Sure, there's a time for heartbreaking ballads, and there's a time for searing punk anthems, but there's also a time for simply nice music. While you might like to imagine your life filled with constant excitement and Chuck Norris-worthy badassery, truthfully, you've still got to get your dishes done, do the laundry, and make dinner. [...]

With the summer wind-down in progress, it's time to finish off the last of those Coronas in the back of the fridge to make room for darker beer. Maybe it's just the years I've spent in Virginia, or maybe it was the time I spent touring with this guy, but for me, nothing pairs better [...]

The National, in Richmond, is a decorous little theater with a semiformal air. But on Tuesday night, when Steve Earle played a set of mostly Townes Van Zandt covers from his new tribute album, peppered with anecdotes from his 25-year friendship with its eponymous hero, the venue assumed the close familiarity of a living room. [...]

Country musician Steve Earle once famously pronounced Townes Van Zandt "the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that." So how come the only people who ever give Townes his propers are his contemporaries and the odd independent filmmaker? Maybe because even [...]