Merle Haggard: Home-fried Humor and Cowboy Soul
Profile and Interview by Al Aronowitz, Rolling Stone, August 1968
COUNTRY MUSIC is blowing in like a fresh wind from the West. America can't be defined by its pay-toilets and its smog. Merle Haggard never heard ...

Visual Scene Important For Kenny Rogers: The First Edition
Report and Interview by uncredited writer, Beat Instrumental, March 1970
‘THEY'RE a bunch of real nice guys,’ said the publicity man, talking about Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. Which is a very standard line in ...

Lonesome Number One: Profile of Don Gibson
Profile by Charlie Gillett, Record Mirror, March 1970
DON GIBSON is the most original country and western singer of the past 15 years, and that's been his problem. While everybody else has been happy ...

Conway Twitty: The Lonely Country Blues Boy
Overview by Bill Millar, Record Mirror, August 1971
WHEN discussing the history of rock 'n' roll, a number of writers have recently implied that the attention paid to black influences has long obscured the ...

The Cold, Cold Heart of Country Music
Report by Philip Norman, Sunday Times, 1972
FOR ALL that Country and Western hopes nothing will change, its heroes die horribly fast. ...

Tom T. Hall: In Search of a Song
Review by Richard Cromelin, Rolling Stone, January 1972
FACT IS, In Search of a Song doesn't quite match the quality of any of Hall's three previous Mercury albums. Meaning only that a couple of ...

Rick Nelson: How Ricky Became Rick
Interview by Caroline Boucher, Disc and Music Echo, March 1972
A YEAR and a half ago and full of enthusiasm for his new band, Rick Nelson set off for Europe and a tour of American service ...

Roots of Country: Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Driftwood, Hank Snow albums
Review by Tony Russell, Cream, June 1972
THESE THREE double albums (with a fourth by Eddy Arnold) open a reissue series presumably intended to uncover the roots of today’s country music. Each of ...

Charlie Rich: Rich and Mellow
Discography by Bill Millar, Record Mirror, August 1972
"ULTIMATELY there was Charlie Rich. Rich was a Georgia cotton farmer and he was into his thirties, he had grey hair and a paunch. Still he ...

Tammy Wynette/Toni & Terry albums
Review by Charlie Gillett, Rolling Stone, April 1973
Toni and Terry: Cross Country
Tammy Wynette: My Man ...

Gram Parsons: The Superstar Who Didn't Quite Make It
Obituary by Nick Kent, NME, October 1973
GRAM PARSONS somehow never quite got to be the nationally-touted superstar he deserved to be, which is possibly as much his own fault as anyone else's. ...

Linda Ronstadt: Ronstadt Country
Interview by Barbara Charone, NME, February 1974
TIME WAS when being a country music fan was difficult going. You could secretly dig people like Dolly Parton or Charlie Rich but it wasn't hip ...

Gram Parsons with Emmylou Harris: Grievous Angel
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, March 1974
MICK JAGGER wrote 'Wild Horses' for and about the late Gram Parsons and its chorus describes the paradox that fueled Parsons’ life and vision. '...Wild horses ...

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band/Dillards/Country Gazette/David Wiffen/Kentucky Colonels Albums
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, April 1974
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Friends: Will The Circle Be Unbroken (United Artists)
Dillards: Tribute To The American Duck (United Artists)
Country Gazette: Don't Give Up Your Day ...

Western Swingtime Music: A Cool Breeze in the American Desert
Overview by Jerry Zolten, Sing Out!, June 1974
IN THE GOLDEN days of big band swing, while Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington were sizzling in the cities, a back-country form of big band swing ...

Nashville: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (MCA)
Review by John Morthland, Creem, 1975
EVEN MORE THAN most soundtracks, this one is totally inseparable from its film. Taken alone, it’s damn near ...

Roger McGuinn and Country Rock: Older Than Yesterday
Retrospective and Interview by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, January 1975
IT'S FRIDAY 30TH AUGUST, in Birmingham England, and it's afternoon. Roger McGuinn is listening to a track off his second solo album, Peace On You. Rushed ...

Kinky Friedman: Kinky Friedman
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, January 1975
ONE LEARNS FROM the customary reliable sources-from-which-one-learns things that Kinky Friedman's original ideas for the title of this album included "Come Back Little Kinky" and "Shit ...

The Depression, Country Music and Me
Essay by Al Aronowitz, Rolling Stone, February 1975
This sorrowful piece was sent to us, by third-class mail, by Al Aronowitz, pop columnist for the until the paper dropped him "because they said ...

