Singer-songwriter Patty Griffin's American Kid moves into the #1 position on the Roots Music Report folk radio chart this week, while Steve Earle & the Dukes (& Duchesses)' The Low Highway, also a New West release, tops the roots country chart. [To view the current folk and roots country radio charts, click on the headline.]
Jon Shain has developed and refined his own contemporary version of the Piedmont blues, a bouncy energetic style that developed in and around his adopted hometown of Durham, North Carolina and to which he was introduced while a history major at Duke University. After graduating in 1989, Jon decided to pursue a career in music and has been writing songs and honing his fingerstyle guitar playing skills ever since. A 2009 International Blues Challenge finalist, he tours regularly and will help close out the AcousticMusicScene.com showcase at this month’s Southeast Regional Folk Alliance (SERFA) Conference in Montreat, NC. [To read Kathy Sands-Boehmer's Quck Q & A with Jon, click on the headline.]
Child Ballads, the new album by Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer, tops the Roots Music Report folk radio chart this week. Son Volt's Honky Tonk remains #1 on the roots country chart. [To view the current Folk and Roots Country Top 50 albums charts, click on the headline.]
I wasn’t at Max Yasgur’s Farm in 1969 when Richie Havens impressed throngs of people at the Woodstock festival. I was just a youngster then. But I did get to hear him up close and personal in the late 1970s at my alma mater, Huntington High School, in Huntington, New York. He was performing in the auditorium, along with Harry Chapin, at one of the late singer-songwriter’s many benefit concerts. Richie joined his fellow Brooklyn NY-born folksinger in heaven or wherever kindhearted gentle souls go, on April 22, after suffering a heart attack at home in Jersey City, New Jersey. He was 72. [To read the full article, click on the headline.]
Acclaimed Montreal-born singer-songwriter, poet and novelist Leonard Cohen, Halifax, Nova Scotia-based singer-songwriter Rose Cousins, and Ontario-based alt-country band Elliott Brood were named as winners in the 42nd Annual Juno Awards (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys). The awards were presented by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) in Regina, Saskatchewan over the weekend. [To read the full article, click on the headline.]
Nearly 200 people are expected to converge on the Montreat Conference Center in Montreat, North Carolina, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, near Asheville, May 16-19, 2013, for the sixth annual Southeast Regional Folk Alliance (SERFA) Conference -- an extended weekend of contemporary and traditional folk music, networking, and learning opportunities. AcousticMusicScene.com will host late-night song swaps. [To read the full article previewing the conference, click on the headline.]
Our Lady of the Tall Trees, the latest album by Seattle-based duo Cahalen Morrison & Eli West, tops the Roots Music Report folk radio chart this week, while Honky Tonk by Son Volt remains #1 on the roots country chart. [To view the Roots Music Report Folk and Roots Country Top 50 albums charts, click on the headline.]
Thirty-two songwriters have been named as finalists in the 2013 Grassy Hill Kerrville New Folk Competition for Emerging Songwriters. Chosen from among more than 700 submissions from throughout the U.S. and Canada, the finalists will perform the two songs they submitted during the New Folk Concerts slated for Saturday and Sunday afternoons, May 25 and 26, as part of the Kerrville Folk Festival. [To read the full article, click on the headline.]
Ten finalists have been named in the 2013 Wildflower! Performing Songwriter Contest. Each will perform two songs on the Singer Songwriter Stage during the 21st annual Wildflower! arts and music festival in Richardson, Texas, just a few minutes north of Dallas. Billed as North Texas’ largest music festival, it takes place, May 17-19. [To read the full article, click on the headline.]
Portland, Maine-based singer songwriter Connor Garvey describes his music as acoustic funky folk-rock for the good-hearted. His initiation as a modern troubadour came during a 45-day self-booked cross-country train tour via Amtrak in 2008. Since then, he has been drawing audiences and critical acclaim with his inventive, rhythmic guitar work, clear, soulful vocals, and songs that capture people’s attention with humor, daring honesty, and grace – songs that challenge us to hope, grow, laugh, and see beauty in all of life’s metaphors. [To view Kathy Sands Boehmer's Quick Q & A interview, click on the headline.]
Singer-Songwriter Darryl Purpose's Next Time Around continues to top the Roots Music Report folk radio airplay chart this week, while the Jay Farrar-led band Son Volt retains tthe #1 spot on the roots country chart with Honky Tonk, a collection of 11 new songs inspired by the honky tonk sound of Bakersfield. [To view the current Folk and Roots Country Top 50 albums charts, click on the headline.]
Singer-Songwriter Darryl Purpose's Next Time Around continues to top the Roots Music Report folk radio airplay chart this week, while the Jay Farrar-led band Son Volt moves into the #1 spot on the roots country chart with Honky Tonk, a collection of 11 new songs inspired by the honky tonk sound of Bakersfield. [To view the current Folk and Roots Country Top 50 albums charts, click on the headline.]
