I spent the summer interviewing so many of my favorite musicians about my all-time favorite: John Prine.
You can read the story at The Bitter Southerner.

JVL
No title available
No title available
almost home
wallacepolsom
YOU ARE THE REASON
I'd rather be in outer space đ¸
hello vonnie

#extradirty

No title available
ojovivo
Aqua Utopiaď˝ćľˇăŽĺşă§č¨ćśăç´Ąă

No title available
One Nice Bug Per Day
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Game of Thrones Daily
$LAYYYTER

if i look back, i am lost
Claire Keane
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from Germany

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from Netherlands

seen from Russia

seen from United States
seen from New Zealand

seen from Netherlands

seen from New Zealand

seen from United States

seen from Syria

seen from Indonesia
seen from Slovakia
seen from Slovakia

seen from Israel

seen from United States
seen from United States
@thepretender
I spent the summer interviewing so many of my favorite musicians about my all-time favorite: John Prine.
You can read the story at The Bitter Southerner.
Jason Isbell and Josh Ritter covering âStorm Windowsâ by John Prine. Perfection.Â
Mason Jennings Minnesota (Stats and Brackets) Performing at a tribute concert for Neil Young at Carnegie Hall this past February, Mason Jennings sang âRed
5 years ago today I published my first-ever professional piece of music writing. The previous month I had just moved to New York from Minnesota, so it was some coincidence that the name of the album was...Minnesota. Fittingly, I managed to find a way to center the entire album review around an obscure Neil Young song from the early 00â˛s.Â
Still relevant.
William Bell's love serenades have forged romances and broken hearts in bedrooms and dancefloors ever since the Memphis-born singer's first hit in 1961.
Proud, honored, and thrilled to have interviewed the legendary William Bell about his beautiful new album.
With big name supporters including Blake Shelton and Thomas Rhett, NRA Country is being used to entice younger members to the NRA by using country credibility. But with some artists distancing themselves, can it survive?
I wrote a story about the NRAâs recent attempt to partner up with the country music industry.Â
Hey Tumblr Country Music People, Iâm looking for some feedback here:
Is âBeaumontâ by Hayes Carll the sequel to âThe Nightâs Too Longâ by Lucinda Williams/Patty Loveless?  Is the singer in âBeaumontâ one of those âsmall town boys that donât move fast enoughâ in Lucindaâs song, only now heâs gathered up some courage, or at least tried to, and so he chases that waitress who fled town years ago all the way to Houston? Is this theory of mine ludicrous? Obvious?  Plausible?
First, listen to âThe Nightâs Too Long,â then give âBeaumontâ a spin, then let me know what you thinkâŚ
IMPORTANT UPDATE TO THIS PRETENDER POST FROM 2012:
Today I had the opportunity to present my amazing theory about âBeaumontâ being the sequel to âThe Nightâs Too Longâ by Lucinda to Hayes Carll in person.
Hayes told me he does not even know that song, although he does have that Lucinda album âon his laptop.âÂ
Oh well. I still think âBeaumontâ is the sequel to âThe Nightâs Too Long.â
In defense of Dave Prater.
I spent a good portion of last year working on this story on Dave Prater, the forgotten, under-appreciated half of Sam & Dave.Â
5 Favorite Albums of 2014
Itâs too easy to spend every spare moment this time of year catching up on the yearâs best music, too easy to treat each year as a separate entity that stops mattering as soon as January 1st hits. In 2015, I made sure to give myself the time to keep listening to 2014 records that I had really enjoyed to see which ones held up once the year had ended and we had collectively decided to move on.Â
Below are 5 albums from 2014 that have stayed with me the most. These records are all slowly becoming some small part of my life, and theyâre records that Iâm fairly certain Iâll still be playing 10 years from now.Â
Angaleena Presley-American Middle Class
Itâs a cliche to say an album gets better with each listen, but thatâs how exactly how I feel about Angaleena Presleyâs debut. The second half of the record, in stuns me every time. Thereâs quaint folk, country-soul, outright diva ballads, power pop, and thatâs just the last four songs. Listen to the pain, admiration, and guilt when Presley sings âsee, my daddyâs not well-read,â in âBetter off Red.â
