Country & Folk

The Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum selling trio Nickel Creek Chris Thile (mandolin/vocals), Sara Watkins (fiddle/vocals), and Sean Watkins (guitar/vocals) officially reunites for the first time since its 2007 self-described "indefinite hiatus" with the album A Dotted Line, followed by a tour of the US in support of the Eric Valentine-produced album, which includes the 2014 Telluride Bluegrass and Newport Folk Festivals.

Carter Girl, set for release April 8, is the first album of new recordings this decade from Americana legend Carlene Carter. Produced by Don Was, Carter Girl is, in a very literal way, Carlene's personal homage to the Carter Family legacy that both underpins so much of America's music and is part of her own DNA.

Dismiss labels. Forget trying to fit into a scene. Be true and play your songs. That encompasses the prevailing spirit of LET IT GO, the fifth album from the Grammy-nominated bluegrass expansionists the Infamous Stringdusters. The new effort finds the band on firm footing, at ease with an evolving sound that defies categorization. It's acoustic music, sure, but not the kind you'll hear from any other band. Roots can be traced but boundaries don't exist.

The follow-up to Long Gone Daddy features two tracks that feature the influential punk rock band, The Melvins - the title track and Hank Sr. cover, "Ramblin' Man" and Merle Haggard's "Okie From Muskogee." The 2014 album features additional classic covers including ZZ Top's "Fearless Boogie," Johnny Paycheck's "I'm The Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised" and Peter La Farge's "Marijuana Blues." Two previously unreleased tracks include the original version of "On My Own" and "Runnin' & Gunnin'."

The new album, Bad Self Portraits, is a microcosm of Lake Street Dive's evolution of the band from a weird alt-country jazz group to a pop-soul juggernaut, that includes 60s influences like Brill Building girl groups, British Invasion rock, horn-driven Stax R&B, Motown soul and even The Band-like gospel blues.

2014 release, a 10-song virtual "greatest hits" set of acoustic renditions of songs from across the BOH catalog, recorded at Nashville's legendary Ryman Auditorium over two magical nights in April 2013.

Discovered in 2012, Out Among The Stars is truly a lost, previously unreleased Johnny Cash album. These aren't alternate takes or different versions of songs that you've heard. These are brand new songs to the Cash canon. Completed in 2013 by Johnny's only son John Carter Cash, Out Among The Stars is a pivotal Johnny Cash album lost in time, and now ready to become a classic.

2014 release, the fourth album from one of Country's most electrifying entertainers and prolific songwriters. This release is the follow-up to his CMA and ACM Album of the Year, CHIEF, which has gone on to sell over 1.5 million records and produce two #1 singles. On THE OUTSIDERS, Jay Joyce once again joins Church for production and songwriting collaborations. Church started writing for the release in 2012 while on his Blood, Sweat & Beers Tour.

VIBRATE: THE BEST OF RUFUS WAINWRIGHT encapsulates a career in music that is like no other. From the 1998 release of his debut album to 2012's Out of the Game, Rufus Wainwright has played it his way, refusing to be categorized while establishing himself as one of contemporary music's very best songwriters, singers and performers.

Just a few weeks after the surprise release of the Cuttin' Grass (Vol. 1): Butcher Shoppe Sessions album—which Uproxx called “the most sublime and delightful music he’s yet made on record”—Sturgill Simpson returns with the next installment of his bluegrass series, Cuttin' Grass (Vol. 2): The Cowboy Arms Sessions. The genre-defying singer/songwriter reconvened an A-Team of acoustic players (now dubbed "The Hillbilly Avengers") for another round of reinterpretations of his catalogue, this time largely focusing on 2016's A Sailor's Guide to Earth, which won the Grammy for Country Album of the Year and was nominated for Album of the Year. This volume also includes "Jesus Boogie," originally performed by Simpson's first band, Sunday Valley, and two previously unreleased songs, "Tennessee" and "Hobo Cartoon," the latter of which was co-written with the incomparable Merle Haggard—who once said that Simpson was "about the only thing I've heard that was worth listening to in a long time."

Cuttin' Grass Vol. 1 (Butcher Shoppe Sessions) is now available on Vinyl & CD.

