Essentials

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Caroline Spence YouTube video March 2020

Essentials: The Top Ten Caroline Spence Songs

June 19, 2025 FredArnold 3

It’s a difficult enough task to find an artist’s best albums or their best songs; the initial dilemma for this writer in the latest round of Essentials was to find an artist that justified inclusion, given […]

Essentials: The Top 10 Songs from season one of “The Bear”

June 5, 2025 Dean Nardi 0

You have to wonder why there aren’t more TV series about restaurants. It’s a good question. Ensemble casts work well on television and restaurants have staffs which are made-to-order ensembles. In restaurants, people work long hours, […]

Essentials: The Top 10 Ruston Kelly Songs

May 29, 2025 Helen Jones 4

If people were asked to describe Ruston Kelly’s music, there are a few terms that might come up: americana, folk, or even alt-country, but there is one term that the South Carolina native prefers above all […]

Essentials: The Top 10 Joe Ely Songs

May 22, 2025 Stephen Rostkoski 7

I owe quite a bit to Joe Ely. His 1980 album “Live Shots”, a blistering document of his London shows opening for The Clash that year, was my introduction to the Texas music scene. There were […]

Essentials: The Top 10 First Aid Kit Songs

May 15, 2025 Fiona Golden 4

As we certainly know at AUK, sometimes people far, far away from the United States naturally flourish in Americana. Anyone acquainted with the niche and wildly underrated subgenre of Scandifolk must know First Aid Kit. Practically […]