Country Archive

Lampedusa Concert for Refugees: Emmylou Harris, Robert Plant, Joan Baez, Steve Earle, Buddy Miller and the Milk Carton Kids - Lampedusa: for readers, the name of the author of The Leopard. Lampedusa: for tourists and beach-lovers, the largest of the Italian Pelagie Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. Lampedusa: for refugees, an

Leo Kottke - Videos Little Martha Medley Leo Kottke says he loves the guitar because he could make a beautiful sound from one simply by dropping it on the floor. And he does not mean a custom-made

Lori McKenna: Buy This Town - That my life is good isn’t making me happy these days. Not when so many are miserable. And when so many are committed to making sure they stay miserable. “The stupid.

Lori McKenna: Unglamorous - There are few stages more glamorous than the Allen Room of the Time Warner Center, with musicians performing in front of a floor-to-ceiling, 50-by-90-foot window wall. And

Marty Stuart: This One’s Gonna Hurt You - The ultimate test of country music is how it sounds when you're drunk. Not elite-drunk, sipping single malt in your library with super technology giving you every bit of production value.

Mary Chapin Carpenter: The Age of Miracles - “We’ve got two lives, one we’re given, the other one we make,” Mary Chapin Carpenter sang on Come On Come On, her 1992 breakthrough album. For her, that estimate was too

Mary Chapin Carpenter: The Things That We Are Made Of - “The Things That We Are Made Of” looks like what you’d expect from one of the few singer-songwriters who can legitimately be described as an artist. There’s the star producer:

Mary Gauthier: The Foundling - I had no desire to talk to Mary Gauthier. Reasons? Try these: Born to an unmarried woman in New Orleans, she was adopted by an alcoholic father and a depressed mother,

Pay the Devil - Pay the Devil Van Morrison

Red Dirt Girl - She's made eight gold albums and three platinum albums, had five #1 hits, won nine Grammy awards --- and yet there are Americans who love music who have never heard Emmylou Harris. Or if

Rodney Crowell - Sex & Gasoline was nominated for a Grammy. Yawn. Given how many classic songs Rodney Crowell has written in his three-decade career, it would be surprising if he released

Rosanne Cash - It starts with Johnny Cash's voice: "Rosanne, c'mon." And then these lyrics: "It was a black Cadillac/that drove you away." The black keeps coming. "It was a black Cadillac/like you

Steve Earle: Guitar Town - Thanks to the tabloid press, even people who have never heard Steve Earle's music know who he is --- the guy who wrote that anti-American song about that punk kid

Steve Earle: The Low Highway - The head of a New York-based cultural organization recently asked me to suggest a musician who might perform a few songs at its annual benefit. I recommended Steve Earle. For several reasons.

Sturgill Simpson - You don’t know Sturgill Simpson? No better way than this: the aptly named “Brace for Impact (Live a Little).” The lyrics: One day you wake up And this life will be over Every party

The Byrds: Sweetheart of the Rodeo - 600 of the 16,592 American servicemen killed in Vietnam in 1968 died that July. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were only recently murdered. In late August, at the Democratic

The Dreaming Fields - A disc jockey once explained to a journalist why his country music station didn’t play Emmylou Harris. It wasn’t that she’d moved beyond country into some other category. It was

Tift Merritt - "Another Country” sounded familiar, but I just couldn't place where I'd heard it before. A clear-voiced singer, sensitive lyrics, music that alternately chugged and soared. Joni Mitchell?

Tift Merritt: Stitch of the World - In another century, a very young singer wrote a song called “Bramble Rose.” It put her on the map of singer-songwriters who happen to be women: Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Raitt,