Sneaky Pete Kleinow
Interview by Mick Houghton, ZigZag, March 1975
ZZ: HOW DID you come to be part of the whole related family of Los Angeles musicians? You actually come from Michigan? ...

Charlie Rich: The Man And His Career
Profile by Martin Hawkins, Country Music People, May 1975
CHARLIE RICH was twenty-three when he travelled to West Memphis to try his luck as a professional musician. Subsequently he moved his base of operations to ...

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
Review by Mick Houghton, Let It Rock, May 1975
When you step up to a Juke box and you slip a nickel in,
You can bet your bottom dollar when the record starts to spin,
You'll hear ...

Mac Davis: All the Love in the World
Review by John Mendelsohn, Rolling Stone, May 1975
HEREWITH, THE Legend of the Songpainter. ...

Bill Monroe: Hammersmith Odeon, London
Live Review by Vivien Goldman, NME, May 1975
BILL MONROE IS the main-man of bluegrass music, a veteran innovator whose recording career spans 40 ...

Tammy Wynette: Hammersmith Odeon, London
Live Review by Rob Partridge, Melody Maker, June 1975
THREE MONTHS ago Tammy Wynette was little more than cowboy fodder in Britain, appealing only to a small body of country freaks. But, one smasheroo chart ...

Tammy Wynette: Going UP Country
Report by Rob Partridge, Melody Maker, June 1975
How come a seven-year-old single, re-issued for the fifth time, made it to number one? Robert Partridge gets the full story behind Tammy Wynette's 'Stand By ...

Johnny Cash - John R. Cash
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, June 1975
IN WHICH JOHNNY Cash meets up, quite casual-like, with the '70s and discovers that even though they don't really have a whole lot in common, they ...

Emmylou Harris: Pieces Of The Sky
Review by Mick Houghton, ZigZag, August 1975
BUD SCOPPA once described Gram Parsons as the most convincing singer of sad songs he'd heard. Nothing he recorded was more heartrending than 'Love Hurts' or ...

Johnny Cash: Riding the Rails and Marty Robbins: Gunfighter Ballads
Review by Mick Farren, NME, August 1975
OKAY, SO HERE are two special double album packages from CBS that feature two of the world's greatest exponents of country and western ...

Gary Stewart: You're Not the Woman You Used to Be
Review by John Morthland, Rolling Stone, September 1975
THIS COLLECTION OF old singles was released to scoop up some of the financial overflow from country music's current hottest new item. ...

Starry-Eyed and Laughing - Thought Talk
Review by Chas de Whalley, NME, September 1975
WHILE AMERICAN COUNTRY Rock bands seem to spring up from everywhere, there has yet to be one from these shores who really ...

George Jones and Wanda Jackson at Hammersmith Odeon
Live Review by Chas de Whalley, NME, September 1975
THE FOYER OF the Hammersmith Odeon was like Middle America gone London town, except the folks were mostly British and there wasn't a stetson to be ...

Willie Nelson: Red Headed Stranger
Review by Mick Houghton, Let It Rock, October 1975
WILLIE NELSON has never written easy songs or recorded easy albums. He has penned his share of country standards over the past fifteen years, all touched ...

Johnny Cash: Look At Them Beans
Review by Mick Farren, NME, November 1975
I FEAR JOHNNY Cash has turned his back on progress once ...

Emmylou Harris: New Victoria, London
Live Review by Penny Valentine, Street Life, December 1975
THE LIGHTS had just gone down, the musicians were just striking up when these two guys fell up the stairs singing loudly, "New York, New York's ...

Emmylou's Four Star Hotel
Review by Barbara Charone, NME, January 1976
THE ELITE HOTEL is a swell place. It's best to travel there by car on a hot, sunny day with the windows rolled down, a sticky ...

Emmylou Harris
Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Melody Maker, January 1976
"I WAS NERVOUS, but looked forward to playing overseas because I had this feeling there was an audience for my kind of music, especially since Gram's ...

C.W. McCall: McCall Keeps On Trucking
Profile and Interview by Chris Charlesworth, Melody Maker, February 1976
JUST IMAGINE the scenario: a thousand massive trucks, a petroleum-driven army, hurtling down the highway in a strict convoy formation, all the drivers linked together by ...

Dolly, Tammy and Carl: In The Wembley Wild West
Report by Philip Norman, Sunday Times, April 1976
THE GUNFIGHTER walks alone, staying close to the side of the street. His clothes are black and faintly luminous. His hat is tied insolently under his ...

