Maddie & Tae 'Just Wanted to Prove Everyone Wrong' With Their Country Songs
When Maddie Marlow and Tae Dye first penned "Girl in a Country Song," it wasn't long before it began making its way around Nashville's close-knit songwriting community. Plucking cliches from country...
View ArticleThe Road Isn't Easy for Lindi Ortega, but the Shows Never Fail Her
Lindi Ortega's voice harkens back to country's Seventies flair, and while hard work has elevated her name to a must-know in today's Americana scene, it wasn't all steel guitars and cowboy boots that...
View ArticleCountry Radio Can't Hold Ashley Monroe Back: 'I'm Willing to Find Other Ways...
It's tempting to tell new listeners about Ashley Monroe within the context of the company she keeps. She's one-third of the Pistol Annies, singing about heartache and hearsay with Miranda Lambert and...
View ArticleMiranda Lambert is Nursing Her Heartache With Lake Street Dive Songs
Brooklyn's own Lake Street Dive have been touring at a dizzying rate behind 2014's stellar Bad Self Portraits, and they performed for a sold-out crowd at SummerStage shortly before the outdoor concert...
View ArticleThe Cadillac Three Have More 'White Lightning' Up Their Sleeves
"My point ain't subtle here," sings Jaren Johnston on "The South," the Cadillac Three's 2013 debut single. He spends the next four-and-a-half minutes proving that particular point. "I'm a southern...
View ArticleIt Only Took Five Songs for Maren Morris to Change Country's Game
Head to church with Maren Morris and you’ll find hallelujahs and Holy Ghosts alongside outlaw icons and rings of fire. That’s the premise of her breakout single “My Church,” a windows-down anthem about...
View ArticleWhat Do Adele and the Underdog of the 2016 Grammys Have in Common?
In the spring of 2011, Adele toured behind the triumphant 21 with a stage full of lampshades, a wardrobe brimming with black frocks, and a cover of a Chris Stapleton-penned murder ballad in her vocal...
View ArticleBrothers Osborne Sing 'Real Songs About Real Shit'
We’ve all been there. You’re trying to sleep a couple more minutes, and your phone won’t stop ringing. You tune it out and throw your pillow over your head. Finally you give in, leaning over to take a...
View ArticleChris Stapleton Didn't Need a 'Parachute' for His Solid 'SNL' Debut
If 2015 wasn't the year country crowned Chris Stapleton its king, 2016 is certainly set to make up for it. Let's rewind: Chris Stapleton is no rookie shopping for Stetsons in Nashville or stroking his...
View ArticleWhat Do Alabama Shakes and a Wedding Ring Have to Do With Margo Price?
If it wasn’t for Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard, Margo Price’s debut album probably wouldn’t even be coming out. Price and her husband sold Howard their vintage reel to reel recording equipment to...
View ArticleLong Live Those Darlins, or Requiem for a Favorite Band
I fell in like with Those Darlins while driving through Cambridge in 2009, when a then-friend asked me to play DJ and my fingers found the scratched case of their self-titled full-length in the well of...
View ArticleKiwi Culture Meets Country Music in New Zealander Marlon Williams
If there’s anyone who proves that singer-songwriters don’t need a Nashville or Memphis address to make authentic, arresting country music, it’s 25-year old crooner Marlon Williams. Growing up in...
View ArticleFarewell, FarmBorough: What We Can Learn From Country Music Festival Failures
"We're not making the same pop-up over again." Brian O'Connell, Live Nation's President of Country Touring, told this to the Voice last year, when his latest venture, the 2015 FarmBorough Festival, was...
View ArticleWhat's in a Name? For Anderson East, It's His Meteoric Musical Rise
Anderson East did not come out of nowhere. It's easy to see why fans might think that: since the release of Delilah last summer, the 27-year-old singer-songwriter has taken his electrifying...
View ArticleFor Its Eighth Year, the Brooklyn Folk Festival Responds in Song to Signs of...
Banjo player Eli Smith grew up in New York in the 1990s, when the city was fertile ground for revolutionary music and art. Queens and the Bronx produced bar-raising hip-hop, the Club Kids took over...
View ArticleFrom the Village Voice Archive: Nat Hentoff on Merle Haggard's Tour Bus
When word got out yesterday that irreverent, influential country singer Merle Haggard had died, we knew there was only one way for the Village Voice to remember him: Nat Hentoff's on-the-bus profile...
View ArticleKenny Chesney and Kacey Musgraves Are Country Music's Subversives
If you want to understand Kenny Chesney's popularity — the ten straight No. 1 albums, the football-stadium tours, the dedication he inspires in his fans and the antipathy he provokes in just about...
View ArticleCountry Music's Most Unassuming Genius
Ultimately, it was due to the country smash "Girl Crush" that I drove to the Boston area on October 26 to interview Lori McKenna in her natural habitat, the big unluxurious cul-de-sac house in her...
View ArticleMiranda Lambert Stretches the Definition of Country on a Double Album
Miranda Lambert is one of the few names in the Nashville orbit that signifies for people who don't listen to country music. Anybody who has been to a supermarket in the past year has seen a tabloid...
View ArticleCountry's Defiant Star Eric Church Walks on the Rock Side of the Tracks
Country star Eric Church, the genre's most defiant rockist, calls to mind one of Groucho Marx's best lines: Gentlemen, he may talk like a rebel, and brand himself to look like a rebel, and his...
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