Read featured interviews with cutting edge folk artists, CD reviews, and other articles relevant to the Folk Music World.
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This is a webinar hosted by the Southeast Regional Folk Alliance (SERFA) on the topic of Cultural Organizing and Social Movements in the U.S. South. Since 1932, the Highlander Center has been a catalyst for grassroots organizing and movement building in Appalachia and the US South. Music has been an …
Seattle based duo March To May has just released their first EP The Water’s Edge, a continental-sounding folk project that blends the sounds of Celtic harp, Spanish guitar, soft percussion, and haunting strings with the lilting harmonies of the voices of Darren Guyaz and Beth Wesche. The result is an understated but passionate journey through the halls of musical awakening, essence, and love. There is fresh …
Donna Lynn Caskey’s new album Nameless Heart certainly won’t leave her as a nameless entity in the folk world. Her old time banjo accompaniments are the perfect backdrop for her artfully written lyrics, traditional in nature and uplifting in message. Track one, confident in its delicacy, seems to be a theme for the album as a whole. She encourages the listener to, “Take off your watch/Hide all the clocks/Today we’ll tell time by the sun and the sky/Rest you head a while/Close your eyes/May…
If you have seen “The Passion of the Christ” movie, you may or may not realize that the title “passion” is derived from the Passion Play that originated in Germany in the 17th century. In the small Bavarian village of Oberammergau in 1633, the bubonic plague hit, as it had many other places after the Thirty Years War. One in two families there suffered loss of loved ones due to this plague, and in an attempt to stop its killing…
Kevin Welch has had a long and prosperous musical career as a Nashville songwriter and touring recording artist. His songs have been recorded by country greats like Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, Tricia Yearwood, The Judds, Roger Miller, Ricky Skaggs, and the Highwaymen, to name just a few. He was passing through Birmingham, Alabama on his way home to Austin from Nashville where he played an NSAI benefit…
I attended a songwriting workshop March 21-23 at the Alabama Folk School at Camp McDowell in Nauvoo, Alabama. It was taught by seasoned singer-songwriter Kate Campbell of Nashville. Her storytelling ability has been compared to Southern greats such as Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, and William Faulkner, while her recording career as a performing singer-songwriter is iconic in terms of her output and the quality of her songwriting ability. Her workshop …
I have been a devoted fan of Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill, the phenomenal fiddle/guitar duo who have pushed the boundaries of traditional Irish music to create a uniquely beautiful sound that is stunningly hypnotic and other-worldly. I first discovered them in 1998 at Celtic Connections in Glasgow, Scotland where they put on a performance that held captive every open …
Colorado singer/songwriter Thomas Hine’s latest CD Forgive My Future (2013) is a modern folk album with that which is reminiscent of the sixties. The new film LLewyn Davis comes to mind. I can picture Hine in a smoky folk club rendering these songs to a captive audience. The lyrics overall are thought provoking, at times a little hard to follow, but overall insightful. The recording has a homespun sound to it, but that is not a bad thing. The production is not overdone. It’s more a raw project with all kinds of …
Florida is a state rich in the fostering and preservation of American folk culture, and I was fortunate to attend one of the numerous annual events hosted by the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park in White Springs, Florida. Among the events during the year are a Quilt Show in October, a Dulcimer Retreat in November, a Festival of Lights in December, National Stephen Foster Day in January, and the 62nd Annual Florida Folk Festival on Memorial Day weekend. The center, located on the banks of the Suwanee River,…
I have a special nook in my heart for Celtic folk music, born of my childhood adventures visiting the UK while living in West Germany, and then my actual residence in the UK from 1995-2000. The annual festival Celtic Connections in Glasgow, loaded with fiercely talented musicians and bands, sealed the deal for me as an avid fan of the genre, and so when I hear of a good band touring in my neck of the woods, I like to take…