Hank Williams Jr.: Hank William Jr. and Friends
Review by John Morthland, Rolling Stone, April 1976
LAST AUGUST, on a hunting trip near the Great Divide at Missoula, Montana, the recently divorced Hank Williams Jr. fell 500 feet down a mountainside, peeling ...

Boots, Brandy, Boots, Bouffants + Buffy
Report and Interview by Mick Farren, NME, April 1976
THERE WERE more Stetson hats than you could shake a stick at in Wembley last ...

Gary Stewart: Steppin 'Out
Review by John Morthland, Creem, May 1976
WHAT MOST attracted rock fans to Gary Stewart's first album was his raw, exuberant singing, and the subsequent suspicion that he was really a closet rocker. ...

Guy Clark: Old No. 1
Review by John Tobler, ZigZag, May 1976
THIS RECORD is a positive gem. However, unless some large quantity of record buyers pick up on it, it is destined to languish in the same ...

Gram Parsons: GP (Reprise)*****
Review by Jonh Ingham, Sounds, May 1976
IF YOU woundered why, or where, Rick Grech gets off with performing Gram Parsons type country music, it stems from co-producing this bona fide classic. It ...

Emmylou Harris: Bluegrass and Fiddle Festival, Long Beach, California
Live Review by Barbara Charone, Sounds, May 1976
EMMYLOU HARRIS and her excellent Hot Band just keep getting better. Their headline performance at the fourth annual Bluegrass and Fiddle Festival in Long Beach, California ...

Shelby Singleton
Profile and Interview by Martin Hawkins, Country Music Review, August 1976
SHELBY SINGLETON is well known in the country music business and really should not need introducing to CMR readers. But magazines in the main rightly tend ...

Emmylou Harris: Honky Tonk Woman
Interview by Barbara Charone, Sounds, August 1976
Emmylou Harris pleads guilty to not being a genius, but she sure can sing country. BARBARA CHARONE reports. ...

B.W. Goes C&W (United Artists)
Review by Cliff White, NME, September 1976
RECORDED BEFORE Safety Zone last year, this is the set that Bobby had intended to call Black In The Saddle. UA wouldn't release it at the ...

Emmylou Harris Makes Up Leeway
Interview by Chris Charlesworth, Melody Maker, September 1976
IT CAME as something of a surprise to learn that Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band were in town last week. To be precise, they were ...

Emmylou Harris: My Father's Place, Long Island
Live Review by Barbara Charone, Sounds, October 1976
NEW ARTISTS consistently better their own past performances. Onstage progression and maturity all too often comes a back seat to the big buck commercialism of success. ...

Flying Burrito Brothers: Southern Californians Bring Me Down
Live Review by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, October 1976
The Flying Burrito Brothers: Hammersmith Odeon, London ...

Willie Nelson: Willie Nelson Live (RCA)**
Review by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, October 1976
WILLIE NELSON has been in country music for the better part of twenty years as a songwriter and performer, while, arm in arm with Waylon Jennings ...

Flying Burrito Brothers: Sneeky Pete And The Return Of The Flying Journeymen
Interview by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, October 1976
"ASK THEM abouta da name. They gotta no right to use it!"

Don't worry, friends, my esteemed Italian colleague doesn't really speak like that, and his hands ...

Willie Nelson: The Troublemaker (CBS)****
Review by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, October 1976
HOW ARE we supposed to take this album, eh? ...

John Hartford: Mark Twang (Flying Fish)
Review by John Tobler, ZigZag, November 1976
MULTIPLE CAUSE for celebration – the return of the amazing John Hartford, and the start of the long overdue British outlet for Flying Fish. Both events ...

Asleep at the Wheel
Profile and Interview by Andy Childs, ZigZag, December 1976
IF, IN A FLIGHT of fancy, you've ever ventured over to this particular neck of the woods you won't be at all surprised to learn that ...

Emmylou Harris: Luxury Liner (Warner Bros.)**
Review by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, January 1977
I'M SORRY, but I don't like Emmylou Harris very much. Doubtless you'll recommend me to the Inquisition for a Heresy like that. But I've been listening ...

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Dirt Silver & Gold
Review by Andy Childs, ZigZag, February 1977
THE SEPTEMBER 13th 1975 edition of Billboard Magazine, the American music industry's Bible, carried an interesting and revealing supplement on Colorado – "a growing music environment" ...

