“Sometimes all we can do is howl.”
country music
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Black Vanguard in White Utopias
“Country music issues a promissory note to its white listeners. The promise is that no matter how much the world around them may be changing, a country radio station or concert will be a safe space for white sentimentality.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Dolly Moment
“Only a society that willfully believes itself ‘post-racist’ could produce such a queen.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Featured, Highlight, Quote Posts, Quotes
Why Mother Maybelle Carter’s Work Was Never Done
“In a few years’ time, however, she became a different kind of working woman: a musician by trade and one of the hardest working women in country music.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Reading List
Cryin’, Dyin’, or Goin’ Somewhere: A Country Music Reading List
Although the sound of the music has changed, country’s themes have endured.
Posted inArts & Culture, Featured, Highlight, History, Quotes
If You Love the Music of the Carter Family, Thank Leslie Riddle
“First, you exclude black people from the festivals. Then write them out by not recording them. And pretty soon, ‘you have this manufactured image of country music being white and being poor.'”
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Nonfiction, Story
The Story of Country Music’s Great Songwriting Duo
Before they released “Wichita Lineman,” the greatest unfinished song of all time, Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb lived surprisingly parallel lives.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Story
Weird in the Daylight
The story of Sadlack’s Heroes, the Raleigh dive bar that helped galvanize the alternative country scene in the 1990s.
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘Country Music … Was Anything BUT Pure’: An Interview with Bill Malone and Tracey Laird
The co-authors of ‘Country Music USA’ – a revised edition of the genre’s definitive history – talk with music writer Will Hermes about the music’s African-American tributaries, its unpredictable politics, country radio’s woman problem, and working on Ken Burns’ forthcoming doc.
Posted inArts & Culture, Editor's Pick, Featured, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews
‘Country Music … Was Anything BUT Pure’: An Interview with Bill Malone and Tracey Laird
The co-authors of ‘Country Music USA’ – a revised edition of the genre’s definitive history – talk about the music’s African-American tributaries, its unpredictable politics, country radio’s woman problem, and working on Ken Burns’ forthcoming doc.