Against Me!-Transgender Dysphoria Blues
Major label classic rock-meets-indie punk-meets necessary, timely social statement. Itâs a record that turns its rather bleak subject material--dead friends, empty coffins, gender dysphoria--into proud, triumphant rock and roll protest. No surprise that its best song is about that most purely American of pop subjects: wanting to find a home.Â
Del Barber-Prairieography
Del Baber is a soft-spoken Western Canadian who sings about his prairie home with compassion and conflict. The second song on this record is called âFarewell, God Bless You, Goodbyeâ and thatâs about all you need to know. Saying goodbye to your upbringing is a long, hard thing to do, and this 14 song record letter is the longest, most heartbreaking goodbye letter youâll ever hear.
Frankie Cosmos-Zentropy
Greta Klein channels Flo Rida, leaves her man behind for the club, and delivers a line on âI Do Too,â my favorite song on Zentropy, that feels more like a revelation every time I hear it: âI have no idea what Iâm doing.â
Rosanne Cash-The River and the Thread
If Rosanne Cash were a man, this would be the mid-late career record that would have been hailed as her wise veteran comeback masterpiece, her Time Out of Mind, her Harvest Moon, her Wildflowers. Cash treats her own Southern roots as a myth worth interrogating, and her songs attack, admire, and antagonize the South--mid-century Memphis, Civil War balladry, New Deal public works--with a love and devotion to its many musical traditions, to the â50,000 Watts of common prayer,â as she puts it, that has melded blues, country, soul and jazz for the past hundred years.
A few reasons to buy the Felice Brothersâ new Christmas EP
-Itâs called Felice Navidad
-This is the album cover
-Their last digital-only, low-key download is one of my favorite records of the last five years.
-Proceeds from album sales goes to the Hudson Valley Food Bank.Â
-Thereâs a melancholy song called âThe Dollar Storeâ
These are the studio notes from the Southeastern sessions when Jason Isbell was recording his career-defining album back in the Spring of 2013. Some highlights:
-The note next to âTravelinâ Aloneâ says âshould be like [Neil Youngâs] Harvest.â
-At some point, âLive Oakâ (listed here as âman who walks besides meâ) âfelt like an old bluegrass track.â
-For âSongs She Sang in the Showerâ (noted here by the opening line âon a lark,â it reads âSimon and Gar,â and also says the song has a âStuck on my Own Loveâ melody. Does anybody know what song that is?
-Track 12 appears to be an unreleased outtake. Itâs hard to make out, but the line reads something like âLookinâ for my constant-need to be wild.â
-The note next to âCover Me Upâ just reads, âPowerful song.â Indeed.
Hereâs a seriously heavy Johnny Cash song he wrote called âMore What is Truth.â Cash apparently never even recorded the song, which Iâm sure his record label was quite happy about.Â
The graduate with the highest grades
Gets 2 scholarships for the marks heâs made
One of the lower grade classmates
Goes to the Army when he graduates
The lucky scholar gets a white collar job
The ex-GI is one of the mob
The white collar man has got it made
The ex-GI doesnât have a trade
The old lady take a pull for her nerves
Says these kids today got moreân they deserve
They donât have to work the way we did
Sometimes I think weâre too good for our kids
They drive fast cars, they drink & smoke
Half of âem drivinâ around high on dope
Always livinâ for the latest thrill
They make me nervous whatâd I do with my pills
Hereâs Kacey Musgraves on John Prine, seemingly from a Grammy acceptance speech that was never used (correct me if Iâm wrong on that).
I stumbled upon Johnâs music & it flipped my world inside out! Clever songs that broke any uptight molds of songwriting? Songs personifying bowls of oatmeal?! Songs that never pandered to trends but stayed ahead of them? I was hooked & he has long since been a huge inspiration. Just when I think a line is good enough I examine how it could be made more honest & conversational, like Johnâs. I encourage songwriters of every age & genre to explore the simple-yet-vivid pictures he paints. For his perspective is gold & a good song will always be a good song. Thereâs no doubt that Johnâs music has helped make me the writer that I am. So I wold like to share my 1st âSong of the Yearâ Grammy with Mr. Prine (an awards that means so much)...for the bravery & standard to always say it how I see it.
