Author: Lauren Leadingham

Inspired by Billy Bragg’s locked-down Mother’s Day release, City Winery All-Stars and Bragg are co-producing a special multi-artist Mother’s Day concert to benefit United Nations Foundation fund.

Sonny Charles talks 40 plus years with Backtrack Blues Band and the new album.

The show must roll on!

The great Steve Martin is here to remind us that the percussive arts — namely just one man and his banjo in the woods — can have healing properties. The actor, comedian, and longtime champion of bluegrass has been taking to Twitter with his Deering Clawgrass banjo and clawhammer technique to distract us in the best way, if only for 80 seconds at a time. Steve originally recorded “The Great Remember for Nancy” with his band, Steep Canyon Rangers, for 2011’s Rare Bird Alert.  The song is dedicated to Martin Short’s late wife, Nancy Jane Dolman, who passed away from…

Pathway to Paris, a nonprofit organization named for the Paris Climate Agreement which was signed on Earth Day in 2016, will celebrate Earth Day’s 50th anniversary with a virtual edition of their annual festival this Sunday, April 26. Among the performers of Earth Day 50 are Patti Smith, Michael Stipe, Ben Harper, Flea, Cat Power, and the Strokes’ Nikolai Fraiture.  Founded in 2014 by musicians and activists Jesse Paris Smith (daughter of Patti Smith) and Rebecca Foon, Pathway to Paris brings together musicians, artists, activists, experts, academics, politicians, innovators, and all citizens to participate in a series of events and…

The Rolling Stones have surprised fans with a new song called “Living In A Ghost Town.” It’s their first single in eight years, one they started working on pre-pandemic and wrapped up remotely during isolation. “Living In A Ghost Town” was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, created and recorded in Los Angeles and London. “We cut this track well over a year ago in LA for a new album, an ongoing thing, and then shit hit the fan. Mick and I decided this one really needed to go to work right now and so here you have it,”…

Today is Earth Day, and to celebrate Jackson Browne has released a new track titled “Downhill From Everywhere,” which he started writing nearly a decade ago. The song follows another, “A Little Soon to Say,” which was released in March. Both will be featured on Jackson’s forthcoming studio album, due out October 9. You can preorder it on vinyl or CD. “Plastic is a great and really useful thing, for medical uses for instance. But it’s just absurd that we use it to deliver things like water,” he told Rolling Stone. “That bottle will be around for hundreds of years and does…

Mike Campbell (lead guitarist of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Fleetwood Mac, and The Dirty Knobs) has premiered a new song and video called “Lockdown,” a lighthearted take on lockdown lifestyle. The video was shot at home by Campbell’s wife, Marcie, and co-directed by Ryan Daniel Browne.  The track will only be available for download, and all proceeds from the track will go to Feeding America. Says Campbell of the song, “Since we’re all keeping away from each other, I have been doing what I always do when I am home: writing and recording. I came up with ‘Lockdown’ for…

Says Waits, “More than kin and more than kind, more than friend and more than fiendish in his daunting and devoted pursuit of the lost and the buried, long may his coattails run and long may we now ride, and those that follow us continue to ride upon them.”

When Neil Young rounded up the current lineup of Crazy Horse last spring, they recorded Colorado, the first Crazy Horse album since 2012’s Psychedelic Pill.  The band features founding bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina, as well as multi-instrumentalist Nils Lofgren on guitar. Nils played with Crazy Horse during the ’70s and rejoined in 2018. Colorado was recorded in the Rocky Mountains and was produced by Neil Young and John Hanlon. Young has released a new version of “Shut it Down,” a track from the album, and has renamed it “Shut it Down 2020.” He and his wife, Daryl Hannah, made a video…