At the end of January 2020, winter hasn’t exactly been winter, but the cold still bites, night still settles early. In the wake of the day’s historic events, a different kind of bite settles into the soul. So it was that I found myself seeking community at The Creative […]
The vagabond life comes with its hopes and failures, its wild joys and its lonely moonrises. Fruition – Jay Cobb Anderson, Kellen Asebroek, Mimi Naja, Jeff Leonard, and Tyler Thompson – essentially became a band on the road, busking on sidewalks around all around America. The product of easy serendipity […]
The Honey Dewdrops – Laura Wortman and Kagey Parrish – have wooed Baltimore audiences (and beyond) for the last decade, having released five records in that time. They moved from their Appalachian Virginia home to Baltimore in the first half of the 2010s, quickly settling into and becoming Baltimore mainstays. […]
For the better part of two decades, Caleb Stine has had a hand in a Baltimore folk-revival that continues to grow. His collaborative and open spirit defines the music, his shows an experience in interconnectedness. Caleb champions other musicians as often as he can, freely talking about the musicians that […]
Every year, in the lead-up to April, Charm City Bluegrass hosts a battle of the bands featuring local-ish acts, most of which have gotten little to no real exposure. At the least, the winners have benefited from the Baltimore audience seeing them at Druid Hill Park in Baltimore, but often, […]
When the calendar rolls over from November to December, it becomes easy to get lost in little reveries, looking back on the year. We live in an age of lists, when Buzzfeed and all of its identical websites present everything in such orderly fashion, a delightful illusion of organization and […]
Night One On a Thursday night in December, arriving following a long drive from Baltimore, I walked into the Boot and Saddle, its dim wooden interiors brightened by colorful holiday lights. Settling in at the bar, I hear soundcheck ending in the back of the club – “Keys” in all […]
A chilly, steady rain thwacked to the ground along Eastern, the Patterson Park movie theater shining in the distance. A steady line of people drifted into the doors under the marquee, the Creative Alliance already filled near to the brim long before doors would open for the night. One […]
Life is so often governed by sea changes, those massive scale events that happen almost suddenly, but the world had never stopped changing under the surface. Mystic Country by Caleb Stine and the Revelations represents a sea change. As ever, Caleb sings directly – you can glean certain information quickly […]
When listening to music, history matters. The singer’s, the band’s. The listeners’, the venue’s. My history with Grace Potter is long, dating back more than a decade, first seeing her with The Nocturnals at the now-defunct Recher Theater in Towson, MD, surrounded by university students and a small haze […]
The last time Mandolin Orange came to DC, they unveiled the heavy folksongs of Tides of a Teardrop, newly released less than a week before the show. Featuring singles like “Golden Embers” and “The Wolves”, the songs practically buzzed into life quietly, beautifully, well-suited to midwinter’s passage. This time, […]
This Old Town took place last month on October 12th at the beautiful Howard County Historical Society Museum in Old Ellicott City. Those who attended were treated to an evening of traditional Appalachian storytelling, song, and dance. Music by Geraldine and Caleb Stine provided the soundtrack for the evening. Joe […]
Town Mountain tours a lot. Somewhere between 130-150 shows a year, with significantly more days spent traveling, they’re nearly always on the road together, a tarheeled traveling family. Hailing from Asheville, North Carolina, I talked to Zach Smith, the band’s bassist, about their upcoming tour, including a show at The […]
As autumn begins to fall, I find myself in an unsteady state, somewhere between the rising dread of lost daylight and the untamed joy of undressing forests and breath-stopping winds. A dichotomy of being that certainly has more shades of gray, but it’s hard to see past the splitting. […]
As previously covered and discussed throughout the past months, Baltimore’s best radio station – WTMD – brings six acts to a mini-festival in Canton on the first Thursday of every month during the summer season (May to September). This month featured a diverse run of acts, including the legendary funk/soul […]
Hot August Music Festival celebrated its Forever 27 this year, inviting a wide-ranging cast of artists, honoring the festival’s blues history, its emphasis on local musicians, and offering the multigenerational crowd a taste of music spanning genres and decades. From the rising stars of Billy Strings and Vanessa Collier to […]
