The list of cultural seats for the Irish-American diaspora usually starts and ends with New York or Boston. Chicago maybe. But Tulsa? Not...

You know you’re going to hear beautiful music at a Milk Carton Kids show. But there is trepidation when they are the headliner. A small...

Okay, maybe not piss off exactly. It takes an artist of a certain stature and temperament to make 2,300 fans wait through two-plus hours...

I generally think of music festivals as minimally clad young people writhing in blazing heat taking duck-lip selfies amid a greater...

Always good to start the year with a 2,300-person sing-along. (And I’m not talking about “Auld Lang Syne,” a song I never really...

The shifting ground between youth and adulthood in my post-college years was an awesome time, at least as far as I can remember. It was a...

Thanksgiving is upon us, and that means Last Waltz season for fans of the greatest concert movie ever made. (Sorry/not sorry to fans of...

As we walked in the door of the CMA Theatre in downtown Nashville, we could hear the crowds screaming about a block away. The big stars...

One thing we’ve learned about the Nashville music scene is to be on the look-out for any show that suggests the presence of “session...

“Let’s see if we can turn a Sunday night into a Saturday night,” Jason Isbell told his band. Then they did. What a pleasure to catch a...

Rhiannon Giddens and her band served up a lot of powerful music at the Ryman Auditorium this weekend. But it was a salty,...

The “in the round” show is a staple of Nashville entertainment. Sometimes called a guitar pull, and often performed in a row rather than...

Not long ago a live-music-loving friend told me that the Avett Brothers were the one band he would still see over and over again. Now...

Any night you find yourself standing 15 feet from a harmony-singing Emmylou Harris is a good night. The show was Aoife O’Donovan at the...

At some point during the pandemic, as we were savoring the 16-hour binge that is Ken Burns’ Country Music documentary, Mary and I became...

It was the mid-1950s and, for better or worse, the “Nashville Sound” was taking shape. It didn’t seem to matter whether they were love...

I might as well have driven down to Mississippi a hundred years ago. But it was March of 2020. Peering back through the lockdown haze, I...

Our goal was simple. We were looking for some traditional Irish music and a pub that wasn’t packed to the gills – a trickier ask than one...

I don’t know how John Prine would have felt about Monday night’s Covid-delayed celebration of his life. He probably would have cracked a...

Our expectations were somewhat low for Father John Misty. We were only going because good friends are big fans and built a Nashville...

The Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa is an inspiring tribute to the creative process of this musical and lyrical genius.

It’s so wonderful when an artist you’ve been wanting to see for years comes through with a killer show. Such was the case with the great...

It was another one of those Nashville moments, when you are having a typical Sunday afternoon and you wind up a few feet away from a...

Shawn Colvin is joining the growing list of musical elders trotting out anniversary concerts, offering a song-for-song acoustic replay of...

Last minute live music decisions in Nashville rarely disappoint. In this case we stumbled on a gem; an art gallery performance by Aida...

So I caught my first Robert Earl Keen show, at the Ryman here in Nashville. Good thing too, since the legendary Texas songwriter is on...

There is a certain kind of brand new music that sounds like it’s always been there. We caught some of it at the Bluebird Café Sunday...

You know you are in the right place in East Nashville on a Monday night when the headliner keeps inviting guests to the stage, you’ve...

Jason Isbell’s is a voice that commands attention, singing words and playing music that rewards the effort. It’s a gift to see an artist...

By JOHN CARPENTER Bruce Roper leaned over the dusty workbench and carefully placed two slender, hand-hewn lengths of spruce into the...