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.
Tag: country
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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.
Posted inBlogs
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.
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Cowboy poetry, the decline of the critic, Lil Wayne’s boring prison memoir, and more: the week in music writing
The Reader collects some of the best and brightest bits from the past week’s music writing.
Posted inBlogs
Cook County doubles down: Rap, rock, country, and DJ sets are not ‘fine arts,’ not exempt from amusement tax
At Cook County’s latest hearing on its small-venue amusement-tax exemption, the government dealt several businesses a blow that could eventually cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece.
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Dan Whitaker & the Shinebenders work hard for hard-working country fans
Dan Whitaker & the Shinebenders work hard for hard-working country fans, Myth Fest debuts with an ambitious bill of international electronic music, and more.