by Whitney Youngs The House of God Church in Orange, New Jersey, is a brick building with a nave roof and lancet stained-glass windows sandwiched between two houses on William Street. The church can trace its history to the first Pentecostal Holiness church in America, a Pentecostal denomination founded by Mary Magdalena Lewis Tate, a…Read more The Sacred Steel of Robert Randolph

by Whitney Youngs           The “Ballad of Hollis Brown,” the second song on Bob Dylan’s 1964 album, “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” tells the story of a poor, unemployed man living in a crumbling cabin on a farm on the outskirts of a South Dakota town with his wife and five children. Mr. Brown cannot feed his…Read more New York City: Spawning Ground for Americana’s Hollis Brown

by Whitney Youngs In 1994, B.A.T. Industries settled with the Federal Trade Commission to acquire the American Tobacco Company for $1 billion, and under the settlement, the company was stripped of its sole tobacco manufacturing plant in Reidsville, N.C., a town, then, with a population of slightly more than 12,000 — many of whose residents…Read more The Kid from Rockingham: B.J. Barham Stays True to his Carolina Home

by Whitney Youngs In 1985, guitarist and singer Vince Herman relocated to Boulder, Colo., from Morgantown, W. Va., and spent his first night in town attending a Left Hand String Band show, where he met its frontman, mandolinist and singer Drew Emmitt. This serendipitous encounter undeniably shaped their musical careers, as the two men, along…Read more Leftover Salmon Still Going Strong

By Whitney Youngs “Central time will put you roughly in the right area,” explains Andrew Taetz about where he and his fellow bandmates currently reside. Taetz fronts the alt-rock-country-blues quintet, The Youngest, comprising members who live in the cities of Chicago and Nashville, and with connections to the state of Texas. Taetz, The Youngest’s vocalist…Read more The Youngest and Its Time Zones

Born in Germany, guitarist Tim Reynolds lived out his formative years in a religiously conservative household in the Missourian city of St. Louis. His foray into guitar playing represented a musical revolution in his own bedroom.

Back in the 1970s, signals of rock radio stations never made made the airwaves in the small town of Sturgis, Michigan, where guitarist and singer Garrick Rawlings grew up.

Abrakadabra, a band known for its infectious grooves and indelible melodies, has been a fixture in the South Bay music scene since its formation in 1981.

Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis once said the blues, “[…] is the basis of most American music in the 20th century. It’s a 12-bar form that’s played by jazz, bluegrass and country musicians. It has a rhythmic vocabulary that’s been used by rock ‘n’ roll. It’s related to spirituals, and even the American fiddle tradition.”

Like a lot of black kids born in the 1970s and growing up on Chicago’s South Side, Wayne Baker Brooks wanted to be Michael Jordan. Jordan — and by extension his brand — embodies the culture of cool, so kids familiar with Jordan’s athleticism would naturally aspire to such heights.

In 1959, fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey founded Takoma Records by pressing 100 copies of an album from a recording at St. Michael’s and All Angels Church in Adelphi, Maryland. Fahey funded the release of “Blind Joe Death” with the saved wages from his gas station attendant job and a loan from an Episcopalian priest.

In a picturesque town, bordering the Hudson River in Upstate New York, there’s a street paved in between the dense forests of birch, maple, oak, and cedar trees named Fred Short Road. Its namesake sounds as generic as any Anglicized street name in America, but the spirit of Fred Short transcends street signs, orbiting the creative sphere of pianist and singer Marco Benevento.