Woody Guthrie

Latest Articles

Max Creek celebrate 40 years of creativity

Still jamming after all these years
Imagine if the guys who started Max Creek never went to the famous Watkins Glen Summer Jam in 1973.
By JIM MACNIE | April 27, 2011

Playing Trial & Error by the Bonfire

Pilgrim's progress
Jesse Pilgrim and the Bonfire do a couple things pretty well on their debut record, Trial & Error , that are hard to do well: create an album with a sense of place, and create an album with something to say.
By SAM PFEIFLE | March 30, 2011

In good Company

Dark Hollow Bottling debut a new old-time sound
Dark Hollow Bottling Company take a piece of their name from an old-school folk/bluegrass tune, "Dark Hollow," possibly made most famous by the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia's Old and in the Way , but also recorded as early as 1926, with popular versions from Bill Browning, Jimmy Skinner, and Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, with Del McCoury singing.
By SAM PFEIFLE | February 24, 2010

Jew note

First Annual Boston Jewish Music Festival, plus the Klezmatics
Defining "Jewish" music is pretty much a fool's task — not much easier than defining jazz.
By JON GARELICK | February 25, 2010

Stars aligned

Cult heroes and superstars dot the region's fall concert calendar
The days are growing shorter, the magazines are (well, barely) getting larger and meatier, and the first batch of cider doughnuts is on the way real soon: all sure signs of autumn, as is the bountiful crop of prestigious concerts coming our way this season.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | September 16, 2009

Woody Guthrie | My Dusty Road

Rounder (2009)
The agit-pop songwriter of "This Land Is Your Land," "Going Down the Road," "Pretty Boy Floyd," "Philadelphia Lawyer," and a passel of other bedrock American folk classics carried a business card that identified him as "Woody, Th' Dustiest of the Dustbowlers."
By TED DROZDOWSKI | August 19, 2009

Nature's way

The atmospheric Jazz and Tap Odyssey
Evoking the great outdoors with live jazz, live hoofing, and spoken text.
By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | February 18, 2009

On their way to Memphis

The Lomax mine the South, and the past, on their debut disc
Their name sort of gives them away.
By SAM PFEIFLE | February 11, 2009

Nice package

Poetry not prose
As the largest stimulus package in world history winds its way through Congress, the critics are already out in force.
By STEVEN STARK | January 29, 2009

What rhymes with Barack?

Mr. Lif takes on the headlines
The story of underground hip-hop these days often seems like the inverse of Barack Obama’s story.
By FRANKLIN SOULTS | October 29, 2008

Interview: Billy Bragg

Mr. Love & Justice on the Clash, the Queen, and preaching to the choir
English singer-songwriter Billy Bragg once called himself “a one-man band who thinks he’s the Clash.”
By JIM SULLIVAN | October 15, 2008

Billy Bragg

Mr. Love and Justice | Anti-
There is no irony in the title of Billy Bragg’s first album in six years.
By JEFF TAMARKIN | May 06, 2008

Chris Teret

Music seen at One Longfellow Square, November 30, 2007
Chris Teret can fit a guitar and a campfire in his back pocket.
By IAN PAIGE | December 05, 2007

Agent Zimmerman

Bob Dylan? A CIA spy? Wait . . . now it all makes sense. (Or as much sense as his lyrics make, anyway.)
I had just removed his hand — gently, I hope — from my knee when the man in the off-white linen suit told me that he was the one who recruited Bob Dylan into the CIA.
By JAMES PARKER | November 20, 2007

The unnamable

Todd Haynes’s not-Dylan movie
If Bob Dylan were a real movie director, I’m Not There is probably the movie he’d make about his own life
By JON GARELICK | November 20, 2007

History tour

Zeitgeist’s compelling Kentucky Cycle; Double Edge’s Republic of Dreams
Whitewash has floated like a soap scum on the bloodbath of America’s past as told in the history books.
By CAROLYN CLAY | October 09, 2007

Irish sprung

Fionn Regan makes his way to America
Irish singer-songwriter Fionn Regan answers straightforward questions with beguiling sidesteps.
By WERNER TRIESCHMANN | September 24, 2007

Bounty

The best of the season’s roots, world, folk, and blues
It’s payback time for Boston’s blues and roots music scene.
By TED DROZDOWSKI | September 12, 2007

Happy endings

Bad news begets good tunes
The end is nigh! And I’m not talking about the mortgage market.
By MATT ASHARE | September 12, 2007

The best of times

More than a decade into their career, Dropkick Murphys accept success — and pay tribute to the people and the city who helped them earn it
On Boston Harbor’s Long Island, two miles out in Quincy Bay, the Curley Building stands hulking and decrepit.
By MIKE MILIARD | September 07, 2007

Revving it up

The Wrong Reasons tough it out; plus, Machines with Magnets
The Wrong Reasons have mustered a gallant comeback, and this time it’s for all the right reasons.
By BOB GULLA | September 04, 2007

Punks find their inner Americana

The altered aesthetic of punks playing folk
Punk might have been swept along, cleaned up, dirtied again, then separated into a million different subgenres created to simplify things when really it only complicated everything.
By JON MEYER | August 31, 2007

Shades of Grey

Roy Davis debuts with a ramshackle warmth
We know at least two things after Roy Davis’s January 4 Big Easy CD-release show: he’s got good taste — and a brass pair of balls.
By SAM PFEIFLE | January 11, 2007

The John Doe Thing

For the Best of Us | Yep Roc
In the wake of X’s first break-up, John Doe distanced himself from whatever punk he had left in him and pursued a rootsier, more singer-songwriterly muse. The John Doe Thing, "Hwy 5" (mp3)
By MATT ASHARE | December 28, 2006

The IFC Soundtrack

Indie rock for indie movies
The bridge between independent film and indie rock has been getting easier and easier to cross with the rise of a new generation of directors weaned on music videos and the multimedia underground.
By MATT ASHARE | December 04, 2006

Portland scene report: November 24, 2006

Sibilance
The Poor Valley Salvation Society, purveyors of the old-school and old-timey, have said goodbye to drummer Diane Toepfer.
By SIBILANCE | November 21, 2006

Sense in the sound

When it comes to singing (jazz and otherwise), it's about more than words
In Stephen Sondheim’s old formulation, opera is about music and musical theater is about words.
By JON GARELICK | September 20, 2006

Black and blond

The hideous sorority of Hollywood’s Black Dahlia and Boston’s Swedish nanny
She didn’t need an excuse to go out that night. Body dabble: Brian DePalma makes a mess of The Black Dahlia . By Peter Keough Dead flowers: James Ellroy on the movie and the obsession. By Peter Keough
By BILL JENSEN | September 18, 2006

URI series highlights the music of dissent

Sing it loud
Word is getting out.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | September 06, 2006

Sketchy

Artists’ notebooks at the Fogg, issues of extinction at the Gardner, and ‘Photographing Great Horses’ at the Fitchburg
Art — like music, physics, literature, dance, and other creative pursuits — rarely springs forth from the imagination in its final form.
By RANDI HOPKINS | July 19, 2006