Category: Interviews and Profiles

An Insider’s Guide to Nashville: 10 Spots to Eat, Shop, and Listen to Music

Droves of tourists flock to Nashville each year for the honky-tonks that line Lower Broadway—and you should check those out—but here are 10 must-see spots off the beaten path.

Bob Doerschuk
June 29, 2016

Q&A: Mary Chapin Carpenter Talks Songwriting, Beating Writer’s Block, and Alternate Tunings

"Looking back is not the same as looking forward,” sings Mary Chapin Carpenter over the resonant ring of her low-tuned flattop guitar.

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
June 7, 2016

Guitar Talk: Vince Gill Stresses the Importance of Experimentation

While Gill is known as one of country music’s hottest pickers—you often see him with a Fender Strat or Tele, or Gibson 335 in hand—acoustics play a big role in his career, and his life.

Greg Cahill
June 1, 2016

Remembering Americana Icon Guy Clark, 1941-2016

He wrote some of outlaw country's most memorable songs, crafting intimate, finely detailed narratives and philosophical reminiscences that make him an American icon.

Greg Cahill
May 17, 2016

Read an In-Depth Q&A with Pete Seeger from the Archives

Before his death in 2014, AG interviewed Pete Seeger about his life and influence on contemporary folk music for its July 2002 cover story. Below is that interview in full: by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers Few individuals have enriched our musical lives in as many ways, and for as many years,…

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
May 3, 2016

Rebels with a Cause: How Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle Saved Country Music

30 years ago, Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle released their debut albums. Nashville has never been the same

Greg Cahill
May 3, 2016

Spirit‘s ‘Nature’s Way’ Became a 1970s Rock Anthem and Classic-Rock Radio Staple

Spirit guitarist and boy genius Randy California penned “Nature’s Way” in San Francisco one afternoon while the band waited to perform at the Fillmore Auditorium.

Greg Cahill
April 21, 2016

Down & Dirty: 10 Next-Gen Resonator Players

AG asked ten up-and-coming resonator players why they are drawn to these fascinating guitars and what aspiring reso players should do if they want to learn.

Mark Kemp
April 11, 2016

What Would Kurt Cobain Be Today: Acoustic Singer-Songwriter or Washed-Up Grunge Dude?

By Mark Kemp As you read this post, please think about the question posed in the headline. For many who admired and came to love Kurt Cobain and his band Nirvana, April 5, 1994, was a horribly dark day. [See note at bottom for clarification on the sequence of events leading…

Mark Kemp
April 5, 2016

Guy Clack sits on a chair with his guitar

Portrait of an Artist: Guy Clark on ‘Write Your Own Story, Whatever It Is’

Like most of the albums he has made over the course of a 38-year recording career, Guy Clark’s latest, My Favorite Picture of You, is a compact collection of exquisitely crafted vignettes, portraits, and narratives, each etched with just the right amount of colorful detail and tapping a deep well…

Derk Richardson
April 5, 2016

12-String Blues from Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix didn’t play a ton of acoustic guitar, so this clip of him playing his blues song “Hear My Train A Comin’” on a Zemaitis 12-string is real treat. So, put some headphones on and listen to a master at work.

Blair Jackson
March 30, 2016

The Stray Birds: Taking Wing With Guitar Strings

The Stray Birds began in 2010 as a duo, after de Vitry returned from Spain to her hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. There, she met Craven, and the two began writing and playing together at an open mic in nearby Marietta.

Pat Moran
March 24, 2016

American Primitive Guitarist Richard Osborn Marks Long-Awaited Return

In a debt to Robbie Basho, Osborn calls his approach “free-raga style” or “American raga.”

Kenny Berkowitz
March 23, 2016

Duke Robillard Releases Acoustic Blues Album

It marks the first time he’s recorded an entire album on acoustic guitar—and it was well worth the wait.

Kenny Berkowitz
March 23, 2016

Peter Frampton standing with acoustic guitar. Photo by Gregg Roth

Frampton Comes Unplugged

For his latest album, Peter Frampton decided to pull out all the plugs on a totally acoustic set of 11 reworked classics from his 1970s solo records.

Mark Kemp
March 23, 2016

Don’t Fence Them In: 10 Genre-Bending Texas Troubadours

The Lone Star State has produced a size-appropriate share of bona fide singer-songwriter legends over the decades.

Richard Skanse
March 7, 2016

Trolling for Trouble: The Internet Can Be an Ugly Place for Musicians

In June, two weeks after Frank Fairfield appeared on what should have been a career-heightening NPR Tiny Desk Concert, the old-timey musician announced he was quitting the music business forever.

Patrick Sullivan
February 25, 2016

Luther Dickinson’s Folk Celebration of Family and Community

On the new Blues & Ballads: A Folksinger’s Songbook, Volumes I & II (New West), he’s taken songs from his catalog, re-recorded them as folk song

Kenny Berkowitz
February 23, 2016

The Story Behind Davey Graham’s 1960s-Era Fingerstyle Classic ‘Anji’

Fifty years have passed since Simon and Garfunkel released Sounds of Silence, the duo’s breakthrough album. In that time, “I Am a Rock,” “Richard Cory,” and the title cut have become folk-rock classics. But the record covered one already-beloved song: “Anji,” an instrumental by Davey Graham, was well-known among British…

Steve Boisson
February 18, 2016

Americana on the High Seas with Buddy Miller & Friends

For Buddy Miller the high seas is the perfect place to create an album of country duets.

Kenny Berkowitz
February 16, 2016

Lucinda Williams & The Ghosts of Highway 20

Lucinda Williams has just completed another ambitious album, The Ghosts of Highway 20, which rings just as deeply and powerfully as its predecessor, but it’s moodier and more experimental.

Mark Kemp
February 11, 2016

The Circle, Unbroken: 50 Years of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

By Mark Kemp “What in the world are you listening to in there?” My mom was confused. It was the early 1970s and she was hearing acoustic guitars, banjos, and fiddles blaring from the wooden stereo console in our living room. Ordinarily, mom would have been fussing at me for…

Mark Kemp
February 3, 2016

KFRC_Fantasy_Fair_Dryden_Balin_Kantner-1

A Space Odyssey: Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantner, 1941-2016

Even though he helped form one of San Francisco’s great pyschedelic bands, Paul Kantner was always a folkie at heart.

Mark Kemp
January 29, 2016

Venerable NYC Mandolin Brothers Guitar Shop Up for Sale

Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Sarah McLachlan, Don McLean, Graham Nash, Bruce Springsteen, Stephen Stills, and Dave Van Ronk all shopped there.

Kenny Berkowitz
January 27, 2016

Martin Dreadnought Inspires a Classic Rock Song

Robbie Robertson liked the opening words, “pulled into” somewhere, but got stuck for the rest of the line...

Mark Kemp
January 21, 2016