Email Author Roy Kasten

2008 Stories by Roy Kasten

• Indigo Girl Amy Ray gets back to her punk roots on a solo tour, while we catch up with Hum's Matt Talbott, on the eve of his band's New Year's Eve reunion show

  published October 15, 2008

  The Champaign, Illinois, band Hum was a local favorite before it split in 2000. After a few one-off reunion gigs in the subsequent years, the... More >>

• Lucinda Williams

  published October 15, 2008

  Let's face it: Since the career-making album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Lucinda Williams' songwriting has declined... More >>

• Jimmie Dale Gilmore

  published October 15, 2008

  Jimmie Dale Gilmore has one of the most instantly recognizable voices in American music, a tremulously high, soulful twang that makes... More >>

• David Vandervelde

  published October 8, 2008

  The endless summer of '70s Cali country-groove rock on David Vandervelde's Waiting For the Sunrise weirdly suits the... More >>

• Ricky Skaggs/Bruce Hornsby

  published October 1, 2008

  Somewhere in the bluegrass beyond, Bill Monroe is wondering just what the hell happened to Ricky Skaggs, the blue-eyed Kentucky boy he... More >>

• Southern Culture on the Skids

  published October 1, 2008

  It's not often that a band, after twenty years together, releases its best album; it's even less probable that said album would be a set of... More >>

• Scotland Yard Gospel Choir

  published September 24, 2008

  At this late stage in the evolution of indie collectivism, sheer numbers are paying diminishing returns, and there's no point in asking how... More >>

• Damien Jurado

  published September 24, 2008

  Damien Jurado has the musical baggage for a future of protracted mid-life crises, as he's known in various circles as an ex-Christian... More >>

• O, Brother!: Producer and guitarist T-Bone Burnett joins Robert Plant and Alison Krauss at the duo's Fabulous Fox performance

  published September 17, 2008

  In 1971, Led Zeppelin released its fourth album. T-Bone Burnett was in Fort Worth, Texas, plotting his first album. And Alison Krauss was born.... More >>

• Detroit Cobras

  published September 17, 2008

  Flea market crate-diggers have many admirable qualities, but torrid, guttural and sexy are not among them. In their heart of hearts, the... More >>

• Foreigner's Lou Gramm — touring as a solo artist with his new band — answers our urgent questions, while Old 97's Murry Hammond steps out with a gospel-folk solo record

  published September 17, 2008

  There existed only one band from the late '70s through the early '80s: Foreigner. The group gave us immortal rock tunes such as "Cold as Ice,"... More >>

• James Jackson Toth

  published September 10, 2008

  "Cocaine and bourbon, pinball and pool," sums up James Jackson Toth — or nearly sums up, as the former lo-fi, acid-folk leader of... More >>

• Tift Merritt

  published September 10, 2008

  There were big plans for Tift Merritt. To her first label, Lost Highway, the North Carolina-raised songwriter seemed an heir to Lucinda... More >>

• Bill Morrissey

  published September 3, 2008

  The music-geek wars between the rockists and the poptimists laid waste to logocentrism — the obsessive privileging of song lyrics —... More >>

• Colin Gilmore

  published August 20, 2008

  The peculiar nature of Colin Gilmore's Oedipal conflict is that it doesn't seem like a conflict at all. The son of country mystic Jimmie... More >>

• Blue Mountain

  published August 20, 2008

  On the classic 1995 album Dog Days, the Oxford, Mississippi, trio Blue Mountain distilled the supremely unalienated bliss of... More >>

• Curtis Eller

  published August 13, 2008

  Curtis Eller touts himself as "New York's angriest yodeling banjo player," which is like claiming to be the funniest Tuvan throat singer... More >>

• Krist Krueger

  published August 6, 2008

  Not long ago DIY meant hiss and rumble and inscrutable dreams, a sonic manner of standing athwart commercial paradigms either by choice,... More >>

• The Ting Tings

  published July 30, 2008

  The club culture and hipster-rock fusion of the Ting Tings seem to have a single purpose: make KC and the Sunshine Band sound a little... More >>

• Black Joe Lewis and the Honey Bears turn soul on its head, while Boyz II Men's St. Louis show spawns two views of vintage R&B

  published July 30, 2008

  Black Joe Lewis is the black sheep of a soul revival led by accomplished veterans like Sharon Jones, Bettye LaVette and Charles Walker. He's... More >>

• Black Crowes

  published July 23, 2008

  One shouldn't feel sorry for Maxim, which committed journalistic hara-kiri by reviewing the Black Crowes' 2008 album... More >>

• Thao with the Get Down Stay Down

  published July 16, 2008

  Now and again Thao Nguyen would signal discomfort in her anti-folkie singer-strummer skin and turn to writing reviews for illustrious outlets... More >>

• The Treeweasels/Half Knots

  published July 16, 2008

  Of all the long-lost St. Louis rock bands of the '90s, the Treeweasels are as ripe for a reunion as any. Formed in 1989 and essentially... More >>

• B-Sides cuts to the heart of the matter with songwriter John Hiatt, while a new book about Slayer asserts the band's thrash-metal dominance

  published July 9, 2008

  Reign of Terror If there's one immutable opinion in metal circles, it's that Slayer's Reign in Blood is... More >>

• Joss Stone

  published July 2, 2008

  With her 2003 debut The Soul Sessions, Joss Stone rode the neo-soul revival wave like a long-funk-fed veteran, not a... More >>