Culture

Been a while since Waylon was in these here parts. No longer! So here’s the Great Outlaw with some marriage advice for y’all…

Philip Glass doesn’t approve of intervals. Last week, at Yale University’s Sprague Memorial Hall, the prolific composer gave a preview of what audiences in Dublin, Edinburgh and Cork could expect from his piano performances a few days later. He starts by declaring that pauses in performance “damage the concentration” – and he ended it in

Occasionally, people complain that this series isn’t contemporary enough and that it ignores the good country music that is still being produced in spite of the commercial interests of Nashville-pap. That’s a fair criticism. So here’s an acoustic version of Josh Ritter’s Folk Bloodbath – a hymn to the murder ballad which is, as Radley

I reckon it’s been too long since Dolly Parton featured here. So here she is making her debut on the Porter Wagoner Show way back in 1967 and performing Dumb Blonde:

Way back when back in the distant times I was at college I had – still do, in fact – a friend who was a John Denver fanatic. Aged 20 or so he’d seen the great troubador more than 20 times. In those days I had not yet seen the country light and, sad to

This week I am handing over the column to David Vick, who has contributed what I regard as the best (so far) of all the Top Tens I have received. Sound in judgment and admirably wide-ranging, Vick has in particular introduced me to Kurt Elling, an amazing jazz vocalist, still only in his early forties,

Mercifully, the election ain’t the only show in town. There’s actual, real good news elsewhere. For instamce, 57 years after his death Hank Williams has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his contributions to American culture. Better late than never. So here, to celebrate, is audio of perhaps his most famous and thus perhaps the

Another rare old tune from a marvellous concert we’ve featured here before. This time they’re performing an old Carter Family tune The Storms are On the Ocean. Terrific stuff.

Their 1970s album was called More a Legend than a Band and that was about right since it and they disappeared for 20 years. Happily the Flatlanders returned and continue to amaze with their groovy, mildly mystical brand of Texas country. Here they are with a song from their album Hills and Valleys called Homeland

At his best Willie’s pretty much a marvel and when he’s singing Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain you get a whole lot of Willie at his best.

When you’ve got a song called If Drinking Don’t Kill Me (Her Memory Will) then you know you’re travelling through the country of country. But that’s fine, because the Possum is keeping you company. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr George Jones…

Kitty Wells was born in 1919 and she’s the oldest living member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. So it’s well past time she featured here and, this being so, it’s sensible to play her first big hit It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels. If Hank Williams was the inspiration for everyone

Another gem featuring three great pickers and Alison Krauss. The Banks of the Ohio is a great song too and, like so many other murder ballads, a reminder of how closely connected old-style country is to the music of these islands.

So old school it makes old school seem dangerously hipsterish. But, you know, great.

Bryan Curtis has an excellent piece at the Daily Beast on the current state of country music. Well, the state of commercially successful, Grammy-nominated country music anyway. As you might expect, it’s depressing stuff. Basically, you have a choice between Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift and perhaps the best that may be said of this

Earl Scruggs and his boys pay a visit to Doc Watson’s home in North Carolina for some good times and some even better music. It’s old school and it’s great.

Been a whole lotta time since Waylon was seen around here. Time to rectify that so here’s the great man singing A Good Hearted Woman which is what every outlaw needs though since all mommas also know they really shouldn’t let their babies grow up to be cowboys you’d think that means they’d be doubly

Well, Sunday afternoon high-class, great-pickin’ gospel really. Alison Krauss has always cited Tony Rice as one of the biggest influences upon her career and here he is, accompanied by the great Ricky Skaggs, performing what is, in my view, a beautiful version of the classic The Soul of Man Never Dies:

Apologies for the light blogging these past couple of days. Still, it’s Saturday and so it’s time for some more country. Since I’m seeing him perform in Perth on Monday night it’s appropriate that Steve Earle makes another appearance in this series. And since his latest album is a set of Townes van Zandt covers

Sadly Youtube doesn’t seem amply stocked with footage of Gram Parsons. But here’s one of the next best things: Emmylou Harris performing her great tribute to Gram, Boulder to Birmingham:

Yay! Another young, still-to-reach-their-prime performer! I like Laura Cantrell heaps. She has something. Here she is performing When the Roses Bloom Again. A nice, properly mournful song that is, in its title anyway, a spin-off of an old Carter Family tune that itself is reminiscent of some of the old Border ballads and, thus, a

Because, frankly, from Afghanistan to Texas to the corridors of Whitehall and the Bank of England, it’s been a pretty bleak week it’s appropriate to bring Saturday Morning Country forward by a few hours. This Lyle Lovett song – If I Had a Boat – always cheers me up. Added bonus: with its dreams of

Elvis Presley once said that the Louvin Brothers were his favourite country musicians. But he nver recorded one of their songs. Perhaps because, like almost everyone else who ever had any dealings with the Alabama-born and raised brothers, he’d been cussed out by Ira Louvin.  Charlie said that his elder brother was all kinds of

Yes, that would be Steve Earle’s boy and yes he’s named after the great Townes van Zandt. One of the things I like about country music is it that, in the end, it’s all one big family. Granted, a family that sings about heartbreak and loss and the endless miseries of life quite a lot,