With so many artists having recorded John Prine’s songs, creating a compilation of covers would have been all too easy, and boring.
Great as Bonnie Raitt’s cover of “Angel From Montgomery” and David Allan Coe’s version of “You Never Even Call Me By My Name” are, we’ve heard them hundreds of times.
But the twelve artists on Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine are funky and a little off-beat, just like the songs. And after four decades, there are certainly plenty of tunes to rediscover.
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Big headlines in relation to CD releases can easily fall the way of hype that it’s nice to find a record that lives up to the bold print.
But what else could one expect from Tom Petty—crusader and hero of fans everywhere—and his Heartbreakers?
With Mojo, they deliver a gritty, almost-live disc with all the elements we love in anything bearing an incarnation of Tom Petty.
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A record of love, lust and lost set to infectious rhythms, if Grace Potter and The Nocturnals were Fleetwood Mac, their new, self-titled record would be their Rumours–glamorous yet accessible.
Sweet and sultry in places, rough and rowdy around the edges and oozing confidence, Grace grooves through rock, R&B and ’70s pop with Catherine Popper (bass), Scott Tournet (lead guitar), Matt Burr (drums), and Benny Yurco (rhythm guitar).
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Listening to Susan Cowsill sing about her home in New Orleans, it’s difficult to believe that she got her start in a pop group with her brothers during the ’60s.
While The Cowsills and their Top Ten singles served as inspiration for the Partridge Family, Susan’s new record, Lighthouse draws from years of experience and the heartbreak experienced after Hurricane Katrina.
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The Bad Livers co-founder Danny Barnes is at it again with Pizza Box, his latest release that soothes our longing for John Hartford-style humor mixed with soulful banjo pickin’ and a fresh injection of inspiration.
Each character Danny sings about, each situation and every feeling is multi-dimensional with personality and meaning. The songs are short stories with beginnings, middles and ends.
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The latest roots recording, Things That Fly, is a 13-song vehicle by the Infamous Stringdusters. It is an acoustic, blue-ribbon winner from a proven bluegrass band. Within this third release, the septet displays a velocity of wise beyond their year’s creative craftsmanship.
Their innate ability is to alter the traditional mind-set of a string band within the established context. Their fingers-to-frets ratio is precise, pulsating, rapid, and appears like drifting rainbows against the blue sky.
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There are no broken promises on Anne McCue’s latest record, Broken Promise Land.
With her authentic, Lucinda Williams-flavored vocals, guitar chops and a near-live recording process without extra layers that would be difficult to replicate on the stage she charges full speed into a bluesy, swampy, slightly psychedelic mix of rock ‘n’ roll that she describes as “cosmic biker rock.”
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The new John Cowan release, The Massenburg Sessions, was recorded in a custom-built uniquely designed studio at John McBride’s Blackbird complex in Nashville capturing the crisp creative clarity of a “more perfect sound” allowing the musicians to hear the intricate work of each other.
Produced by the widely respected George Massenburg and Kazuri Arai, the disk has 13 selections. Throughout Cowan has extended his elastic New Grass Revival Americana roots’ rhythms. Simply known as “The Voice,” his transcendent soulful vocals roam as we tremble and pause in wonder hearing Cowan soar above the canopy of our expectations.
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