Emmylou Harris: Luxury Liner
Review by John Tobler, ZigZag, February 1977
A CLASSICALLY CONCEIVED album for one such as myself – two songs by Parsons, one by the Louvin Brothers, a Rodney Crowell, a Mr. Guy Clark, ...

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Dirt, Silver and Gold (United Artists)****
Review by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, February 1977
PLEASE TELL me, who is going to buy this peach of an album? It's a three record set, a compilation of the Los Angeles' band's ten ...

Waylon Jennings: Waylon Live
Review by John Morthland, Creem, April 1977
It wasn't until late 1974 that the Waylon Jennings mystique took hold for me. This is partly because to my mind that's when his sound coalesced ...

Asleep at the Wheel
Report and Interview by Mick Farren, NME, April 1977
CAN AN ELEVEN-PIECE WESTERN SWING BAND EVER FIND WEALTH AND PROSPERITY IN THE WORLD OF ROCK'N'ROLL? ...

Asleep At The Wheel: Hammersmith Odeon, London
Live Review by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, April 1977
I DON'T think I've ever seen so many ten gallon hats on one stage. Not outside Texas, anyhow. And so many straight-legged jeans and cowboy boots ...

Asleep at the Wheel: The Wheel
Review by Andy Childs, ZigZag, May 1977
THIS ISN'T going to be a very long review, because I want to play the record again before the pubs open. ...

Joe Ely: Joe Ely
Review by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, September 1977
HAVE YOU heard of Joe Ely before? Thought not. I certainly haven't. His past history is a total blank as far as I'm concerned. And his ...

Asleep at the Wheel: Collision Course (Capital)
Review by Max Bell, NME, August 1978
STRANGE TO relate but not everything that emerges in the new release racks this week will bear the mark of androids in overalls. And disco and ...

Tammy Wynette: Stand By Your Record Producer
Interview by Colin Irwin, Melody Maker, September 1978
Tammy Wynette, over here for a short tour, lectures COLIN IRWIN on how to be an Average Superstar... ...

Texas Country Rock: Texas Twisters
Overview by Martin Hawkins, Melody Maker, November 1978
THE ECHOES of rock get older; and likewise those consumers who, like me, retain an interest in them – rather than giving in to the indoctrination ...

Emmylou Harris: Profile…Best Of Emmylou Harris
Review by Penny Valentine, Melody Maker, December 1978
UNDOUBTEDLY, Emmylou's success has been to make traditional country music acceptable to a rock audience. She has a lot to answer for, and in a way ...

Joe Ely: The Venue, London
Live Review by Fred Dellar, NME, March 1980
THEY BOP, they hop, they bounce like rampaging 'roos. They sing songs bearing titles as profound as 'She's My Baby, She's My Girl' and 'Do I ...

Joe Ely
Report and Interview by Kris Needs, ZigZag, April 1980
SITTING on a curb with a fuming Joe Ely... ...

Joe Ely: Past And Present
Retrospective by Martin Hawkins, Country Music People, May 1980
Texan star JOE ELY is not quite the newcomer to recording that we think. MARTIN HAWKINS reveals the tale of the FLATLANDERS' sessions of 1972 ...

Nashville
Overview by Martin Hawkins, The History of Rock, 1981
The producers and musicians who made country music a multi-million-dollar industry ...

Rosanne Cash Comes Into Her Own
Interview by Dave Zimmer, BAM, April 1981
COTATI – LONESOME steel guitar moans waver and echo throughout the Inn of the Beginning – a classic Old West watering hole 50 miles due north ...

Rodney Crowell: Crowell's Got Cash But He Has His Own Career
Interview by Steven X Rea, LA Herald Examiner, September 1981
A favorite of Willie and Emmylou, he's a family man with wife Rosanne ...

In Gloss We Trust: Dolly Parton at the Dominion, London
Live Review by Richard Cook, NME, April 1983
HOWEVER MUCH YOU take righteous liberal umbrage at the mass of contradictions Dolly Parton presents, you lose. As surely as the lonely waifs and mountainside ...

Joe Ely: Hi-Res
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, July 1984
JOE ELY'S Hi-Res has a feverish, jittery seediness, a buzz you can't shake off. Remember the first episode of Cheers, where the guys argued about the ...

Nashville Revisited
Report by Cynthia Rose, NME, August 1984
This summer an 82 year-old former boxer, shoeshine boy and burlesque costumier from Brooklyn died in Los Angeles. His name was Nudie Cohen and he passed ...

Gram Parsons: We'll Sweep Out The Ashes In The Morning
Retrospective by Don Watson, NME, April 1985
"Death is a warm cloak. An old friend. I regard death as something that comes up on a roulette wheel every once in a while."
Gram Parsons, ...

