London-born, Georgia-dwelling Holly Golightly (not a pseudonym—her mother was a Breakfast at Tiffany’s fan) has made some 30 albums in various incarnations. No Help Coming is the fourth with her strychnine-voiced, multi-instrumentalist Texas-bred partner known ...

In the 1970s, when musicians mining America’s rich musical history were a much rarer breed, Ry Cooder was a pivotal figure. If initially I was wary of artists plunging into roots music from bygone days, ...

Super groups are a stock-in-trade in the rock world but seldom live up to their billing. That’s the case with Superheavy. Producer and ex-Eurhythmic Dave Stewart built this East meets West band in 2009 around ...

John Hiatt’s songs are a rich tapestry of stories and moods, alternately tough and tender. The opening track, “Damn This Town,” is a gritty tale of a lost soul trapped by the circumstances of birth ...

Steve Cropper, Grammy-nominated Rock Hall of Fame guitarist, recorded Dedicated as a heartfelt tribute to fellow guitarist Lowman “Pete” Pauling and his pioneering 50s R&B group, The 5 Royales. Cropper was the house guitarist of ...

Its heyday had about the lifespan of a mayfly but rockabilly has had a habit of cropping up in slightly altered form throughout every rock ’n’ roll era. Ireland’s fetching cool kitty Imelda May Higham ...

Born to bluegrass (he played mandolin on stage with Bill Monroe at the age of six and was in Ralph Stanley’s band in his mid-teens), Ricky Skaggs went mainstream country in the 80s and became ...

Hailing from Kansas City, 23-year-old Samantha Fish is the latest in an emerging generation of young female blues singers- songwriters-guitarists who learned their blues from Muddy Waters and Stevie Ray Vaughan and their songwriting angles ...

There’s almost nothing in the music of Pentangle, Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, or any of the members of those groups that wasn’t directly inspired by one larger-than-life guitarist named Davy Graham. As the young man ...

Jennifer Warnes is one of the most underrated pop singers of her generation. Her albums, though few and far between, brim with melody and craft—and lyrics both intelligent and emotionally weighted. The Well was originally ...

Eight years in the making and definitely worth the wait, this latest roots music collaboration from singer/songwriter Gillian Welch and guitarist David Rawlings uses spare vocal harmonies and simple folk instrumentation (guitar, banjo, and harmonica) ...

Whatever you want to call the music that people like Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile, Bela Fleck, Mark O’Connor, and Yo-Yo Ma have been recording the past decade, it’s taken a hard left into composer Bela ...

Since abandoning his hit-making stint as a mainstream country romantic balladeer in 1989, Michael Martin Murphey has fashioned a productive if unlikely career singing western music. Now he’s up to six volumes of Cowboy Songs, ...

On her stomping “Soulful Dress,” Maria Muldaur sings that ”I’ll be at my best when I put on my soulful dress.” Her enticing, smoky-voiced boast about how appealing she is in a certain figure-flattering garment ...

This is a dream project: 12 previously unreleased lyrics by country legend Hank Williams set to music by 13 recording artists and supervised by Bob Dylan. It seems that when Hank died in the back ...