SXSW has come and gone, and for Adam Duritz, frontman for alt-rock icons Counting Crows, this year’s fest was a pleasant blur of music, friends, and questionable meat products. The Crows, who will release their new all-covers album Underwater Sunshine on April 10, headed to Austin to headline a free show and record a live [...]

It would be an understatement to say that Luther Dickinson  (North Mississippi Allstars, Black Crowes) has been keeping busy lately. And on May 8 it will all pay off as he will be releasing three separate records. The first, Hambone’s Meditations, is an instrumental guitar record featuring pieces in the style of John Fahey’s “Tacoma [...]

Lukas Nelson (son of Willie) was literally wasted when he wrote the songs for Wasted, his new album with his band Promise Of the Real, due April 3 on Tone Tide. He’s since sworn of drinking, but that doesn’t mean he can’t fully inherit the spirit of these red dirt anthems. Stream Lukas Nelson & [...]

Paul Simon has announced that he will release the 25th anniversary edition of his seminal album Graceland on June 4. The CD version will come with five bonus tracks and a DVD of the Graceland documentary Under African Skies. On May 11th, the film, which earned praise at SXSW, will have a limited theatrical engagement [...]

On Frankie Ray, his unreleased album from 2007: “It sort of came out with this record label called Koch. The album was supposed to come out and I could tell nothing was going on, there hadn’t been one interview. So I freaked out right before it was supposed to come out, and I was able [...]

Tin Pan South is an annual songwriters festival in Nashville. Their slogan is “It All Begins With A Song.” On March 27, hit country songwriters Josh Turner headlined a BMI Showcase, while Luke Bryan played a bill hosted by CMA.

Banjo legend and Country Music Hall of Famer Earl Scruggs died of natural causes Wednesday at age 88, according to The Tennesseean. On the banjo, Mr. Scruggs’ three-finger picking style was fast, intricate, and just what bluegrass needed in order to acheive the hard-driving, passionate sound now associated with Appalachian music. He was the first to popularize the [...]

Last night on American Idol, Elise Testone tackled the untackle-able — Led Zeppelin’s cock rock classic, “Whole Lotta Love.” And  the judges “weren’t fooling” when they heaped her with praise. “Robert Plant would be very proud,” gushed Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, adding that “Nobody can pull that song off!” Tyler should know what he’s talking [...]

(Photo: Todd Wolfson) On June 5, Fantasy Records/Concord Music Group will release Big Station, the 11th solo album from acclaimed Texas singer-songwriter Alejandro Escovedo. The new disc, a followup to Escovedo’s 2010 album Street Songs of Love, was produced by Tony Visconti and largely co-written with fellow songwriter Chuck Prophet (read our recent interview with Prophet, [...]

Here’s the first official video from Regina Spektor’s What We Saw From The Cheap Seats, due May 29 on Sire/Warner Bros.. The album’s lead single, “All The Rowboats” has a somewhat classical vibe lurking behind it’s pop structure. It’s a chilling dive into the deep waters of melody, with some sinister synth lines adding to [...]

In the summer of 2009, Lost in the Trees’ writer, composer and singer, Ari Picker, lost his mother to suicide. Over the years since, Picker has dealt with his grief by composing A Church That Fits Our Needs. It could have been an anguished collection of woes and heartache, but instead Picker created the band’s [...]

This is the second installment of the Martin Guitar Video Series for American Songwriter that pairs up our favorite musicians with up-and-coming video directors (watch the Madi Diaz episode here.) Nashville singer-songwriter Hugh Mitchell was five years old when he carved an “H” into his dad’s 1979 D28. He quickly realized his mistake, changed the [...]