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The Weepies Keep It Simple with a "Crooked Smile"
Even though they\’ve not been touring at all, the past few years have been full to overflowing for the Weepies — a new baby and a battle with breast cancer kept them off the road. Somewhere between going through all of that and coming out the other side, the husband-wife duo of Deb Talan and…
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Blazing Strange Trails: An Interview with Lord Huron's Ben Schneider
On Lord Huron\’s 2012 album, Lonesome Dreams, frontman/songwriter Ben Schneider created a whole series of stories based on the fake Western fiction of George Ranger Johnson. His hero tumbled and tootled through windswept tales, searching high and low for a once-lost love. For the follow-up, the just-released Strange Trails, Schneider opened things up a bit,…
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The Bangles Get Back to Their Garage Pop Roots at City Winery
With a “1-2-3-4” click in from drummer Debbi Peterson, the Bangles rocked the pants off City Winery last night in their first Nashville appearance since 1988, and the first of this two-show stand. The group recently released their first EP and a batch of early archive pieces as Ladies and Gentlemen… the Bangles. To match…
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Squared Roots: Will Hoge x Ray Charles
Inspiring folks from Elvis Presley to Roger Waters to Billy Joel, Ray Charles was a musical force to be reckoned with. He\’s in the Playboy Hall of Fame, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Georgia State Music Hall of Fame, the National Black Sports & Entertainment Hall of Fame … really, he\’s in…
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As Decidedly Country as Country Gets: Lee Ann Womack at City Winery
Reaching all the way back to 1997 to start her show with “Never Again, Again,” Lee Ann Womack set the evening\’s tone with a cut that\’s about as decidedly country as country gets… which is not to say that she didn\’t plan on mixing it up a little. Second song out of the gate and…
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The Artistry of Audacity: An Interview with the War on Drugs’ Dave Hartley
The War on Drugs had a big year last year. Marijuana legalization jokes aside, the band\’s album, Lost in a Dream, made — or topped — more than a few critics\’ lists. For an album that documented in song the emotional turmoil and torment that frontman/songwriter Adam Granduciel had been going through, that\’s no small…
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Five Questions: James McMurtry
Somewhere between Texas, Virginia, Arizona, and Alaska — that\’s where James McMurtry looked for himself and his voice as an aspiring young singer/songwriter. By the time his 1989 debut, Too Long in the Wasteland, came to pass, he\’d found both and was back in Texas where it all began. Since then, McMurtry has released another…
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The Hard-Won Happiness of Brandi Carlile
While it\’s true that girls with guitars are far from an endangered species, every now and then, one comes along that is truly special. That happened in 2005, when Brandi Carlile announced her arrival with an eponymous debut. Carlile is the whole package — a singer, a songwriter, an entertainer, an activist, and, yes, a…
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Lord Huron: Strange Trails
On the new Strange Trails, Lord Huron picks up right where Lonesome Dreams left off… with impossibly catchy melodies, emphatically fanciful lyrics, and intriguingly hazy production. Lord Huron has a very specific, radio-ready sound that emerges somewhere between the crisp acoustic guitars and Ben Schneider\’s layered vocals, and which owes a solid debt to My…
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Nothing to Prove: An Interview with alt-J’s Gus Unger-Hamilton
a group of English and fine arts students at Leeds University came together to form an art-rock, for lack of a better genre descriptor, band. When they graduated, the guys (Gwil Sainsbury, Joe Newman, Thom Green, and Gus Unger-Hamilton) moved to Cambridge and really got down to it, signing with Infectious Records and releasing an…