David Serby’s short story long

PHOTO by CHRIS MILLER
Just one of the many virtues of honky-tonk singer/songwriter/guitarist David Serby is his uncanny ability to turn a very personal experience into a universal truth. And while many a country you-done-me-wrong song predictably lays the blame on an ex-flame for lyin’ or cheatin’—or both—Serby understands that life really [...]

Glen Glenn and the half-century of reverb

PHOTO by DOMINIQUE ANGLARES
Before it was Glen Glenn, it was just Glen Troutman: a Missouri-born country singer who in the early ’50s played country dance hall shows and made the rounds on local TV stations (including Les “Carrot Top” Anderson’s County Barn Dance on channel 13, on which [...]

The happy Wanda Jackson country gospel rockabilly show

Writer Nick Tosches called Oklahoma’s star daughter Wanda Jackson “the greatest menstruating rock & roll singer whom the world has ever known,” and although the National Endowment for the Arts may not have had that specific phrase in mind, they so agreed with the general sentiment that they [...]

Paperplanes waiting for a train

PHOTO by ZACK PIANKO
It got dark and I’d been waiting so I could most diligently listen to the new Paperplanes album, and so I took off Terry Allen’s Lubbock (On Everything), which contains some of the finest writing of any kind ever to come with an American credit, and I put [...]

‘Proud to Be An Okie’ explains the subtext behind all that hee-ing and haw-ing

If ever a book needed a soundtrack, it’s Peter La Chapelle’s Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California. He manages to write about some of the best times and hot bands of the past century [...]

Beautiful post @ WFMU on Country Fuzztone: country songs with fuzz lead guitar. I have tried to track these down myself via guys like Ray Taylor and maybe Don Feger, and this post (aided by Deke Dickerson!) has lots of great stuff (Carl Butler, Johnny Darrell, later Wanda Jackson) and a few cool clunkers, and [...]