This article appears in our May/June issue. Subscribe here. Gojo Café is a charmingly dingy Ethiopian restaurant on a strip of dingier Nashville road filled with chain shops and taco trucks, in an orange building that looks like a cross between a miniature brick warehouse and an adult video store. It’s 5:30 p.m., and Kacey [...]

(Photos: Alissa Anderson) This article appears in our March/April issue – subscribe here. In the great myth of Dawes, Tay Strathairn, Wylie Gelber, Taylor Goldsmith and his younger brother Griffin were born in a golden hippie orb, high up in Laurel Canyon; the Goldsmith siblings harmonizing even whilst emerging from the womb, having already memorized [...]

This article appears in our March/April issue. Subscribe here. While it may be en vogue to embrace your country roots, Harper Simon, for his second album Division Street, decided to ditch Americana and crank up the volume. Stream Division Street “I grew up in New York listening to more countercultural kinds of records,” says Simon, [...]

It’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow, and nothing says “love” like sweet songs about its first beginnings; about those intangible moments when a relationship turns from casual to full of possibilities, blossoming in front of you like the open road. Nashville’s Andrew Leahey & the Homestead tackle both of these things in the new video for “Little [...]

Daniel Romano Come Cry With Me (Normltown) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Country music is a genre, of course, but it’s also a geographical location: we expect at least some degree of physical southern roots or innate twang birthright from its ardent preachers, particularly those brave enough to wear a Nudie-inspired suit on stage [...]

It’s less than two hours before Crosby, Stills & Nash are set to walk on stage at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, and Graham Nash and I are sitting in his backstage greenroom checking out each other’s tattoos. Crosby – whom everyone refers to as Croz – has gone down the street to Gruhn [...]

Manipulation, or negotiation? In Nashville, it seems as if you can’t have one without the other. And finally, our country singin’ minivan-lovin’ heroine is getting hip to both. Edgehill Republic has their big, 25th anniversary show coming up at the Ryman, neither Rayna nor Juliette are getting what they want. Rayna, for one, wants to [...]

It’s image-recovery time in Nashville. Powerful New York publicist Makena has made Juliette go to an event at the zoo for a Sean Butler’s fundraiser. Who is Sean Butler? Well, a nice, Tebow-esque NFL rookie who likes fuzzy animals and church. “You haven’t let me do anything fun for three weeks,” Juliette whines, before posing [...]

The story of how I first heard The Lumineers comes with some embarrassment. As a new Nashvillian-by-way-of-Manhattan, I have a magnetic draw towards anything southern. Thus I’m slightly ashamed to admit I’d started watching a show called Hart of Dixie back in December, which involves an actress named Rachel Bilson running around a fictional Alabama [...]

“Move It on Over” is the Hank Williams recording that episode five of Nashville takes its name from this week, and it’s all about people moving on and trying to forget the past. But as the song goes, “move over old dog, cause a new dog’s moving in.” You may be trying to sweep the [...]

“We Live in Two Different Worlds” is the title of last night’s everyone’s-spiraling-downward episode of Nashville, that found our sprightly, Swift-ian antagonist, Juliette Barnes, facing her demons, the dangers of live television and the repercussions of swiping a bottle of Sally Hansen Quick Dry in Pompous Pink. It’s also the third episode of the show [...]

Nashville is a show with two distinct plotlines: Rayna Jaymes (Connie Britton as Gwyneth Paltrow in Country Strong, minus the alcohol, pills and slutty behavior) battling upstream against the rapidly rising waters of superstar Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere minus Heroes superpowers, as Taylor Swift plus slutty behavior); and the second story line of Rayna’s husband [...]