People aren’t as self-directed as they like to imagine, our interests, careers, and hobbies coming just as much from opportunity as decision. Photography is like that for me, though like anyone else in this little slice of existence, I increasingly guide my path. My wife scrapbooks. That’s important, I promise. […]
WTMD – undoubtedly Baltimore’s best music station – has hosted/arranged First Thursday events for a decade and some change, beginning in Mount Vernon before moving to Canton Waterfront Park in 2014. Since moving to the Waterfront, First Thursday is less of a traditional outdoor concert and more of a monthly music […]
On Labor Day weekend at the Skyline Ranch Resort in Front Royal, VA, and within spitting distance of Shenandoah National Park, the Appaloosa Festival will float into town. Expanded from a two-day to a three-day festival for the first time, hosts Scythian are welcoming an even larger slate of performers, […]
Philadelphia might well lay claim to Kurt Vile, but The Ottobar (and Baltimore) could just as easily assert adoption rights. Kurt Vile rode the back of a world-altering thunderstorm to Charm City on a Tuesday night, breezing into our streets and onto our favorite stage. Kurt’s touring Bottle It […]
Music is hope, right? The Steel Wheels, from Harrisonburg, Virginia, traffic in that kind of positive ideology, steering roads on their bicycles and in vans, spreading a kind of honest truth in their music. Which isn’t to say their songs are full of Kumbaya (that’s not bad, either, fwiw), but […]
Every other year (excepting the first two), the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (henceforth called Mass MoCA) functions as a lodestone (magnetized, if you will) for a legion of Wilco fans. Solid Sound. This year marked the 6th every-other-anniversary of the festival, and much like always, it mirrored Wilco’s own […]
To call it “difficult” to summarize DelFest understates the reality. As an event, it offers more than music – which, frankly, is a lot in and of itself – instead providing a profound sense of community, of togetherness, and a wild joy. If anything, the truest theme and the greatest […]
I find myself pulling into a park I’ve never seen in a part of town I’ve rarely been to meet the women of Wicked Sycamore. A sunbright solid blue afternoon, the suddenly massive fields of Leakin Park – the honest-to-goodness largest continuous park in an urban setting in America (take […]
Jackie Greene has earned the nickname “Prince of Americana” for his own albums, has toured the world with Phil Lesh, has played with nearly everyone at some point or another, can pick up any instrument (but the sitar, he admitted), but right now, he’s working on some new recordings and […]
College, senior year. I discovered Sing the Greys and then, more importantly for me, The Midnight Organ Fight. Unpolished, honest, and almost painfully direct; Scott Hutchison sang songs that felt familiar, those yawn-deep voids of depression, the jittery stumble-steps of anxiety. And the flickering joy, the emphasis that, even […]
Del McCoury has had a big year already. In February, he celebrated his birthday with the Grand Del Opry, which he characterized as “a great honor”, and his sons’ band The Travelin’ McCourys won a Grammy for their first album. “You know, last year we had a release party there […]
BJ Barham writes and acts from a place of honesty, sincerity. Every little thing he does suffused by the principles he’s nurtured, developed throughout his adulthood. Hard-earned, celebrating five years of sobriety, two years of parenthood, and approaching fifteen years in the music industry. A cliche of sorts, sure, but […]
We walked into Union Collective, its wide open spaces, expansive rafters, and industrial chic style inviting in the way few other places cannot hope to match. Charming, still, but not so dingy as the clubs we music fans so often inhabit; it does not hide in the darkness or paint […]
Eraserland is already a totemic record to me, the kind I carry in the chambers of my heart so it can flow through me again and again. Released on March 29th – my mother’s birthday – my most recent Spotify count is 49 for the album (minimum play), with the singles near […]
I find myself turning into the windswept beauty of an almost-ancient Roland Park neighborhood, its gnarled oaks, sloping hills, and beautiful old homes a kind of embrace. The oldest planned suburban neighborhood in the United States – a streetcar suburb – designed to tame the lush wilds around Lake Roland, an […]
