Without delay, here are the albums I listened to while putting together the Jan. 27 issue of The Island News:
Jimmy Buffett — Son of a Son of a Sailor
John Denver — An Evening With John Denver
Son Volt — Union
Archive for Son Volt
Newspaper tunes, Jan. 27 edition
Posted in Music with tags An Evening With John Denver, Cowboy Junkies, Dwight Yoakam, Gone, Harvest Moon, Jimmy Buffett, John Denver, Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music, Neil Young, Ray Charles, Son of a Son of a Sailor, Son Volt, Studio, The Island News, Union on February 2, 2022 by macmysteryYou didn’t have to tell me it was a classic
Posted in Music with tags alt-country, Carter Family, Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Lucinda Williams, No Depression, Prefix, Son Volt, Steve Earle, The Jayhawks, Uncle Tupelo, Whiskeytown, Wilco on September 9, 2008 by macmystery
Steve Earle's classic 1997 album "El Corazon"
Prefix, an online music magazine, has released a list of the Top 10 essential alt-country albums.
For the uninitiated, alt-country is a genre of music closely related to Americana. While classic artists such as Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris and Johnny Cash often find themselves included in the genre, it isn’t synonymous with the country-rock fad of the 70s. You’ll find no Eagles here.
For the most part, what is now known as alt-country originated with the band Uncle Tupelo, which split in the early 1990s into two major bands: the straightforward Son Volt and the more experimental and pop Wilco, both of which have an album on this list. The genre is best covered by the now-online-only magazine “No Depression,” named for a Carter Family classic, Uncle Tupelo’s debut album and an AOL user group.
The No. 1 album on the list is Steve Earle’s El Corazon, one of several superb albums put out by Earle in the years since his incarceration for heroin posession in the early 1990s and my personal favorite. Other notable album’s on the list include the Jayhawks’ “Hollywood Town Hall,” Loretta Lynn’s “Van Lear Rose,” Lucinda Williams’ “Car Wheels On a Gravel Road” and Whiskeytown’s “Strangers Almanac.”
Here’s a performance of “Christmas in Washington” from Earle’s “El Corazon:”
Raising Two Americans 