Engine 145 - A Roots Music Publication

Pulling off a musical biography well is not easy.  Trust me; I’m spending much of my own time these days working on one, (on roots music A&R and publishing pioneer Ralph Peer). From short profile articles to full-length books, there are questions for the writer—focus, depth, audience, and how to go about it. I have [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Reading Marty Robbins, Dwight Yoakam–and James Brown"

Country fans have long since noticed (and sometimes complained) that the ACM and CMA awards shows feature pretty much the same star acts and hits of the year. That was hardly the case back in the mid-1960s, as pointed out in the Country Hall of Fame and Museum’s major new exhibition, The Bakersfield Sound: Buck Owens, [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Bakersfield, Nashville, and That “East vs. West” Thing"

Keeping up with the sheer volume of new releases that might be of interest to people reading this column is always a challenge, practically impossible, and while I don’t plan to do it often, I figure that one way to play some catch-up here is just to line up some brief comments on recent releases [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Some Records I Think You Ought to Hear"

Owen and Harold Bradley’s Quonset Hut, the first Music Row studio, was a place where, circa 1966, Tammy Wynette could be recording her breakthrough “Apartment #9” in one room, and Bob Dylan recording cuts from Blonde on Blonde in another, while an unknown named Kristofferson emptied the ashtrays for both. But then, people tend to forget that [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Chuck Mead’s Nashville Is Smart, Live, and Kicking"

If you’re fundamentally or primarily a fan of country music, or Americana, or bluegrass, as many reading these words will be, you might well not be familiar with the name “Janiva Magness.”  (For one thing, her first name’s pronounced JAN-i-vah, more like “Canada” than “Geneva.”)  This, separate genre worlds being what they are, despite the [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Janiva Magness’ Americana Blues"

Pssst. I have some shocking news to reveal: For some time, apparently, there have been some points along the roots music spectrum where the talent to amuse is commonly relegated to secondary status as less significant, less special, and even less demanding of technical proficiency than bringing audiences to tears, working them into a lather, [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Walking Into The Light…Side"

It’s beyond me when a new “musical year” begins these days, but happy New Year. The start of a new calendar year here in Nashville does have a certain distinctive local flavor to it; performers who’ve been out on the road, suddenly back home for a Christmastime break, show up at events and get-togethers around [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: New Year’s Beginnings, Middles, Endings, and Post-Mortems"

Working as I do in both journalism and music history, from time to time I’ve had the opportunity (and also the working need, truthfully) to interview the immediate families of some of country and roots music’s most celebrated figures, sometimes getting to know them outside of that defined situation.  It occurs to me again and [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Country Icons and Family Legacies"

2011 has not been a huge year for new music by many women on the country music charts, a situation that’s been much noted, often with understandable dismay. The most-heard hits by female vocalists have tended either to have come from the mixed male/female group arena or to be yet another single pulled from older [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Country Women Now, Books and Christmas"

Lately I’ve been thinking about repetition, repeatedly. See, I’ve never been one of those who can be counted on to rail against the latest alleged oncoming modern pop corruption of whatever country music has been sounding like for a while. In country, complaints about sonic invaders have always been there. But in addition, history leaves [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Refresh…Revive…Repeat…Rethink"