Rosanne Cash: Blues From The Pink Bedroom
Interview by Gavin Martin, NME, April 1986
ROSANNE CASH'S latest LP Rhythm And Romance lays bare both her turbulent marriage and a lengthy struggle with drug abuse. GAVIN MARTIN meets the woman who's ...

Dwight Yoakam: Mean Fiddler, London
Live Review by Gavin Martin, NME, September 1986
AN IMPARTIAL lady friend had been clean bowled over the previous night at Dingwalls. This tall, lean Kentucky hunk may be coot-like beneath his hat but ...

Dwight Yoakam: Hillbilly Hipster
Interview by Cynthia Rose, Mail On Sunday, April 1987
DWIGHT YOAKAM was eight years old when he wrote his first song: an American lament patterned after those of 1940s blue mountain balladeers the Stanley Brothers. ...

Nashville Cats: Country Music In 1987 - Goldmine Or Shaft?
Report and Interview by Simon Witter, i-D, June 1987
Simon Witter travelled to Nashville to find out if there's any substance to the media's
latest ...

Career Heats Up For Joe Ely
Interview by Charles Bermant, The Globe and Mail, September 1987
WITH ITS OWN hot brand of Texas rock and roll, the Joe Ely Band has transformed the tiny stage of this rural club into a musical ...

Lonesome Dove: Steve Earle Puts the Celtic into Country
Interview by Chris Bourke, Rip It Up (New Zealand), December 1988
"Ring Steve Earle," said the message. "Area code 615 ..." ...

Tennessee Ernie Ford: Guilty Pleasures
Retrospective by Tom Graves, Rock and Roll Disc, March 1991
MY MOTHER TELLS the story of a Bob Hope television special that aired in the 1950s. The comedian had just made a crack about the ...

Johnny Cash: Pills'n'Thrills And Bellyaches
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, May 1991
HITCHING UP HIS blue jeans to give his hands something to do, country music's Greatest Living Legend smothers a cough before the familiar voice offers the ...

Garth Brooks: Meet Nashville's New Breed Of Generously Stetsoned Crooner
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, March 1992
BANDY-LEGGED and pigeon-toed, Garth Brooks has finally taken off his stetson and is staggering around the stage of Atlanta's Omni like a man who's just won ...

Willis Alan Ramsey: A Perfect Ending to a 20-year Vacation
Profile and Interview by Tom Graves, Musician, March 1992
AT THE END of Willis Alan Ramsey's only album, a self-titled 1972 Shelter release, the song 'Northeast Texas Woman' fades to studio chatter, and the last ...

Lyle Lovett: Erm…
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, May 1992
Confusion and uncertainty are Lyle Lovett's middle names. Is he country? Or is he blues, or gospel, or swing? What the hell, he decides, "They're all ...

Johnny Cash: The Man in Blackpool
Report by Mick Houghton, Q, April 1993
JOHN R. CASH is somewhat bemused by questions about Butlin's – or Bognor come to that. He's between sets at Southcoast World (Butlin's, Bognor to you ...

Mary Chapin Carpenter
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Mojo, November 1993
A RIOT OF SEQUINS and studded belts, of thick foundation and fringed pastel jackets, of monstrous boots and massive hair, Nashville's old – and new – ...

Garth Brooks
Profile and Interview by Robin Eggar, Sunday Times, January 1994
"SHHH." THE admonition echoes around the room, stalling conversation in mid-drawl, beer in mid-swallow. The ensuing hush is equal parts reverence and show-me. ...

AUDIO: Willie Nelson in Stockholm (1994)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1994
Willie Nelson – on tour in Sweden – on leaving Columbia for Liberty, his tussle with the IRS, Cowboy movies, songwriting and ...

Willie Nelson: Funny How Time Slips Away
Retrospective and Interview by Bill DeYoung, Goldmine, January 1995
WITH HIS beatific smile and twinkling bright eyes, Willie Nelson looks like the most serene and centered man on the planet. When he's wearing a Stetson ...

George Jones & Tammy Wynette: Hammersmith Apollo, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Mojo, November 1995
LONG AGO, in the days before hats and hi-tech rednecks, country music was a soap opera and George Jones and Tammy Wynette were its Dirty Den ...

Steve Earle: Birth, School, Work, Heroin, Coke, Marriage, Heroin, Marriage, Crack, Prison...
Interview by Bill Prince, Q, May 1996
There are eight million stories... and they all happened to Steve Earle. Six weddings, 27 years of drug addiction, 30 days in chokey, one hit – ...

