Before they released “Wichita Lineman,” the greatest unfinished song of all time, Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb lived surprisingly parallel lives.
country music
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, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
‘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.
Posted inArts & Culture, Editor's Pick, 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.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
The Cowboy Image and the Growth of Western Music
How did cowboy hats and boots become the visual iconography of American rural music?
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Nonfiction, Story
The Blue Ridge Country King
No one would have thought that Highland Ridge, Virginia was the center of anything. Then Jim McCoy’s honky-tonk came along.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes
When Life Imitates Country Music
“The trills in his notes sputter and lift. He sounds like an animal in trouble. Like a lounge singer who’s lost his mind.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Honky-Tonk Man
“I called him Mr. Chuck. We did what families do: We carefully observed the borders of conversational terrain. The election of Obama, no. The best strategy for grilling buffalo burgers, yes.”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Surveying Sin in American Music
What a blast! But there’s danger in the air─someone on the dark floor’s got a gun, and everyone “does his best to act just right, ’cause it’s gonna be a funeral if you start a fight.” In [Billy] Hughes’s terms, folks “struggle and they shuffle” until the sun comes up, delicate diction for a Saturday […]