Isn’t Loretta Lynn the country veteran who sang all about being a coal miner’s daughter and the pill back in the early ’70s? What the hell is she doing up here – you might well ask. Well, this unexpected gem was produced, arranged and mixed by one Jack White..
Anti-folk graduate and New Jersey native Nicole Atkins' debut album Neptune City is a beguiling mix of Roy Orbison, Loretta Lynn and Jenny Lewis's bangs. Just don't mention The Boss.
Cork singer-songwriter NICOLE MAGUIRE is rapidly making a name for herself with her full-on pop-rock songs, swoonful voice and dogged determination. On the release of her debut album Fight The Score she talks to Jackie Hayden.
As The White Stripes prepare to unleash another work of scuzz-bucket genius, frontman Jack White talks about his Catholic upbringing and explains why, as a teenager in blue collar Detroit, he fell hopelessly in love with the blues.
What happened when the woman who wrote ‘Fist City’ worked with the young man who liked to use his? Well, that will depend on your take on both country music and the music of the White Stripes.
Gretchen Wilson has co-written six of the songs here and they are about the life she and many others of her background can easily relate to. Add to that her strong vocal delivery and you have a very strong and seemingly irresistible package.
The deadline is approaching for entries to the 2008 International Songwriting Competition, with the full list of judges just announced, including Tom Waits and Black Francis.
Songs like ‘Sentimental Heart’, a concerto for piano, strings and Pet Sounds haberdashery, suggest this pair are as natural a songwriting team as Karen and Richard.
They go in search of the holy grail and come back laden with embroidered bell bottoms, cowboy boots and Nudie suits – tourists bedazzled by the gimcrack knick-knacks in Beale Street souvenir shops.
Born to a teenage mother, brought up in a succession of trailer parks and working in bars age 14, Nashville-based country-rocker Gretchen Wilson has had to earn her fame and success the hard way. And with even the great Tony Bennett high-tailing it from his own shows to catch her performances, it looks like the singer’s popularity is set to grow and grow.
Country music’s stock has never been higher. First Johnny Cash gained an entire new generation of fans, then Hollywood began to pepper its films with bluegrass and roots music. Now, everyone from Jack White to Van Morrison is waking up to the magic of country. Ireland's getting in on the act too, with the launch of the Midlands Music Festival, a two-day celebration of all things hatted and booted. Colm O’Hare traces the rebirth of a genre.
2004 was a year of infotainment overload when popular culture became increasingly co-opted to the business of selling. But there were those precious few, who remained faithful to the idea of art for its own sake.
A solo Jeff Tweedy show, a new Poozies retrospective, Christy appearing on Later With Jools, and Kila’s pre-Christmas shows: it’s a busy time in the folk world.
On a fleeting visit to Dublin the legendary Jack White sat down with Hot Press' Stuart Clark to discuss his past life as an upholsterer, jamming with Bob Dylan. Jimmy Page and The Edge and going for dinner with Loretta Lynne.
At 53, EMMYLOU HARRIS has finally taken up the pen and the result is one of her finest albums yet. SIOBHAN LONG journeys to New York to meet the reluctant songwriter.
It's head-scratching, nail-biting, on-the-tip-of-your-tongue time again, as GEORGE BYRNE presides over our renowned annual music quiz [this is for the year 2000]
The still vibrant 64-year-old on why Morrissey’s like Father Frank, why Iraq is like Vietnam, and on her meetings with Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Bono, Phil Spector and a whole Oval Office full of presidents.