Arthur Beatrice founding members Orlando Leopard (vocals/instruments) and Elliot Barnes (drums) discovered early in their school-formed friendship, and musical partnership, that their opposing views would take them in interesting and often unpredictable directions. The pair were looking to introduce a new dynamic to their songwriting when they met and enlisted Ella Girardot (vocals/keys), after hearing her perform UK group All Saints' 'Pure Shores' in the school talent contest. Brother Hamish Barnes (vocals/bass/guitar) joined a little later, quickly providing another point of creative tension when he began contributing songs that soon became as vital as anything before. Ella refers to these lyrics as being 'Ambiguous...', and they may seem as such, especially when paired with seemingly unrelated titles. Each song name is in fact intended to encourage the listener to reconsider the words on realization that the title words are always absent. '...It's meant to be a 'rupture' of sorts - that thing that makes you realize that something isn't quite right, and you have to look at the whole song again to work out why it has its name.

2014 release, the seventh album from the Country superstar. RISER is a Country project grounded in lyrical substance with a new sonic power that spotlights Bentley's distinctive gravelly voice, one of the most original and recognizable in the genre. To assemble the album, Bentley enlisted producer Ross Copperman and executive producer Arturo Buenahora, Jr.. Together, the trio mixed the immediacy of old-school live recording techniques with the experimental nature of new technologies. Buenahora matched Bentley with the right co-writers and songs. The result is RISER: an album with a heightened depth, an increased vulnerability and a greater sense of purpose in every word.

Country music's 'Gentle Giant' re-teams with award-winning producer Garth Fundis for Reflections, the follow up to 2012's well-received comeback album And So It Goes. Don Williams, a Country Music Hall of Fame member, dominated for decades as a country hit maker and was dubbed 'the Gentle Giant' because of his unique blend of commanding presence and that laid-back, easy style cutting across national and genre boundaries. Those personal and musical qualities that stood out strongly across the 1970s, '80s and '90s, came full circle both in 2012, as Williams delivered the masterful And So It Goes, and today, as he readies the release of Reflections.

The first release of original material in seven years for the New York singer-songwriter was produced by Gerry Leonard.

Lions, the new album from William Fitzsimmons was produced by Chris Walla - guitarist for Death Cab For Cutie and previous production credits include Tegan and Sara and The Postal Service. Born to two blind parents, Fitzsimmons grew up in a home where music was integral to communication. With a Master's degree in counseling, he worked as a mental health therapist and recorded songs during graduate school. Fitzsimmons' music has been licensed to ABC, NBC, MTV and he has been featured with NPR, Rolling Stone, Uncut, Paste, Q Magazine and Wall Street Journal.

At the heart of Jamestown Revival is a friendship that spans over a decade. Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance grew up together in the small Texas town of Magnolia. From a young age, they shared a love for music as well as the outdoors. About an hour north of Magnolia TX, there was some old family land with a dilapidated ranch house where they spent the better part of their adolescence.

The ancient and the modern converge to create the timeless in Side By Side, the new Rebel recording from vocal titan Ralph Stanley and his gifted son and musical heir apparent, Ralph Stanley II.

Good Woman was written and recorded in a time of tremendous turmoil and change forthe band, between theending of relationships,thedeath oftheir beloved mother, andthebirth of Emily’s first child. The album is a testament tothe Stavely-Taylors’ strength and that of other women; to sisters, mothers, and daughters; to love, loss, and change; and to trying to be a good woman.The band explains: “We have been working on this for a long time and are thrilled to share the title track. When we think about making this album we think about moments and snapshots of all the different contexts we were in as it was made. Living in each other’s pockets and then living with oceans between us. Of voice notes and field recordings and ideas in emails sent across continents. We think of homesickness and family. Of being an outsider. Of endless notebooks and scraps of paper. Of studios in the winter and recordings under the summer sun. Of rainy London days and long American nights with coffees and beers, dogs, and cats. We think of love. Big, big love. Our Mum. Our Dad. Our friends. And of loss. Death and birth. Womanhood, motherhood. Sisterhood.“And coming home.”

Danny Kroha’s Detroit Blues could be considered part two of his solo debut LP - Angels Watching Over Me. In his own words, “it was me in a room playing acoustic instruments and doing my own arrangements of some old songs”.

Not so fast man!, when you hear this record and dig a little deeper into the facts, you’ll have a heightened awareness of the sonic beauty found in the simplicity. On many of these traditional songs, Danny dropped, added or rearranged verses from various sources, mixing up music from one song and words from another and unintentionally created his own amalgamation of early blues and ‘60s folk.

