General

Without question, the best guitarist I ever witnessed in person was Danny Gatton. And I’ve seen some great ones. Jeff Beck and Stevie Ray Vaughan, together in “The Fire Meets the Fury” tour of [...]

Call it “supper club blues” if you want. Just don’t call it second-rate. Charles Brown is one of those artists who helps make the case that blues is a diverse art form – with the opposite end of [...]

Kevin and Tim tag-team on this piece about an American classic that still gets a lot of action some 50 years after it first hit the scene. It can sneak up on you: that warm, soothing yet crunchy [...]

Article first published as Book Review: Composed: A Memoir by Rosanne Cash on Blogcritics. Our last post on living, breathing artists led me to another crisis in confidence. Just what is this [...]

Those of you who’ve stuck with us over the past year might remember a post I wrote a while back called “Tim’s Top Six.” It was a less-than-subtle attempt to prove that I pay attention to music [...]

A 56-year-old rockabilly legend teams up with some hungry young hotshots… throws them 16 hard-bitten songs that are ready to burn… and then lets it rip in an old-school analog studio, where [...]

At what point did we know that the box set was deceased? Was it when the German Bear Family label released a 12-CD collection (with hardcover book) of Pat Boone’s complete ‘50s recordings? Or [...]

Remember the box set? Actually, in a year or two we might be asking ourselves, remember compact discs? I came fairly late to the CD party – which is probably a good thing, because a research team [...]

Ever find yourself on a long drive in the middle of the night, searching for those perfect songs to keep you awake but not wired? There I was, drinking a mocha-infused Starbucks cocktail, almost [...]

Our new Fly Fishing Correspondent, Kevin Swan, reels in some of his favorite Ry Cooder moments from the “pre-Buena Vista Social Club” era: When Rolling Stone magazine published their [...]

Alright, guitar fans. I know all of you have your favorite examples of six-string nirvana – Derek & the Dominos, The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s first album, [...]

Sunday morning – a time of worship. And for me, that worship involves a cup of joe, the Sunday Times, and a playlist of soul-soothing music. (Hey, I did 12 years of hard time at parochial [...]

Here’s an album that came and went a couple of years ago, but I keep getting sucked back into its strange vortex. It answers the question, what happens when a fairly twisted French dude records a [...]

I have more than 21,000 songs on my iPod. And I wrap tin foil around my head to keep out the gamma rays. Do you think less of me? I’m referring to the iPod, of course. Normal people would find [...]

Nephew Dan is a busy man – touring the world and all – but he wanted us to check out this awesome clip of Otis Rush in his prime, playing in front of a polite but reverent audience [...]

I’ve played blues harp for years… not on the same level as, say, Charlie Musselwhite, but I can get the attention of a bar full of drunks. One band I played in never seemed to make it [...]

RCR correspondent, guitarist, plumber and Numbers runner Kevin Swan returns with a tribute to the blues legend who did not play no rock and roll, Mississippi Fred McDowell… Alan Lomax [...]

The recent reissue of the Rolling Stones’ classic “Exile on Main St.” made me nostalgic for the days when a new Stones album was something worth arguing about… Beatles or Stones? It’s one of [...]

Brother James takes us to the Dominican Republic – home of the “ripped parrot,” flame-throwing accordionists and the well-greased palm at customs. I will never forget the blast of [...]

I come from a big family of harmony singers. Myself, I can barely sing in unison… with Autotune. When my sister Caroline and I accidentally ended up at the same college for a year, she sat [...]

“This is the story of a love affair between a man and a woman whose backgrounds and experiences, whose cultures and class were so different, that the chances of them even meeting were extremely [...]