Our Favorite Music of 2015

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Avery Hill Dreams & Ghosts: A Family Album (Avery Hill) Avery’s debut album is a personal journey through her own family’s history told with the deft touch of a master storyteller. Be sure to check out her visit to The Sundilla Radio Hour. — Kelly Walker Charlie Mosbrook A Time Long Gone (Charlie Mosbrook) The lead track “Up Among the Stars” leaps right out and invites you to settle in for more. The rest of album makes it a welcome invitation indeed. — Kelly Walker Neptune’s Car The 45th Parallel (Neptune’s Car) The latest from a duo that has been […] Read more »

Review | The Wrecking Crew

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Chances are, you’ve never heard of the greatest, most successful band of the rock era. But if you listened to music at all from the late 1950s through the mid-70s, you heard them; if you were a fan at all, you bought their records. They played the soundtrack of your life. They were The Wrecking Crew. And at last, their story is going public, thanks to a marvelous documentary created by the son of one of the members of the band. The Wrecking Crew were a group of studio musicians in Los Angeles, but to call them “studio musicians” is […] Read more »

CD Review | Kelly Bosworth

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Everybody has a story, but not everybody is good at telling their story. Kelly Bosworth has an incredible story, and tells it in such a way that you’ll probably want to add it to your music collection. Born in New York but raised in Oregon, Bosworth grew up on classical piano, music lessons with her dad, and eventually jam sessions that became tradition with family and friends alike. But in 2011, Kelly’s father, Mark, had a rapid and unexpected resurgence of cancer in his brain, a cancer he had battled on and off for several years. Mark was on a […] Read more »

Parchman Farms: Photgraphs and Field Recordings, 1947-1959

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“Parchman Farm: Photographs and Field Recordings, 1947-1959” is at once beautiful and horrifying. Many of the photographs are stunning, and give people a glimpse into a world that they know nothing about, and never want to experience. And the 44 songs are outstanding examples of traditional and original tunes; it’s not difficult to see how these pieces of music made their way into songs that would be considered “modern.” And yet, the pictures are all of prison life at Mississippi’s notorious Parchman Farm, and all of the songs are sung by prisoners, many of them violent criminals, and many who […] Read more »

Our 2014 Year-End Favorites

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We spent much of December counting down some of our favorite albums of 2014. Troy Public Radio invited Sundilla Radio Hour host Kelly Walker onto their Noon news magazine In Focus to talk about some of our favorites. Here’s the complete list of albums we featured on our year-end programs. Nathan Bell Blood Like a River (American Family) (Nathan Bell 2014) Amy Black This is Home (Reuben 2014) Jeff Black Folklore (Lotos Nile 2014) Bobtown A History of Ghosts (Bobtown 2014) Cheryl Branz Letting Go (Cheryl Branz 2014) Bronwynne Brent Stardust (Bronwynne Brent 2014) Eliot Bronson Eliot Bronson (Saturn 5 […] Read more »

CD review | Click: Songs by Neale Eckstein and Friends

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Neale Eckstein is a man who wears so many hats that he needs a special room in which to keep them. In the real world, he’s a dentist in Massachusetts. It was there that he and his wife Laurie started the Fox Run Concert Series in 1997, and quickly made it into one of the premier house concert series in the nation, with a drool-worthy roster of performers (MANY of whom have also played Sundilla.) Neale and Laurie are regular attendees at the annual Folk Alliance Conference (a spectacle worthy of its own story) and it was there that they […] Read more »

Live at Caffe Lena: Music from America’s Legendary Coffeehouse, 1967-2013

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Visit the Caffe Lena Facebook page and you are greeted with a quote from Dave Van Ronk, “Caffe Lena is the best damn acoustic music club in the world!” The list of artists who have taken the stage of the upstate New York coffee house goes a long way to supporting the assertion. In addition to Van Ronk, Tom Paxton, David Amram, Rosalie Sorrels, Utah Phillips, Jerry Jeff Walker, Arlo Guthrie, Kate McGarrigle, Pete Seeger, Patty Larkin, Bill Morrissey, Christine Lavin, and John Gorka only scratch the surface of the luminaries who have made the trek to Saratoga Springs in […] Read more »

CD Review | This One’s For Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark

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“Let’s give her a good go, and make ol’ Guy proud of us.” With those words, Rodney Crowell launches into “That Old Time Feeling,” one of 30 Guy Clark tunes covered masterfully and lovingly by some of the top performers in the genre. Guy Clark’s songs have been covered by so many, and so often, that there was probably some discussion among those on this disc about who would sing what. Take “That Old Time Feeling,” for example: many people consider it a Jerry Jeff Walker classic. And JJW hasn’t been left out; he closes the collection with “My Favorite […] Read more »

CD Review | Dan Navarro with Stonehoney Live at McCabe’s

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This 2009 release held special significance for a couple of reasons. It was the first full-length CD to feature Stonehoney, a popular and successful country-rock quartet that had spent too much time on the road and too little in the studio. (That issue has since been rectified with the release of The Cedar Creek Sessions.) More importantly, it was the first solo CD by Dan Navarro. Poignantly, the concert that would become Dan Navarro with Stonehoney Live at McCabe’s took place just one week after the final performance by Lowen and Navarro. Lowen and Navarro were together for 22 years […] Read more »