One of the few silver linings of the current situation is that you get to go to festivals you wouldn’t normally be able to attend, albeit virtually, and in that spirit San Fransisco’s Bay Area’s beloved Hardly Strictly Bluegrass is launching its new global and community-driven initiative Let the Music Play On to bring the spirit of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass to backyards and living rooms all over the world with a global broadcast taking place the weekend of October 2nd. And what a broadcast – the artists announced so far includes Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller, Steve Earle & the Halfgrass Dukes (feat. Tim O’Brien and Dennis Crouch), The War and Treaty, Amythyst Kiah, Chuck Prophet, Patty Griffin, Birds of Chicago, Los Coast, Shakey Graves, Alison Brown, John Doe, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Yola and Sierra Ferrell. Continue reading “Hardly Strictly Bluegrass to hold online festival featuring Emmylou and more”
At AUK we are on a quest to find the ‘top 10 americana albums ever’. Over the last few weeks our writers have been going through the mental anguish of trying to narrow the whole history of americana down to just ten albums. When every writer has had their say, a shortlist of the most frequently chosen albums will be drawn up and voted on, in order to generate the definitive AUK writers top ten. This week we turn to one of our most senior writers. During a recent AUK writers zoom meeting, collective jaws dropped as he told us all of having seen The Beatles and The Rolling Stones within four days of one another! Enjoy the selections of Alan Fitter. 
‘Pieces of the Sky’ was an album eagerly anticipated by those of us who followed the road of Country Rock in the 70s. Still reeling from the loss of Gram Parsons, this was expected to be the next best thing to an album from the Cosmic Cowboy himself. It fully lived up to those expectations and then exceeded them, as Emmylou Harris stepped out of the shadow of Gram and established herself as not just a good harmony singer in a band, but as an artist with a very clear musical vision and the ability to front a band in her own right. 
There was a time when the free CDs glued to the front of magazines were something other than a revenue stream for the publishers, and every so often a reminder of the glory days pops up. Back in September 1998 Uncut Magazine came with a CD called ‘Sounds of The New West‘. It was designed to accompany an article introducing New Country/Alt. Country/Americana to those scared of the word Country. What you got was a cracking compilation that should have sent you off to investigate the rest of the genre, whatever you wanted to call it. Now fully 19 years and change later we have volume five. The series of CDs makes for a good study in how tastes in Americana have shifted over the last couple of decades.