Sarah Shook is best known as the singer and guitarist for rowdy country band Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, but Cruel Liars, the debut album from their latest project, the darker and more intimate Mightmare, proves that pigeonholing them would be a grave mistake. Shook grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household where their exposure […]
Tag: country
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Guitarist Eli Winter taps into Chicago’s musical resources
People pick their college for a lot of reasons beyond education. In Eli Winter’s case, one of the factors that persuaded him to choose the University of Chicago was the chance to engage with the city’s music scene. While growing up in Houston, Texas, the guitarist was particularly drawn to the way Chicago musicians from […]
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Dan Sartain’s posthumous Arise, Dan Sartain, Arise shows why his songwriting will live on
It took only the opening bars of the first Dan Sartain record I heard, 2006’s Join Dan Sartain (released on the illustrious Swami Records), to hook me on the music of the Alabama songwriter. His sharp, sometimes dark lyrics, his soulful and magnetic voice, and his ability to spin timeworn styles such as blues, rockabilly, […]
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Saxophonist Gene Barge helped shape the sound of Chicago R&B
Gene Barge has done his most influential work as a sideman or producer, but he’s just as important as any of R&B’s marquee stars.
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Eighteen years ago, Tift Merritt made an almost perfect country song
Tift Merritt’s “Trouble Over Me” isn’t exactly about love, but its emotional ambiguity is what makes it so relatable.
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Country mainstay Pam Tillis hits her stride on Looking for a Feeling
If you’re going to put out your first solo album in 13 years, you’ll probably want to make sure it includes a few songs that will appeal to your longtime fans. What country audiences want is obviously a moving target—country has been shifting toward including independently minded crossover pop artists such as Kacey Musgraves, so […]
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Hardy is the new, loud voice of modern pop-country
Today’s biggest pop-country stars take lyrical tropes from 80s and 90s hits—drinking cold beer, driving trucks, praying, partying, feeling heartbreak—and bulk them up with hip-hop beats, hyperslick production, and catchy hooks that sound engineered in a lab. Twenty-nine-year-old Mississippi native Hardy (aka Michael Hardy) began his career as one of Nashville’s song scientists; he was […]
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Hard-working country rockers the Moondogs never released their only album
The Moondogs gigged hard for a few years in the late 70s and early 80s, and these beloved country rockers have played a reunion show as recently as 2012.
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Picked clean on the gig poster of the week
This week’s featured gig poster was created by Nashville artist Dean Tomasek.
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Countrified rockers Possum River emerged from the breakup of the Cryan’ Shames
They didn’t enjoy the success of the garage-pop band that gave them two members, but after 48 years one of their songs turned up on Stranger Things.
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Longtime Carol’s house band Diamondback brings new fans and old regulars to the resuscitated country bar
Last week Carol’s Pub reopened under new ownership, reestablishing Uptown’s last surviving link to the era when the neighborhood was known as “Hillbilly Heaven.”
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The Wildwood Pickers took their bluegrass around the world—and worked as a house band at Dollywood
Today the Pickers are best remembered as an early proving ground for one of their founders, guitar virtuoso Muriel Anderson.
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Gene Barge blew his sax on some of the wildest R&B hits of the 60s
The Blues Festival pays tribute to 91-year-old saxophonist Gene “Daddy G” Barge with a set with by his longest-running band, the Chicago Rhythm & Blues Kings.
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RIP Trey Gruber of promising young Chicago band Parent
Trey Gruber of up-and-coming Laurel Canyon-style rockers Parent has died at age 26.
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An overlooked 1972 cut from singular southern soul singer Arthur Alexander
Arthur Alexander’s single “Mr. John” didn’t go anywhere in 1972, but it still sounds great on a recent reissue.