He was perched at the carved wood and marble bar of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, eyes glittering like black diamonds, dark hair turning up at the collar and a cigarette held parallel to the bar. It...

Mary Steenburgen on a red carpet for acting is nothing new. And when the promotions for Wild Rose, an independent movie about a gritty Glasgow girl transfixed by a Nashville dream, ramped up, the...

Jay Farrar didn’t know he was creating a whole new genre when Uncle Tupelo began, just as he didn’t set out to toughen up Americana with Son Volt, emerging with a band that merged Neil...

Dave Mason can’t believe how long he’s been on the phone. Half a century into the kind of stardom that affords someone the spotlight, the 2004 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee...

Steve Earle sits on his bus at an Owensboro, Ky. bluegrass festival. He played the Opry the night before, Summerfest in Milwaukee the night before that. Once the show at this bluegrass festival is...

Richard Thompson remembers standing outside his sister’s bedroom door as a young boy, listening to the records she was playing on her Dancette record player, and marvels. Easily one of modern...

Mavis Staples told Bob Dylan no. The socially conscious young woman who’d captured a fragmented America’s imagination as the earthy-voiced singer on the Staples Singers hits knew she wasn...

Patty Griffin has built a life of traveling the world and singing her carefully framed miniatures. Three decades into her career, the woman regarded as an “artist’s artist” realized...

They arrived with the full impact of Lauren Bacall’s great line, “If you want to capture someone’s attention, whisper...” In the big bam wham glam of the hair metal era...

Raul Malo is leaving for Europe in an hour, where he and his band the Mavericks will headline festivals in Spain and Holland. “There are 12 of us,” he says with a laugh. “Eight...