Email Author Lawrence Kay

2002 Stories by Lawrence Kay

• Bob Dylan

  published December 24, 2002

  When Bob Dylan hit the road in 1975 in the shifting, shambling entourage known as the Rolling Thunder Revue, it was with a renewed sense of... More >>

• Alice Stuart | Catherine Irwin

  published December 18, 2002

  The plaintive female voice has long been a staple of the folk music scene. Joan Baez and Judy Collins provided its most polite, studious form,... More >>

• Richard Buckner

  published December 4, 2002

  In the early 1990s, then-local singer Richard Buckner detached himself from his longtime band, the Buckets, to become one of altcountry's rising... More >>

• Johnny Cash|Various Artists

  published November 20, 2002

  Perhaps more than any other living country singer, Johnny Cash is a veritable American icon. Like Willie Nelson, Cash bridged the hippie-era... More >>

• Buddy Miller

  published October 2, 2002

  In country music, as in rock, the dividing line between commercial and alternative has become fuzzy in recent years, as indie-oriented artists... More >>

• Various Artists

  published September 18, 2002

  There are few moments in current popular culture as delicious as watching a washed-up Martha Quinn shilling on a late-night infomercial for... More >>

• Dave Gleason's Wasted Days

  published August 21, 2002

  The altcountry scene certainly has no shortage of artists genuflecting toward the late, legendary Gram Parsons. Yet few have retraced his steps as... More >>

• Hear This

  published August 21, 2002

  Like many countries, Japan often seems to simply reflect the popular culture of the United States, regurgitating pop, rap, and rock as each style... More >>

• Various Artists; Dan Zanes and Friends; Tom Paxton

  published August 14, 2002

  It was bound to happen. One by one, all your hipster friends started breeding like rabbits. Suddenly they traded in their Dickies and Doc Martens... More >>

• The Jesus and MaryChain/Oasis

  published July 17, 2002

  Back in the early '80s, the Jesus and Mary Chain set the pace for the über-cool, guitar-heavy British indie scene with a series of... More >>

• Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

  published July 10, 2002

  "Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I'm sorry. This moment is so much bigger than me." -- Halle Berry at the 74th Annual Academy Awards Most of... More >>

• The Flatlanders

  published July 3, 2002

  Sometimes country bands are like high-class wines: They just need time to ripen. That's certainly the case with the Flatlanders -- Joe Ely, Jimmie... More >>

• Chuck Prophet

  published June 12, 2002

  Somewhere, somebody must have kicked Chuck Prophet around some. Stung, perhaps, by the frequent insinuation that he's just "a poor man's Tom... More >>

• Jun Miyake

  published May 29, 2002

  The Japanese fascination with Brazilian bossa nova runs as deep as any of the island nation's other super-consumerist pop culture hobbies. The... More >>

• Wilco

  published May 22, 2002

  If there really were such a thing as altcountry radio, it would be difficult to imagine Wilco's new album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, getting... More >>

• Hear This

  published May 15, 2002

  In the early '60s San Joaquin Valley superpicker Buck Owens almost single-handedly rescued country music from the sleepy formulae of Nashville's... More >>

• Walk a Crooked Mile

  published April 24, 2002

  Jeff Kazor is the leader of the Crooked Jades, a local group that specializes in "old-time" string band music, an antiquated forerunner of the... More >>

• Bart Davenport

  published April 17, 2002

  Long gone are the days when musicians with wide-ranging tastes felt the need to stick to one style of music in order to find an audience. No... More >>

• Carolyn Mark and Her Room-Mates

  published March 27, 2002

  Carolyn Mark is one of those troubling examples of altcountry singers who seem completely devoted to the music, but only in an exaggerated,... More >>

• Various Artists

  published March 6, 2002

  In these anxious times of war and terror, our nation's ties to the world around us are testy at best -- particularly with our Islamic allies like... More >>

• Scratch Attack

  published February 13, 2002

  It's midnight on a brisk February night, and a large, boisterous group of folks has gathered in the studio of Berkeley radio station KPFA-FM... More >>