George Jones with Tom Carter: I Lived To Tell It All
Book Review by Tom Graves, The Washington Post, June 1996
I LIVED TO TELL IT ALL, the long-awaited autobiography of country music legend George Jones, has to be one of the bleakest, most disconsolate music bios ...

Emmylou Harris: The Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Retrospective and Interview by Bill DeYoung, Goldmine, August 1996
SERENDIPITY, WHAT Webster loosely defines as "dumb luck," is an important concept for Emmylou Harris. ...

Linda Ronstadt on Emmylou: And Then There Were Two…
Interview by Bill DeYoung, Goldmine, August 1996
CHRIS HILLMAN, who'd introduced Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons, played matchmaker another time: Backstage at a concert in Texas, he put the newcomer together with Linda ...

AUDIO: Johnny Cash, Late and Alone (1996)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1996
Johnny Cash talks to Barney Hoskyns about his health, his religion, his revival with Rick Rubin, and the myth of the Million Dollar ...

Carlene Carter live
Live Review by Ben Edmonds, Mojo, November 1996
"I WANNA TELL Y’ALL SOMETHING," Carlene Carter notifies the young country audience that’s braved an outdoor venue on an unseasonably cold and wet September evening. Wearing ...

AUDIO: Gillian Welch and David Rawlings (1996)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, December 1996
The Queen of nouveau bluegrass, Gillian Welch, and her guitar pickin' sidekick David Rawlings, talk about meeting at Berklee, making the fabulous Revival album, living in ...

Whose Alt.Country Is It Anyway?
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1997
THEY CALL it Alternative Country, a generous umbrella of a category that makes room for acts as different as Steve Earle, Son Volt and Slobberbone; for ...

Glen Campbell: The Glen Campbell Collection (1962-1989)
Sleevenotes by Colin Escott, Razor & Tie Records, 1997
ALTHOUGH GLEN CAMPBELL has always insisted that he's a country boy who sings--not a country singer, he arrived at a time when country music was in ...

Keeping Quiet For The Sake Of A Song: Townes Van Zandt 1944-1997
Obituary by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, January 1997
OTHER MUSICIANS revered Texan song writer Townes Van Zandt who has died of a heart attack aged 52, but he made real efforts, helped by a ...

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Uncle Charlie And His Dog Teddy
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Mojo, August 1997
AFTER A bunch of friends, including a young Jackson Browne, figured that singing Bill Monroe and Mississippi John Hurt songs in the back of McCabe's Guitar ...

This Byrd Has Flown: Chris Hillman comes to the Coach House
Report and Interview by Bill Wasserzieher, OC Weekly, August 1997
ROCK & ROLL HALL of Famer Chris Hillman has played in bands with religious proselytizers, trust-fund dopers and even a matricidal drummer who heard voices and ...

Shania Twain: Come On Over***
Review by Chuck Eddy, Rolling Stone, December 1997
THE FIRST thing you notice about Shania Twain's Come On Over, once you get past her pretty pictures on the cover, is how the titles have ...

Willie Nelson: The Barbican, London
Live Review by Gavin Martin, Uncut, August 1998
THE GREAT FEAR of seeing a hero in their twilight years is that their powers will have deserted them and they'll be unable to reach, let ...

Waylon Jennings: Honky Tonk Heroes
Retrospective by Gavin Martin, Uncut, September 1998
FOR WAYLON Jennings – born into a dirt poor cotton-picking West Texas family – the wanderlust began as far back as he could remember. ...

Back to Clinch Mountain: Ralph Stanley
Report and Interview by Geoffrey Himes, Country Music, September 1998
"THREE GROUPS shaped bluegrass music," Ricky Skaggs told me recently, "Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, the Stanley Brothers, and Flatt & Scruggs. Everyone who ...

The Lone Star Spirit of Willie Nelson
Profile and Interview by Chris Smith, The Performing Songwriter, December 1998
THERE WAS, of course, Texas music before Willie. Problem was, nobody outside of Texas heard it. The eclectic styles growing from lone star roots before the ...

Townes Van Zandt: A Far Cry From Dead
Review by Matt Hanks, No Depression, July 1999
LIKE DOCK BOGGS, Townes Van Zandt was obsessed with death. Both men were shadowed by their own mortality, obsessing over it and collapsing under it ...

