Your Front Row Seat To Americana Music
Roads can lead us to amazing places. Not all of them are on a map. When you’re in a car, you think about things. You are a captive audience and your mind finally has time to explore the feelings pushed deep inside. Fortunately, for Dolly Valentine (Leslie Schott, formerly of Holy Golden) such introspection inspired... Continue Reading →
A new Spotify playlist rounding up the best new Americana. Sit back, relax, and take a listen. Loyal readers of Mother Church Pew will be familiar with the Pew Playlist. It's been a regular feature of the blog and a fan favorite. It's also a lot of fun to put together because I get to... Continue Reading →
For most casual fans of music, the forty-five minutes that a band spends on the stage is all they can see. However, when the guitar cases are closed and the venue’s floor is littered with empty beer cans and trash, most bands load their gear into the van and return back to their normal lives.... Continue Reading →
Americana music has experienced unprecedented growth over the last few years, both in fanbase and styles included within the genre. With such expansion, it comes as little surprise that many U.S. music festivals have started including more Americana acts on their lineups. Bonnaroo has always been ahead of the curve in this area. In the... Continue Reading →
Death isn’t the opposite of life, it’s a part of it. And like everything else in life, having a sense of humor about it makes its inevitability an easier pill to swallow. That’s why we love “Double Grave,” the new video from Nashville-based string duo Zach & Maggie. The scene begins at a rainy graveside,... Continue Reading →
What's in a name? A word associated with an identity, names have power. But just because you know someone's name, doesn't mean you know his or her story. For a songwriting storyteller like Louisville, Kentucky-based Andrew Shockley, who makes music under the moniker Delafaye, a name is a prime creative opportunity. Following the release of four... Continue Reading →
"Is the world slowly breaking?" ask James Downes, Trevor Leonard, and Brendon Thomas, who make music together as Philadelphia folkicana outfit The End Of America, in the chorus of their new single "Monsters," out officially on July 19th. It's a question for the ages and one that bears pointed significance in these perilous times in... Continue Reading →
The "good old days"--like fine wine, memories get more robust with time, the rough edges of circumstances smoothed out by its passage, leaving the best parts behind. In their new video "Hot Southern Nights," Americana duo Swearingen & Kelli pay homage to the simpler times of AJ Swearingen’s parents and their humble beginning amongst the... Continue Reading →
At any given record shop, you can find the volumes of music left behind by amazing musicians who took an ill-fated leap of faith into the spotlight of fronting an album. Some the whispers of faded dreams, others parables on vanity, they haunt the dusty bargain CD bins and record crates. However, some who are... Continue Reading →
They say variety is the spice of life, and Northern Virginia-based rockicana outfit Melodime is testing that theory—in more ways than one. “We just got back from our third annual summer music camp this past August in Haiti, it was awesome,” explains vocalist Brad Rhodes of the band’s non-profit Now I Play Along Too, which... Continue Reading →