Modern folk rarely includes storytelling. Todd Snider is, therefore, an anachronism: a true bard who spends at least as much time contextualizing songs as he does playing them.
Originally from Oregon, Snider has accumulated barrels of yarns over 15-plus years on the road — such as becoming the unlikely frontman of a Memphis country band after [...]
How do you make the perfect pipe bomb?
Cash from strangers, and a little help from your friends. That’s how Phillips Saylor has gone about it, anyway.
When Saylor, frontman of the local alt-country band Stripmall Ballads, decided to mix his music with puppet theater, he tapped acquaintances at the Puppet Underground and friends and volunteers from [...]
The Tallest Man on Earth (real name Kristian Matsson) enters melancholy territory on his second LP, The Wild Hunt. The album is wildly imaginative even if it follows traditional folk standards; while the songs evoke images of red-wagon adventures (while evoking the soundtrack to Where the Wild Things Are), the lyrics are intimately painful. Mattson's [...]
It is an odd phenomenon that ex-punk rockers sometimes make great roots musicians. The Builders and the Butchers may not make pretty crossover folk pop like Ryan Adams or the Avett Brothers, but since frontman and erstwhile punk brat Ryan Sollee emerged from the cocoon of Portland’s folk scene, the Builders and the Butchers have [...]
Can you have too many portable pump organs?
For Ben Knox Miller and the Providence-based roots band The Low Anthem, the answer is no. “We use Craigslist,” Miller says. “Every time we go on tour, and we’re going to a city and maybe have a day off, we check to see if they have any portable [...]
The Hurt Locker, Jeff Bridges, Sandra Bullock, Christopher Waltz, Mo’Nique.
There, I just freed up your Sunday night. Wanna go see some excellent music instead?
Actually, if Bridges gets any Oscar love, it bodes well for the status of the guitar-toting troubadour in America’s cultural mythology—and, perhaps, for the prospects of Joe Pug and Justin Townes Earle. [...]
People who hear Dawes before learning anything about the band are generally surprised to learn they’re from Los Angeles. What, like L.A. never had cowboys?
The band’s m.o. is most certainly country, what with its easy stride and affinity for one-four-five “Hey brother, jump on that third when we hit the chorus” template. But there’s definitely [...]
Citay's third and newest album, Dream Get Together, marries two eras of dreamy, psychedelic rock—the early '70s and late '80s. More rock-fueled than the group's last release, Little Kingdom leaves no drum undrummed and no guitar unstrummed; the first track, "Careful With That Hat," containsa full seven minutes of jamming.
Though Citay began as a studio-only [...]
It was a good year to be young and bearded. A good decade, really. The aughts kicked off with the release of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, whose soundtrack opened the eyes of at least one generation to the pleasures of underproduced plucking and simple melodies; and ended with three harbingers of the so-called "indie [...]
If folk music’s prime currency is authenticity, Langhorne Slim might well earn some crooked eyebrows. Classically trained at the SUNY-Purchase conservatory, Sean Scolnik donned loafers and floppy hat and named himself after his hometown in the tradition of all those rail-hoppin’ ramblers who used to do that. The blogosphere gobbled up this aesthetic and and [...]
