Oliver Gray

Festival Review: South By South West, March 16th – 20th 2021

March 29, 2021 Oliver Gray 0

Oliver Gray has attended Austin’s South By South West Festival for the last seventeen years. Now he tackles the online version. Negotiating the South By Southwest Festival normally entails walking for miles, staying up very late […]

Book review: Stevie Simkin “What Makes the Monkey Dance: The Life And Music Of Chuck Prophet And Green On Red” (Jawbone Press, 2020)

August 12, 2020 Oliver Gray 0

What Makes The Monkey Dance is the polar opposite of the standard ‘Cut and Paste’ rock biography. Author Stevie Simkin is an academic, and has applied all his stringent research techniques to documenting the career of […]

SXSW 2019, Austin, Texas, 8th-16th March 2019

March 28, 2019 Oliver Gray 3

One piece of received wisdom regarding SXSW, the sprawling music showcase held annually in Austin, is that it has become over-corporate and is no longer worth attending for an Americana fan. This I would refute strongly. […]

South By Southwest Festival 2018, Austin, Texas

March 29, 2018 Oliver Gray 0

The annual jamboree that is Austin’s South by Southwest Festival plows on with over two thousand artists descending on the town for a week long binge and that’s just the music. With film, gaming and politics […]

South By Southwest Festival 2017. Austin, Texas

April 4, 2017 Oliver Gray 0

I normally advise Americana-loving friends who enquire about sxsw simply to visit Austin at any time of the year and check out venues like the Broken Spoke or the Saxon Pub to get the authentic Austin […]

Can’t Live With It, Can’t Live Without It: Tom Waits

August 5, 2026 2

The musical influence of Tom Waits over the last seven decades has spanned far beyond what one might define as americana. His deep, gravely voice, has been described as having been soaked in a vat of […]

Paul McClure “The Good And The Bad Of It”

August 5, 2026 0

The Rutland Troubadour returns for album number four. Paul McClure, on his fourth album, decided to go to pastures new and left the rural north and travelled south to East Sussex and the fine Bex-Pop Studios […]

Artists with Hearts of Gold contribute to two more albums of Neil Young covers

August 5, 2026 0

Includes tracks from My Morning Jacket, Lucinda Williams and MJ Lenderman among others. Cinema Music Group, Killphonic Records, and City Slang have announced Heart of Gold: The Songs of Neil Young, Vol. 2 – Out of […]

Articles by Oliver Gray