Townes Van Zandt: A Far Cry From Dead
Review by Chris Smith, The Performing Songwriter, July 1999
STEVE EARLE ONCE gushed, "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the world, and I'd stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my boots and ...

For The Record: The Hag Tells It Like It Is
Interview by Geoffrey Himes, Country Music, November 1999
LAST APRIL Merle Haggard turned 62, well past the age when most men slow down and mellow out. The Hag, however, is busier and ornerier than ...

Gram Parsons, Track by Track
Sleevenotes by Bud Scoppa, Sacred Hearts and Fallen Angels (Rhino), September 2000
The International Submarine Band: Safe at Home ...

Willie Nelson: Expecting the Unexpected
Profile and Interview by Hank Bordowitz, Gallery, March 2001
WILLIE NELSON studies martial arts. He has honed his skills as a karateka in various styles for around 40 years now. When you consider ...

Chet Atkins: Mr Nashville
Obituary by Fred Dellar, Mojo, September 2001
HE WASN'T the most accomplished guitarist in country music. There were those in Nashville who could fashion half a dozen great licks in the time that ...

Ooooh Las Vegas! 37 Stories, and It's All Out There…
Essay by Holly Gleason, Rock's Backpages, November 2001
Country music publicist Holly Gleason spends a night in Sin City – and comes to terms with the celebrity frenzy that is pop's new American Dream. ...

Steve Earle: Highway Blues
Retrospective by Adam Sweeting, Uncut, April 2002
HOW STEVE EARLE'S GUITAR TOWN BROUGHT A NEW ATTITUDE TO NASHVILLE. ...

Willie Nelson’s Straight Story
Report and Interview by Peter Murphy, Hot Press, July 2002
IN DAVID LYNCH’S The Straight Story, the septuagenarian Alvin Straight showed his steel when the twin freak mechanics the Olsens tried fleecing him for repairs on ...

Let Me Touch You For A While: Alison Krauss Creates Intimacy Amongst the Disenfranchised
Essay by Holly Gleason, Rock's Backpages, September 2002
THERE IT WAS ONE DAY -- propped against my doorway in West Hollywood -- a plain brown cardboard box like so many others. Anonymous. Almost closed ...

The Carter Family: Into The Valley
Retrospective by Sylvie Simmons, Mojo, November 2002
FIRST KILL YOUR HOG. SKIN IT, singe off the hairs and leave the hide to soften. Tug it over a round frame, whittle out a neck, ...

Johnny Cash: The Man Comes Around (American Recordings)
Review by Sylvie Simmons, Mojo, December 2002
WEIGHTED DOWN by the difficult circumstances behind its recording – illness, hospitalisations, two bouts of pneumonia this past year alone, speculation that the increasingly fragile Cash ...

Up! Is A Direction: Shania Twain’s New CD(s)
Review by Rick McGrath, Culture Court, December 2002
More Of The Same Old, But I Give It A 10 For Marketing Moxie, ...

Keith Urban
Interview by Joe Matera, Mixdown, 2003
GOLDEN ROAD, the second solo album from Keith Urban, symbolizes the life and musical journey that has taken him from the Australian farm town of Caboolture ...

June Carter Cash 1929-2003
Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, May 2003
COUNTRY SINGER June Carter Cash (73) died in Nashville on May 15 of complications from heart surgery. She was the daughter of country legend Mother ...

Dixie Chicks: Apollo, Manchester
Live Review by Nick Hasted, The Independent, September 2003
DISSENT STILL finds its focus in pop, more than any other art form. But there can have been few less likely standard-bearers for this radical tradition ...

The Mantra In Black: Ten Reasons Why Johnny Cash Always Matters
Comment by Gary Pig Gold, earcandymag.com, October 2003
1. LUTHER PLAYED THE BOOGIE
Without a red hot and blue band to back it all the way up, even a Man in Black's powers weaken ...

Steve Earle Gives New Meaning To The Expression 'Lifetime Achievement'
Interview by Toby Manning, Word, May 2004
MARRIED SIX TIMES TO FIVE DIFFERENT WOMEN, HE'S ENDURED THE JUNKIE'S LIFE, DONE TIME AND LIVED TO TELL. NOW A CHANGED CHARACTER, HIGH PROFILE CAMPAIGNER AND ...

Loretta Lynn: Van Lear Rose
Review by Andria Lisle, Mojo, June 2004
The Coal Miner's Daughter becomes a country music queen – with a little help from one of The White Stripes. ...

