COAL MINOR CANARY: DAVID HAGE GOES BEYOND ACOUSTIC FOLK GENRE ON DEBUT EP
It sounds like an apocryphal legend, but it’s true. In the heyday of the coal mining industry, workers would bring caged canaries into the mines. More sensitive to poisonous gases than humans, the bir...
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TONY HALCHAK TRACES HIS NEPA ROOTS ON ‘HARVEST SONGS’
When Tony Halchak began putting together his new EP, “Harvest Songs,” he had a theme in mind: a family displaced from its longtime hometown, maybe living in the Rust Belt, maybe a casualty of of the f...
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PHILADELPHIA FOLK FESTIVAL: ‘IT COULD BE 1975’
Philadelphia Folk Fest weekend is upon us, as thousands of fans have descended on the bucolic Upper Salford grounds outside the city for the venerable event’s 56th edition. As usual, this year’s Fe...
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KING JAMES & THE SPECIAL MEN BRING THEIR NEW ORLEANS VIBE TO DEBUT ALBUM
For most bands, recording a debut album is a bit of a rookie exercise. A group of musicians still finding their sound, feeling out their chemistry together, learning what works and what doesn’t. But w...
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KIM RANCOURT TALKS SOLO DEBUT, LOU REED ARCHIVE AND NEW YORK ALBUMS
Coming of age in Michigan in the early ’70s as Iggy and the Stooges pumped out the primal soundtrack, relocating to New York City in time to take in that city’s own brand of weirdness, and eventually ...
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IF YOU GO TO SEE VANESSA COLLIER, ‘BE PREPARED TO FEEL SOMETHING’
For Vanessa Collier, a live show is more than a set delivered by a performer to an audience. No, for the Maryland-based singer and saxophone player, it’s much more intimate and interactive than that. ...
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SLIM CESSNA’S AUTO CLUB LOOKS BACK ON ‘CIPHER,’ ‘MORE RELEVANT NOW THAN EVER’
Deeply literary in the Southern tradition and walking the line between wildly unhinged and coolly calculated, Slim Cessna's Auto Club has been making eerie and compelling music since its namesake, the...
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RICHARD X. HEYMAN GOES ‘INCOGNITO’ FOR 12th ALBUM
Richard X. Heyman is an industry unto himself, recording most of the instruments on his records and releasing them on his own Lower East Side label, Turn-Up Records, along with his wife, Nancy. And wh...
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JASON MOLINA’S LEGACY ON STAGE WITH SONGS: MOLINA IN PHILLY, BROOKLYN
Jason Molina, the iconic, idiosyncratic singer/songwriter who recorded under the equally inscrutable name Songs: Ohia, was not an easy man to know. More than four years after his passing at 39 years o...
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THE SPINTO BAND PREMIERE: ‘KIND OF A GIRL’ + INTERVIEW
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina battered the South, Pope John Paul II died and Kanye West released "Late Registration." Meanwhile, six teenagers in Delaware who had been writing songs together for some...
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