Wounded Messenger’s Top 101 Albums of the Decade

I now understand the infatuation that music journalists have with making lists. As pretentious, biased, and personalized as lists are, they’re just as much fun to do. Especially this one, which I won’t purport to be the “best” albums of the decade, only my “favorite” albums of the decade. As for the number, well, I [...]

Album Review: Yonder Mountain String Band – The Show

“Out of the Blue,” the strongest song on YMSB’s The Show, leads off the album, and false hopes abound in the song’s galloping rhythm and focused songwriting. The Show quickly becomes a real head-scratcher for YMSB fans with song number two – “Complicated” – which shares more than just a name with the horrible Avril [...]

Music on the Mountaintop 2009 Review

My review and photos of the Music on the Mountaintop festival are now up at Glide Magazine’s Hidden Track blog.

News Fragments: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Lineup, Sunny Day Real Estate Reunion, Phish Album Announcement, Virgin FreeFest

-San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival has announced the initial lineup for the free event, which takes place at Golden Gate Park October 2-4, 2009. The first announced acts look just great, and the lineup includes Okkervil River, Del McCoury Band, Robyn Hitchcock, Aimee Mann, Allen Toussaint, Dr. Dog, Neko Case, Booker T. and the [...]

Tennessee Shines at Bonnaroo

Saturday, June 13, from 12-8 p.m. at Bonnaroo’s The Other Tent, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Jim Lauderdale hosts the Tennessee Shines stage with eight hours of bluegrass from The SteelDrivers, Cherryholmes, the Del McCoury Band and the David Grisman Quintet. Lauderdale will introduce the bands, sit in for some songs and welcome special guests to the stage [...]

Live: Second Annual Carolina Bluegrass Festival, May 17, 2009 at Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary, NC

It was a day on which “Cold Rain and Snow” was bound to be played. But the dreary weather couldn’t keep a thousand or so bluegrass fans from experiencing one of the best lineups of the season at Cary’s Koka Booth Amphitheatre.
The Second Annual Carolina Bluegrass Festival featured a fast-paced schedule of headline-worthy bands [...]

Album Review: Sara Watkins – Sara Watkins

Sara Watkins’ first “solo” album is a pretty, poignant collection of acoustic-based songs that have a broad appeal. Sure to enchant fans of Watkins’ wildly popular former band Nickel Creek, the eponymous album covers all the bases of modern mass-appeal acoustic music. Watkins and a huge list of performers go out of their way to [...]

Album Review: Larry Keel and Natural Bridge – Backwoods

Backwoods (CD – MP3) was produced by Larry Keel and Keller Williams, and the album bears more of Williams’ technical touch than Keel’s signature grit, striking a balance that is awfully becoming of the group. While it sounds a bit slick for such a down-and-dirty group like Keel and Natural Bridge, there’s a clarity and [...]