Bruce Sylvester produces "Troubadour," a weekly roots-music program on WMBR-FM (Cambridge, MA) and www.wmbr.org. His travels have included Turkey, Morocco, most recently Prague and, numerous times, Spain. Shakespeare, Margaret Atwood, Zora Neale Hurston, Lars Saabye Christensen and Steve Earle are among his favorite authors.
TENNESSEE ERNIE FORD Portrait of an American Singer Bear Family 17332 www.bear-family.com Have you ever felt like – to paraphrase “Sixteen Tons” – you owed your soul to the company store? October 17th marks … Continue reading →
STEVE EARLE and THE DUKES Terraplane New West 6329 www.newwestrecords.com As a teenager in Texas, Steve Earle heard plenty of blues … though, until now, the blues had usually been less in his own … Continue reading →
Bob Dylan Shadows In The Night Columbia 88875057962 www.columbiarecords.com I once asked the late Mimi Baez Farińa what Bob Dylan is like as a person. She replied that she didn’t know because she hadn’t … Continue reading →
Gary B. Reid The Music of the Stanley Brothers University of Illinois Press 978-0-252-08033-3 www.press.uillinois.edu From the Blue Sky Boys and Monroe Brothers down through the Everlys, brother duets have created some of country … Continue reading →
HowellDevine Modern Sounds of Ancient Juju Arhoolie 550 www.arhoolie.com In 2013, HowellDevine’s delightful Jumps, Boogies & Wobbles became the first new blues album that the roots-music devotees at Chris Strachwitz’s Arhoolie Records had released … Continue reading →
LUCINDA WILLIAMS Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone Highway 20 www.lucindawilliams.com After Lucinda’s decades of songs of dead-end men, some fans feared that a good marriage would smooth her bone-lean writing’s jagged … Continue reading →
VARIOUS ARTISTS We Are The Music Makers!: Preserving the Soul of America’s Music Music Maker Relief Foundation www.musicmaker.org Founded in 1984, the North Carolina-based Music Maker Relief Foundation – led by Tim and Denise Duffy … Continue reading →
Whiskey Shivers Whiskey Shivers CBM 001 www.whiskeyshivers.com Long ago, bluegrass was dubbed folk music in overdrive. Decades later, punk’s faster-and-louder ethos experienced a faster/who-needs-louder breakaway as a new generation pogoed to fiddle breakdowns and … Continue reading →
Bob Dylan and The Band The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11 Columbia Legacy 888750 161222 www.legacyrecordings.com A legend in their time, Bob Dylan’s basement tapes were informal sessions recorded on three … Continue reading →
Various Artists Look Again To The Wind Sony Masterworks 06067 www.sonymasterworks.com Forthcoming film: We’re Still Here: Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears Revisited directed by Antonino D’Ambrosio Johnny Cash was “a holy terror … a dark and dangerous … Continue reading →
