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Five Questions: Pokey LaFarge
Pokey LaFarge may have been a slow kid, but he sure is a quick study. Growing up in Normal, Illinois, he found inspiration in guys like John Steinbeck, Muddy Waters, Ernest Hemingway, Willie Dixon, Jack Kerouac , and Bill Monroe. After high school, the aspiring songwriter hitchhiked his way around the country. Add all that…
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It's All Good for Kate Pierson
It\’s hard to believe that the B-52s will mark their 40th anniversary next year. With one of the most recognizable voices in any generation floating atop some of the most classic novelty songs in all of music, one of the band\’s founding members, Kate Pierson, long ago carved out her place in the pop pantheon.…
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Best Round Ever: Brandy Clark, Shane McAnally, and Josh Osborne at Tin Pan South
In Nashville, there are great songwriters and big hitmakers. In the space where those two populations overlap, that\’s where you\’ll find Brandy Clark, Shane McAnally, and Josh Osborne. And what an absolute pleasure it was to spend a Tin Pan South evening with them at 3rd & Lindsley, a show that Clark dubbed Two Gays…
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Laura Marling: Short Movie
Laura Marling, the British songstress who released four records in five years, returns with her fifth, Short Movie, later this month. After that flurry of activity, Marling spent a couple of years in a self-imposed exile in Los Angeles surrounded by people who made art for art\’s sake and nothing more. The experience recalibrated and renewed her…
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One Eye Forward, One Eye Back: An Interview with Andrew Combs
Maybe there\’s something in the water in Nashville — or, more likely, in the draft beer at the Red Door Saloon — but quite a few young artists are making records that recall a bygone era, a time when great songwriters doubled as great artists. Forty-something years ago, folks like Paul Simon, Mickey Newbury, Jim…
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From Day Drunks to Diehards, Cory Branan Makes His Way
In alt-country circles, singer-songwriter Cory Branan is as respected as they come — even outside the city limits of Nashville. Like most budding Southern musicians, the Mississippi native made his way to Tennessee and, eventually, carved out a place for himself in the broad country music scene. But in his younger years, he was playing…
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Five Questions: Joe Pug
Though he hails from Maryland, singer/songwriter Joe Pug has bounced from Chicago to Nashville to Austin in his search for a place in the world. But that\’s just geography. Pug, long ago, found where he fits artistically, and it\’s somewhere down the line from Bob Dylan, John Prine, Steve Earle, and John Hiatt. Like those…
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Matthew Perryman Jones at City Winery
City Winery (in Nashville and elsewhere) is set up and sold as a listening room. And, when the calendar is full of acoustic singer/songwriters and small jazz ensembles, that makes absolute sense. But, sometimes, a more emboldened band or artist makes it to the City Winery stage, only to fall prey to the room\’s low-key…
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Squared Roots: Gretchen Peters x Mickey Newbury
In the early 1960s, when Mickey Newbury returned home from three years of Air Force duty, he lived and traveled the Southland in a \’54 Pontiac, chasing his songwriter\’s dream. He would play gigs, when he wasn\’t working on a shrimp boat, and made his way to Nashville, where he signed his first publishing contract…
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Five Questions: Pine Hill Project
Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Shindell have both enjoyed lengthy, prolific, and acclaimed careers in the singer/songwriter world. Even as solo artists, though, they shared an artistic kinship that neither could deny… nor could their fans. So, when the two finally realized their long-time dream of collaborating as a duo, the Pine Hill Project was born.…