folk

There’s a lot more to the new record “Long Ride” from the guitar-toting Vicky Emerson than her living space – she, after all did make the jump from Wisconsin village Elmwood to the big city in Manhattan.

When Rachel Taylor Brown gets into a song – she owns it absolutely – she knows where it’s going, where it’s been and where it was at 7pm last Tuesday night.

Orba Squara’s “The Trouble with Flying” is a bit more than just a latest release – it’s a chunk of his life. Sure, it’s a collection in which you’ll hear over a dozen cleverly crafted tunes, but Squara took it another step. He turned his trip across the U.S. that influenced much of the work on the record into an online web documentary – and a damn good one.

On Chella Negro’s debut record, “Silos & Smokestacks”, you’ll learn what it takes to be an honest folk artist, singer/songwriter. It seems more and more, the traditions of folk music are lost – whether through advancements in recording technology, desire to be different, or the power of all of our social networking sites – folk music is becoming more and more electronic, a bit less than the acoustic values it was built on.

When an artist’s breakout track is titled, “I Like Trucks”, you’d probably expect him or her to be born with a knee-thumping country background – someone out of ol’ Tennessee; a Nashville native no doubt.

Typically, I would start out this e-mail with a message to both you, the reader, as well as to the subject of this intro, bluegrass 4-piece Spring Creek; a note to let you all know that this band is the perfect bluegrass act to persuade even the most ignorant of bluegrass listeners to give the genre a shot. While this may be breaking news to you, it certainly isn’t to Chris Elliott, Alex Johnstone, Taylor Sims and Jessica Smith – they know they’re bringing a new edge in the personality department to an old style sound.