […]

‘Graphite or diamond’ (G.o.d) refers to two drastically different materials that are derived from the exact same element – carbon. Depending on how you look at it, some may say one has more value than the other. Solo artist and multi-instrumentalist Sylis Ander uses the juxtaposition between graphite and diamond to illustrate how human suffering […]

Two-time GRAMMY® Award-winner Fantastic Negrito is back with his third album, Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? As we’ve heard from the genre-fusing artist, he continues to fuse elements of hip-hop, R&B, funk, soul, and rock ‘n roll into his signature style. Inspired by and reminiscent of the socio-political albums coming from black America in […]

Just two weeks ago we heard Matt Rollings’ amazing keyboard work on Mary Chapin Carpenter’s new release, The Dirt and the Stars. Now the Grammy-winning producer and pianist issues Matt Rollings Mosaic, his first album in 30 years with a mind-blowing list of guests that reads like a lineup for the Americana Music Awards., representative […]

For a lot of people, banjo music invokes a response similar to Homer Simpson when he shouted, “Aaah! Hillbillies!” Granted, a lot of banjo music like bluegrass originated in the hills. But there is far more to bluegrass and banjo music than a bunch of guys in dirty overalls, as Gangstagrass proves.  Gangstagrass is a […]

Alison Mosshart, frontwoman of The Kills and The Dead Weather has a new multimedia project. A photo/art collection titled Car Ma which showcases her fascination with muscle cars, tire tracks and Americana, connected to the spoken word album Sound Wheel which takes snippets of Mosshart’s poetic thoughts from the book and augments them with odd […]

In these times of quarantines, face masks and no concerts, it’s wonderful to see so many musicians of every genre finding ways to share music with those of us missing it. If they’re not doing virtual performances from their living rooms, they’re digging through their archives for something “new” fans might enjoy hearing. For guitarist […]

In Suds & Sounds we turn the spotlight on breweries, focusing on the role of music in that brewery’s history, packaging, tastes, and in its city or town as a whole. The idea is to get beer and music lovers to connect with a side of the brewery that may often go overlooked, but one that we think […]

Metallica has confirmed its return to the stage for the first time since the September 2019 S&M2 concerts that opened Chase Center in San Francisco. Metallica will be the first rock band to be featured in the Encore Drive-In Nights series, with a full set showing August 29 at hundreds of drive-in and outdoor theaters […]

On their web site, the Gasoline Lollipops slot themselves among the alt-country crowd, and the rock crowd, AND the Americana crowd. It’s not that they can’t make up their minds, it’s that they don’t concern themselves with being pigeonholed, so you needn’t either. “For so long I thought we had to have a genre,” says […]

Singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards has such a steep career trajectory that she fell into that unenviable category of artists where producers, industry types and others were telling her how she should sound, and what she should be doing next. It all became too heavy a burden to bear so she dropped out, choosing to run her […]

It’s not that guitarist Bill Frisell doesn’t often play with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston; he’s just never enlisted the two of them for a trio album. Sometimes it takes a while. While pianists Chick Corea and McCoy Tyner and fellow guitarist John Scofield adopted the trio format early in their discography, Duke […]

It’s been three years since Washed Out’s last release Mister Mellow showed fans a slightly different approach to the Chillwave sound. On Mister Mellow, Ernest Greene experimented more with sounds that touched on psychedelia and beats that bordered on hip-hop. With the release of his new album Purple Noon (Sub Pop), Greene brings the sound […]