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Infinite and Unforeseen: A Conversation with Sera Cahoone
There often seem to be seasons in life, when one thing after another takes our breath away — and not always in a pleasant way. Singer/songwriter Sera Cahoone has been experiencing just such a time for the past few years. From losing her cousin in 2014 to getting engaged in 2015 to breaking that off…
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Caroline Spence: Spades & Roses
When you think about it, songwriters do an amazing thing. Taking a limited number of notes and a limited number of words, they craft infinite expressions of emotion. They turn the mundane into the sacred, the personal into the universal. It\’s a wonder, really, that there are so many different ways to say — or…
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Peter Bradley Adams: A Face Like Mine
No matter the form, when it comes to art, there are a number of different tacks to take. Some artists continually push their work across new horizons. Neil Young, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Joni Mitchell come to mind, in that regard. Others — Claude Monet, Jason Isbell, and Bonnie Raitt, among them — stand a…
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Squared Roots: Tift Merritt x Linda Ronstadt
In the world of folk-rock, a few artists reap the lion\’s share of mentions, with Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Jackson Browne, among them. One of the great voices of the genre, though, is Linda Ronstadt. As a singer and song collector, she is all but unrivaled — a point most of her peers would…
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Rhiannon Giddens: Freedom Highway
Sometimes, a voice comes along at the exact moment in history that it very much needs to be heard. Though Rhiannon Giddens first stepped up to the mic as part of the Sankofa Strings and Carolina Chocolate Drops in 2005, it\’s on her truly stunning new album, Freedom Highway, that she truly finds her voice…
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Squared Roots: Johnnyswim x Johnny Cash
Through wars with authority and battles with addiction, Johnny Cash carved out a place in musical history for himself that is the stuff of legends. The rebellion and redemption, as well as the humor and humility, that run through his songs resonated — and still resonate — with fans around the world who have bought…
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Squared Roots: Scott Biram x Lead Belly
Though Lead Belly was merely a man, his story reads like the stuff of legends. He had multiple encounters with the law, was sentenced to a chain gang, escaped, killed a relative, and got thrown back in the hoosegow, earned himself a pardon because the governor was a fan. But then he stabbed someone else…
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Squared Roots: Jane Siberry x Leonard Cohen
True songwriting heroes are a rare breed and, in roots music, a few names take up more space than all the others combined — names like Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Townes Van Zandt, Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and John Prine. For artists on the darker end of the spectrum, from Jeff Buckley to…
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Melissa Etheridge: Still Brave, Not So Crazy
“If you look back to history, you\’ll see they all came from the same place,” Melissa Etheridge says, explaining the roots of American music\’s myriad genres. “They all came from the same musical movement in the South, from Appalachian music to the blues coming out of the freed slaves in the early 19th century, and…
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Chely Wright: From the Heart
The 2010s have been a big dang deal in the life of Chely Wright. She kicked off the decade by coming out in a very public way with a huge media blitz supporting an autobiography (Like Me) and an album (Lifted Off the Ground), as well as the related LikeMe Foundation. Over the next few…