A variety of unlikely scenes popped into my head the first time I listened to The Juggernaut Jug Band. My first vision landed me in a gorgeously ornate, 1920s-era theater. I was a child, mesmerized by the kooky, rink-a-tink sounds that filled the movie house, forming the backdrop for a dancing man named Chaplin. The […]

Al Schnier’s young son is on the phone. Sort of. Every few moments, the little boy lifts his head off his father’s shoulder and gurgles baby talk into the receiver pressed to his old man’s ear. It’s as if he’s trying to help his pop answer a question. Suddenly, the kid shrieks with excitement: Elmo’s […]

For a long time, they were discouraged from playing (or even listening to) music, outside their church’s walls. But now, the Campbell Brothers just take their church — and its somewhat unusual musical traditions — wherever they go. “The lap-steel guitar has always been a prominent instrument in the praise and worship services of our […]

Asheville artist Marie Hudson compares abstract art to modern jazz — an acquired taste, and certainly not for everyone. But Hudson insists there is a method to her madness: “I am probably more interested in the content,” the artist explains. “Whether it says something or not to somebody else, it has to say something to […]

The best things in our increasingly mass-produced lives are still grown regionally. The simple things, the uncorrupted things — the things that gild our days and seasons — grow in highly specific soils and climates. New England is particularly known as a fertile breeding ground for folk music — and a crucial slice of a […]

Why would a news reporter — who hasn’t written about music in five years — want to do it now? Because in 1995, when my longtime girlfriend stepped on my heart, Guided by Voices was my medicine, my punching bag. I’d have an asthma attack every time I heard the words “gold-hearted mountaintop queen directory.” […]

Mexican-American poet/author Luis J. Rodriguez boldly challenges mainstream America to reconsider what we think we know about the Latino world — and about minority culture in general. Rodriguez grew up in South Central Los Angeles, where he was heavily involved in gang life. He documented those experiences in his 1993 memoir, Always Running: La Vida […]

Seldom do we encounter a band with a style that’s utterly unique. But Royal Trux, like AC/DC and The Ramones, has boasted an instantly identifiable sound since its early days. Unlike those groups, however — whose musical growth could be graphed as a straight line — the Royal Trux chart would be something akin to […]