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The new album from Jason Isbell and his backing band will hit stores on Feb. 17^th. This new offering has his fans clamoring for more of his introspective, yet distinctly Southern lyrics and exquisite instrumentation that was introduced on 2007’s “Sirens Of The Ditch”. Isbell first gained notoriety when he joined the Drive By Truckers after they released “Southern Rock Opera”, an album devoted to all things Alabama. “Opera” was the album that helped to break the Truckers to a wider audience.  During that tour, and on subsequent albums until he left the band, Jason contributed to the songwriting...

By larry may

Americans are fanatic about going to a small bar or pub to see a talented singer songwriter that embodies all they love about their local scene: cheap beer, greasy cuisine, and an earnest musician that helps them to forget their lives for a couple of hours while being transported by lyrics soaked in imagery, guitars that look like roadkill, and a weathered voice to power it all.  Unfortunately, when the beer is gone, and the road crews start breaking down, the artist can be forgotten by the spent crowd.  Let’s hope this is not...

Glen Phillips has fans that don’t know they are fans. His work with Toad the Wet Sprocket still inspires musicians to pick up instruments and for fans to keep coming back to treasured pieces of their younger lives. Toad’s breakup came in 1998 amid some dissension with the members and rumor has it, their label. Phillips has issued several solo records in the past decade, and has stayed on the road supporting those songs. Starting with Mutual Admiration Society, a bluegrass trio with Sean and Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek, he began warming up to the idea of the support...

A quick scan of your radio dial would reveal there is a very real dearth of Southern guitar driven bands catching airplay.  That could all change with the hard work being turned in by the members of Kentucky’s Black Stone Cherry.  Their second release, ”Folklore and Superstition” is presently climbing the sales charts.  Before a show in Texas, I called guitarist Ben Wells, and tried to get a sense of the band.

Q.  Where did you grow up?

A.  I grew up in a small Kentucky town, Glasgow. It’s a small deal, everybody knows everybody.  It’s a dry county, no...

By larry may

A typical music fan thinks that they know all there is to know about their hero’s lives. This is part of the allure of being a fan, the intense need to connect to someone that has touched so many lives in profound ways. More of the mystical figures in rock leave behind little hard fact, and the fans and pundits replace truisms with speculation, or more commonly, vicious fabrication. In order to make a legend worthy of being legendary, the harder the life lived, the more fascinating the figure they become.  Dweezil Zappa, the...