On my way to The Sutler Saloon to talk with Tawnya Reynolds about her latest record, 8 Tracks, I was listening to the album for the fourth or fifth time in my car. Tawnya’s straight-forward brand of country songwriting pumped out of the speakers of my silver Dodge Grand Caravan and caught me feeling a little nostalgic for my time growing up in the Southwest.
REVIEW: Cam - Untamed
It’s refreshing when an artist lives up to the hype. I always feel relieved for the artist, and selfishly, relieved as a listener that a great single hadn’t gotten my hopes up. Breakout artist Cam released Untamed, her first full length album, this week to much anticipation. And by much anticipation, I mean you couldn’t listen to country radio in Nashville for the past two months for thirty minutes without hearing “Burning House,” her breakout single, at least once.
REVIEW: Chris Smallwood - "Out in the Open"
Backstreet's Back: Thoughts on Adele's "Hello"
Like many women my age, I spent much of my freshman and sophomore year of college crying to Adele. I was all about Adele. I’m not sure why, as it’s not like I had any dramatic relationships or star-cross’d lovers by 19, but Adele songs are sort of like the horoscopes in the newspaper: you can convince yourself they apply perfectly to any situation you are in-- like they were written just for you.
REVIEW: Darlene Love - "Introducing Darlene Love"
If you were to find the records of what I checked out of the Troy Public Library between the ages of 12 and 15, Darlene Love’s autobiography My Name is Love would be on there a solid four or five times. At that time, Love was making a living as an entertainer, but not a star, as she had been since the early 1980s. Doing musicals, session work, bit parts in films, and annual appearances on David Letterman’s Christmas show-- she was present, yet under the radar. Love was a cult favorite, a story of the perils of sixties pop, and a casualty of Phil Spector’s regime. She had become such a symbol of the past events in her life, that she was forgotten as a current performer.
About five years ago, a Darlene Love renaissance began. It wasn’t a comeback, as she never really left, and “renaissance” almost seems too understated a word. Learn her story-- she worked and worked at this for years, and now, at age 74, she just released a kickass album.