The Dillards: Pickin’ and Fiddlin’/Wheatstraw Suite/Copperfields
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
WHEN DOUGLAS and Rodney Dillard’s quartet hit Los Angeles in 1963 they blew everyone’s minds. Playing bluegrass with fuck-you rock’n’roll attitude, they wasted the competition at ...

Johnny Cash's Concept Albums
Retrospective by Phil Sutcliffe, Mojo, October 2004
THEY WERE "CONCEPTS" all right, but that didn't make them the product of cool, analytical thinking. Back in the early '60s, Johnny Cash was wrestling his ...

Dwight Yoakam: The Very Best Of; Randy Travis: The Very Best Of
Review by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, November 2004
ROUTE 88 WAS an ambitious cross-label campaign to establish several country stars in the UK, with Yoakam and Travis seen by many as the twin figureheads. ...

Alison Krauss and Union Station: Lonely Runs Both Ways
Review by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, November 2004
THIS IS KRAUSS'S first studio album for three years, though in the meantime she's delivered a bestselling live album, won three Grammy awards, and made a ...

AUDIO: Dolly Parton (2005)
Interview by Gavin Martin, Rock's Backpages Audio, 2005
Movies, fasting, fame and faith, plastic surgery, marriage, 9/11 and on being a gay icon: Dolly says more in twenty minutes than most do in two ...

Willie Nelson: Shepherd's Bush Empire, London
Live Review by Andrew Mueller, The Independent, April 2005
AT THIS LATE stage, attending a Willie Nelson concert is more a gesture of pilgrimage than anything else. Nelson, now 71, with a ponytail that must ...

Branded Man: Merle Haggard Brings The Bakersfield Sounds East With Dylan
Report and Interview by Ted Drozdowski, Boston Phoenix, April 2005
WHEN BOB DYLAN CALLS, other musicians listen. Even when they're icons and gifted songwriters in their own ...

David Allan Coe
Sleevenotes by Colin Escott, Hackmart/Shout Factory! Records, May 2005
"I ALWAYS FIGURED David's stories were about ninety-two percent bullshit, but it made for good promotion," said record producer Shelby Singleton...who knew the value of not ...

Dolly Parton: The Essential Dolly Parton
Review by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, December 2005
DON'T BE FOOLED by the high hair, long nails or curvy torso. Dolly Parton may appear, on the surface, to be a prairie poppet moulded and ...

Rosanne Cash's Cadillac
Interview by Stephen Dalton, The Times, January 2006
ROSANNE CASH has already been to church by the time we meet for breakfast. As dawn broke on this wintry Parisian morning, the singer-songwriter slipped into ...

Johnny Cash: Cash Upfront
Comment by Andrew Mueller, The Guardian, January 2006
WALK THE LINE, James Mangold's cinematic telling of the early life of Johnny Cash, takes its title from one of its subject's best-known songs. ...

Kris Kristofferson
Interview by Rob Hughes, Uncut, May 2006
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON is tough to nail. Uncut first catches him, fleetingly, en route to the airport at his home in Maui. ...

Dixie Chicks: 'We Had A Song At No 1. The Next Day It Was At No 70'
Interview by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, June 2006
NATALIE MAINES has a little cluster of black teardrops tattooed on her lower leg, trickling from her ankle down to her foot. Dixie Chicks' poised lead ...

Johnny Cash: American V
Review by Stephen Dalton, The Times, July 2006
MORE THAN THREE YEARS after his death, the Man In Black is still enjoying the kind of final-act career resurgence that artists half his age might ...

Rosanne Cash
Interview by Andrew Purcell, Sunday Herald (Scotland), January 2007
JOHNNY CASH lives with his daughter. He's in the set of her jaw, the power of her voice, and he stares down proudly from every wall ...

Johnny Cash: Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (Legacy Edition)
Review by Mark Kemp, Paste, October 2008
IN THE DOCUMENTARY included with this new edition of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, daughter Rosanne shatters the mythology surrounding her dad, gently bringing him down ...

Gone Country: On Jessica Simpson's Nashville Conversion
Comment by Mark Kemp, Texas Music, January 2009
ASIDE FROM HIP-HOP, country music is the most wildly popular musical style people love to hate. The Bottle Rockets once wrote a song about a hipster ...

Merle Haggard Stands Tall
Interview by Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle, March 2009
AS LONG AS people speak of country music, the music of Merle Haggard will live. As his career nears the half-century mark, Haggard's imprint is as ...

Another Look at the Nashville Skyline
Report by Bill Wasserzieher, Rock's Backpages, June 2009
NASHVILLE IS a town of serene churches and raucous honky tonks. ...