‘Good to see you again, folks!’ read the screens next to stage one on Thursday, the opening evening of 2019’s Cambridge Folk Festival; a not unfounded assumption that audiences return year after year. Thursday night has traditionally been a soft…
In August of 2017 Shannon Lay’s life changed completely. She went from being a sometime musician to creating music full time when Kevin Morby asked her to open for him on an American tour. That life changing moment became the…
The gestation period for birds is 35 days, while elephants take almost two years! In the case of Carriers, Curt Kiser’s Cincinnati-based band, the gestation period took five years. Yet along the way the band has become very well known,…
“Let’s start a band.” With those words Seeker Lover Keeper was formed at a bar in Newtown, Australia nine years ago. Wild Seeds, their second album, finds Sarah Blasko, Sally Seltmann, and Holly Throsby reuniting for the first time in…
On Lillimure’s self-titled debut LP, up-tempo jazz-hop splits meet conscious lyricism and sheer vocal finesse. It’s a fine blend of influences spanning a multitude of subgenres, culminating into the dense filling that fulfills a folk-pop shell. Shifting into a palpable…
The heat index was topping out at 108 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) as Pitchfork began. Even hotter than the temperature was the performance of the Great Black Music Ensemble, a 13-piece band under the direction of AACM’s Ernest Dawkins.…
Varied in its themes as it is delivered like a warm embrace, Sharon Goldman’s songwriting is unvarnished folk-pop. Every Trip Around the Sun prides itself on humanity, and it seems to be that it does so with a “nothing more,…
A resident, and well-respected artist, in California, Eleni Mandell publishes what we can call her “prison album”. Even though not actually recorded in prison, the record is inspired by her participation in the “Jail With Guitars” program, bringing songwriting in…
First released in 1972, Misora is timeless. Sachiko Kanenobu’s classic LP far has garnered critical acclaim and the reverence of folk music enthusiasts around the globe, marking her as a beloved singer-songwriter even though it is still her only release…
Tanya Gallagher’s music speaks to generations, and her newest album is the greatest indicator of the singer-songwriter’s multifarious appeal yet. As much a supplement to the 60s and 70s folk ushered in by Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez as she…