Keep your ears peeled for familiar and wild homemade sounds. There’s a DIY one string washtub bass made out of some kinda bug spray can. There’s a lot of jug bass, blowing the bass notes over the jug opening, frequently heard in early rural American music but also with the 13th Floor Elevators who ran their jug thru an amplifier. The one string guitar, aka The Diddley Bow, on “Come Out Of The Wilderness” is extremely rare, aside from Danny, one of the last times we heard one was on One String Sam's “I Need A Hundred Dollars”. You have your traditional assortment of spoons, jawbones and other percussion instruments, but during one session, Danny and the album supervisor tried out several pairs of Danny's work boots to find the best tone for the foot stomps. We’ll report back soon on what brand was chosen.

Instead of following all the rules rooted the early blues and ‘60s folk, Danny Kroha mixed up all the rural and urban traditions and kicked out a new surreal sound that could really only happen in Detroit - “I listen to both genres, for sure. I just wasn’t TRYING to make a record that sounds like that. It just came out that way”.

The transcendent new album from Ani Di Franco, Revolutionary Love marks the latest proof of one of her most powerful gifts as an artist: a rare ability to give voice to our deepest frustrations and tensions, on both a personal and political level. “My songs have always reflected an acute connection between my personal life and the life of my society,” says the trailblazing musician and activist. “As I started to come out of years of dealing with marriage problems, I saw my entire country in the same situation; the complete breakdown of communication and loss of empathy and connection. But after what seems like unforgivable damage, then where do you go? You can’t kick each other off the planet, you can’t change the past, so what then?”

As the 22nd studio album in an iconic career— a musical career which forged one degree of separation between Pete Seeger and Prince and the accompanying career of founding her own precedent-setting label, Righteous Babe Records—Revolutionary Love began taking shape in the final weeks before the Covid 19 pandemic came to change the plans of everyone everywhere. Returning home to New Orleans from a West Coast tour in February of 2020, with a new batch of songs written on the road, Di Franco found herself without a path to recording those songs and lost in the creative abyss of the collective need for social isolation. “And then I decided I wanted to start pushing this new music out by fall… before the election,” she recalls. “I felt very strongly that I needed a horse to ride to try to help get out the vote—to get people inspired and get them believing in democracy, believing in each other and in themselves.”

Di Franco began to explore using live recordings from the tour as the basis for the new album but then she reached out to her friend Brad Cook, a Durham, North Carolina-based producer/multi-instrumentalist known for his work with artists like Bon Iver and Waxahatchee. The two had kept in touch after crossing paths at the Eaux Claires Music & Arts Festival (an event co-founded by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, who appeared on Di Franco’s acclaimed 2017 album Binary), where she became enamored with one of Cook’s guitars. “Brad let me borrow the guitar and I ended up writing half this record on it,” says Di Franco. “I called him up and told him about the new pile of songs I’d pulled out of his guitar and about my recording predicament and he said to me, ‘Give me a week. If you can get yourself to Durham, I’ll take care of the rest.’”

Produced by Di Franco and recorded mainly in two whirlwind days at Overdub Lane in Durham, Revolutionary Love more than justifies the mad dash behind its making. As her first studio effort since the release of No Walls and the Recurring Dream (Di Franco’s widely praised 2019 memoir), Revolutionary Love arrives as an instantly transportive selection of songs. Rooted in her poetic lyricism and ever-commanding vocal work, the album unfolds in an understated yet captivating alchemy of folk and soul and lushly textured jazz-pop. In sculpting that sound, Di Franco and Cook assembled an eclectic lineup of musicians, including percussionist Brevan Hampden (Hiss Golden Messenger, Milton Suggs), horn/flute player Matt Douglas (The Mountain Goats, Josh Ritter), keyboardist Phil Cook (Megafaun, Shouting Matches), drummer Yan Westerlund (Quetico, Mipso) and Di Franco’s longtime touring band Terence Higgins on percussion and Todd Sickafoose on bass.

The first Country act to achieve RIAA’s DIAMOND certification, GRAMMY-nominated duo Florida Georgia Line have been making history since 2012. They’ve tallied 17 career #1 singles, 13.1+ billion streams, sold more than 33.9 million tracks and 4.7 million albums worldwide, logged 1.5 billion video views, and played to over 4 million fans spanning massive headline tours. Honored by ACM, AMA, Billboard, CMA, and CMT Awards, Florida Georgia Line releases their anticipated studio album Life Rolls On.