FTB podcast #194 features the new album from SHANNON WURST called Lionheart Love. Also new music COLIN LINDEN, OLD MAN LUEDECKE & A BRIEF VIEW OF THE HUDSON. 

Here's the direct link to…

Ok so here's a six-pack of my favorite twangy albums of 2012 ! Again the albums are not in any order! 

1. Bryan Clark and the New Lyceum Players Southern Intermission.Clark is a native of Texas and now resides in Nashville. He is just your everyday singer,songwriter, guitarist, producer, who reads e.e. cummings and James Joyce and enjoys  rewriting terse Elizabethan sonnets in his own words.(doesn't…

There is a part of me which lives in the past--- a musical past filled with auras of God and small dilapidated churches and woods and creeks and a whole world which now seems such a long time ago.  I return to that world for short bursts when I hear the music of that world--- of The Delmore Brothers and The Louvin Brothers and The Blue Sky Boys and so many others.  They were a large part of the soundtrack of my childhood, rock being a bit in the future , and I cannot deny the impact it had…

Living in the Bay Area since 1971, I sometimes get the blank stare from other locals. I don't want to listen to Grateful Dead wannabes or guitarists who sound as if they're on a liquid IV drip with Garcia riffs being infused into their bloodstream;  I want musicians with their own material, their own style, their own sound. Something about that makes people uneasy. There are days when hearing someone demanding that a live band "play more Jerry tunes!" makes yelling "Go hit the Internet Music…

Ever have those weeks where everything you see reminds you of one particular topic?

For me this week, that topic is drinking.

Or rather, not drinking.  Not one of my favourite topics.

Recently, after reading articles about people drinking less, discussions of getting healthy, etc., I saw that my friend posted that he was embarking on his annual “Juiceless January”, so I thought to myself, ‘ok, don’t make plans with him until February.’  I mean, it would be…

2012 was an outstanding year for the blues. Whatever way you like it, electric or acoustic, there were a spate of superb offerings. Here is our choice of the top 20 blues albums of 2012. See if you agree…

Brother Sinner and the Whale:   Kelly Joe Phelps

Passionate, gospel blues, with superb finger-picking and slide guitar. In probably his…

Dark and occasionally Gothic Folk songs with a Celtic rawness

I really enjoyed Amelia Curran’s previous (Award-winning, no less) album HUNTER HUNTER so was thrilled to receive SPECTATORS just before Christmas. The first thing that struck me this time was the deepness of the songs. Nothing sounds ‘literal’, leaving the listener to determine the storyline of several songs.

Although Amelia Curran sounds nothing like her, I couldn’t help thinking of Joan Baez…

One of my New Year's resolutions is to write about music more. For me, music is the elixir of life. Discovering a new artist, flipping through the vinyl crates at one of the few remaining record stores in my hometown, and especially hearing musicians play live -- there are few things that give me as much joy as the rush that music provides.

While 2013 is only a little over a week old, I've…

While many of Austin venues were advertising the annual Free Week in January, a number of us were willing to pay a little more than usual to see Bobby Whitlock and CoCo Carmel play at their usual spot, The Saxon Pub.  They don’t normally play Saturday night, but it was a great idea.  And the place was full.

Bobby, as probably everyone knows, was an integral part of the Derek and the Dominoes Layla and Assorted Love Songs legacy recording,…

So I know that I had a strange musical upbringing.  I am the only child of an Irish American bullshit artist (professional theologian) who liked to sing shanty Irish songs and a Polish American tone-deaf special education teacher mother.  My parents had Judy Collins albums and one strange little album with a painted star-scape on the cover called Stardust.  When I was 10 years old in the 4^th grade I was compelled to take up the saxophone and immediately became enamored by…