Interviews
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Squared Roots: Jill Andrews x Joni Mitchell
Pretty much every singer/songwriter today counts Joni Mitchell among their heroes. If they don\’t, they should. From her 1968 debut to her 2007 finale, Mitchell\’s talent has been both steadfast and elusive — remaining constant even as it evolved. Her early records (Blue, Clouds, Ladies of the Canyon, Court & Spark) showcased a craft so fully…
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Five Questions: Shawn Mullins
Before — and after — Shawn Mullins was a pop star in the late \’90s, he was a songwriter of both substance and style. While his early Big Blue Sky release shared a folky kinship with Shawn Colvin, some of his later records were more in step with the classic country of Kris Kristofferson. On…
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Laying It All on the Line: An Interview with David Ramirez
With his stunning new album, Fables, singer/songwriter David Ramirez breaks a three-year hiatus that was not of his choosing. He\’d been on the road pretty consistently for years — traveling some 260,000 miles on his own — when a writer\’s block crashed the system. Like all the finest poets and philosophers before him, Ramirez dove…
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The Truth of Absolutes: An Interview with Son Little
Son Little (aka Aaron Earl Livingston) is one of those artists who transcend time, place, and genre. That makes his music hard to define, though not hard to appreciate … much like the artist who makes it. Livingston was born in Los Angeles, but grew up on the East Coast — somewhere between New York,…
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Five Questions: Brooke Annibale
Though singer/songwriter Brooke Annibale hails from Pittsburgh, she did a tour of duty in Nashville before returning home last year. Those contrasting environs are both present in her work. Indeed, she\’s both a little bit country and a little bit rock \’n\’ roll, to borrow the old Osmond analysis. Her new album, The Simple Fear,…
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Five Questions: Tall Heights
Round about five years ago, Paul Wright and Tim Harrington started busking on the streets of Boston playing cello and guitar, and singing harmonies to any and all who would listen. Since then, they\’ve become Tall Heights, evolving their sound as they logged the miles. Their new release — Holding On, Holding Out — is…
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From Memphis to Metal: Lucero Covers a Lot of Ground
Lucero is one of those bands that has been around so long, pretty much everyone\’s been a fan at one point or another. And, if not, the new album might just change that. With its acoustic underpinnings, All a Man Should Do is the country-rock outfit\’s most mellow offering to date … though it still…
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Squared Roots: Rhiannon Giddens x Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton turns 70 in January. And, while that might seem impossible, it takes that span of time to accomplish all that she has over the course of her various careers as a songwriter, a singer, an actress, and a businesswoman. Rising out of the ashes of unspeakable poverty in east Tennessee, Parton blazed a…
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Five Questions: Gretchen Peters
Singer/songwriter Gretchen Peters has had quite a year. Following the universally praised release of Blackbirds in February, she has toured the U.S. and abroad almost non-stop — with another 2016 tour slated to mark the 20th anniversary of her debut album, The Secret of Life. In the here and now, as 2015 tip-toes toward a…
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The Pursuit of Goodness: An Interview with Patty Griffin
“Diamonds, roses, I need Moses to cross this sea of loneliness, part this Red River of pain.” Those were the pleading and plaintive first words that most of us heard from singer/songwriter Patty Griffin\’s debut album, Living with Ghosts. It was a sparse and heartbreaking introduction to an artist who has gone on to become…