-Kacey
I spent this past Friday afternoon at the Country Music HOF and Museum, took a bunch of pictures. This letter that Dolly Parton sent to Ashley Monroe after hearing her debut record is the first of many to come.Â
Dear Ashley,
Steve Moore, my friend and yours, gave me your CD yesterday. It is really great. What a beautiful, beautiful voice you have, what great songs and what great harmonies you sing. Youâre a lot better than me, but you reminded me a lot of myself in the way you phrase everything. I bet we would sing great together. Maybe some day weâll have the opportunity. In the meantime, I just wanted to let you know that I think youâre great. I will keep it and listen for my own enjoyment if thatâs okay.
My favorite line on the whole CD was âI made him sing âI Saw The Lightâ until he sobered up.â Boy, did that hit home. It sounded my like brothers and everybody back home!
I wish you all the luck in the world. Steve says youâre quite special. And if he says so, I know itâs true because heâs quite special, donât you think?
Much love,
Dolly
Is there a better way to describe being a teenager?
We read all the right books
We sang songs we misunderstood
And with or without any reason we did rebellion what justice we could
I donât know if thereâs a singer-songwriter Iâve listened to more consistently in the past six-seven years than Jason Isbell. It was a treat to review his new album (out today!) for Rolling Stone, but thereâs one song on the record I felt like I needed to say a bit more about.
At first glance, âPalmetto Roseâ is a throw-away Isbell tune, a blues shuffle vaguely concerned with Southern identity with a catchy chorus that Isbell could write in his sleep at this point.Â
It wasnât until I started really listening to the songâs bridge, towards the end, that this song started to hit me.
Out on Sullivanâs Island theyâre swimming
On the beach where the big boats rolled in
With the earliest slaves and their children
Our first American kin.
I started Googling. I learned about Sullivanâs Island. I learned that it was once the largest slave port in North America, that approximately 40% of all African Americans living in the U.S. today can most likely trace their heritage there.
I learned that today, Sullivanâs Island is a quaint beachfront community that did not bear a single mention of its history until Toni Morrison dedicated a park bench nearby in 2008 to the millions of slaves who were brought to the island.
The bridge to âPalmetto Roseâ flung open the troubled door on this song--the dark waters beneath the surface of its murky blues-rock, the hundreds of years of history the songâs narrator is taking in as he looks out at a city he canât help but love, despite its countless demons.
The bridge made me pause over an earlier line in the song that I hadnât paid nearly enough attention to: âCatch em coming out of the King Street Store/With some bullshit story about the Civil War.â
The bridge made me think of the last chapter of The Great Gatsby, when Nick Carraway looks out on the Long Island Sound as he âbecame aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailorsâ eyes â a fresh, green breast of the new world.â
I thought about how the bridge to âPalmetto Roseâ was a twisted, Southern Gothic version of that final moment in Gatsby. Instead of looking back three hundred years and seeing pure green innocence, the singer looks back and sees nothing but blood and terror.
The bridge also made think of Randy Newmanâs âSail Away,â our most brutal of national anthems, where Newmanâs slave-trading narrator has gone to West Africa to give his sickening American Dream stump speech: âWe will cross the might oceans into Charleston Bay,â he sings, over and over Heâs talking about Sullivanâs Island.
It so happened that I first started really listening to âPalmetto Roseâ in the days after a man walked into a church in Charleston, 9 miles west of Sullivanâs Island, and murdered nine men and women. I thought about the twisted atrocities and age-old beauties of âPalmetto Rose,â a song that could be best described as: half about flowers, half about slavery.
I thought about how Isbell demands that you not be able to think about one without the other.
 I have a feeling the new album from Traveller (Robert Ellis, Jonny Fritz, Cory Chisel) will be one of my favorites of the year.Â