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Artists On Dylan

Love Bob Dylan? You’re not the only one. We asked a bevy of artists to share their thoughts on the iconic songwriter. Visit Americansongwriter.com daily during our 30 Days Of Dylan countdown to read the full interviews, hear exclusive audio and video, and more. Alec Ounsworth, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: Bob Dylan is probably [...]

Taylor Guitars Puts You In The Luthier’s Seat

Inside every guitarist lurks a guitar designer: someone wanting to tweak some aspect of the guitar to better suit their needs and desires. Taylor Guitars’ new SolidBody Configurator allows guitarists to release that inner beast and design the instrument of their dreams, see a virtual image of their creation, and then purchase that guitar. We [...]

Bob Dylan: The Paul Zollo Interview

It was May 8, 1991, and I’d returned to my Hollywood office after lunch to find a pink phone message tacked to the board with an unlikely haiku: “Mr. Dylan appreciates your magazine. He will be in touch.” At first I suspected it was a joke. I’d been trying to land an interview with Dylan [...]

Role Models: Robyn Hitchcock

British singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchock is best known for his days in The Soft Boys and his incredible, often psychedelic solo work. Here he discusses his most profound influence. How did you first get into Bob Dylan? I was marooned in a penitentiary for overprivileged boys when I was 13 and I heard “Like A Rolling [...]

Legendary Guitars: Eric Clapton’s Martin 000-28EC

For most of his career, Eric Clapton has been closely associated with the Stratocaster. It’s the guitar you hear on Derek And The Dominos’ Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs, and also the guitar that one of his idols, Buddy Guy, plays. Clapton even once said the best way to tell the difference between his [...]

Glen Campbell: Memory Maker

It’s an essential part of the late 1960s time capsule. That well-scrubbed, apple-cheeked, All-American boy on Sunday night TV. The golden brown, blow-dried hair carefully parted on the right. The turtleneck. And especially that glorious voice, all full-throated sincerity and cowboy-virtuous. He made his first inroads into the national psyche with his record of [...]

T Bone Burnett: The Taste Maker

Over the course of 40 years in the music industry, T Bone Burnett has made a lot of friends in high places, producing albums for artists as varied as Robert Plant, B.B. King, Tony Bennett, Elvis Costello and Willie Nelson. Last year, he got many of them together for a good cause, creating the three-city [...]

Legendary Guitars: Dave Matthews’ Taylor 914CE

Now entering its 21st year, the Dave Matthews Band has become a part of the musical fabric of America, and Dave Matthews has become a major inspiration for many singer-songwriters. Matthews and the DMB became known for an innovative sound that initially eschewed the usual use of an electric lead guitarist, and instead favored violin [...]

The Reawakening of Bob Dylan

On the evening of February 13, 2011, Bob Dylan sang a baffling version of “Maggie’s Farm” at the Grammys. The performance came at the end of a medley of Americana acts that included Mumford & Sons and The Avett Brothers, two young bands that borrow from some of the same music that inspired Dylan in [...]

Icons: Dave Stewart

Meeting with Dave Stewart at his Hollywood dream factory is a dizzying experience, not unlike what one imagines visiting Warhol’s factory was like in the day, minus the zombies and cocaine. There’s a whole lot of people in a unified space doing a whole lot of art all the time. To Dave, it’s more Wonka [...]

Legendary Guitars: Kurt Cobain’s Fender Jag-Stang

When Nirvana exploded onto the music scene with Nevermind in 1991, the band became an overnight phenomenon in a new era of rock. And the band’s frontman, the late singer-songwriter-guitarist Kurt Cobain, became the somewhat reluctant spokesman for a population of angst-ridden young men whose lives, almost like his own to that point, seemed to [...]

Joan Baez: The Voice Heard ‘Round The World

Joan Baez epitomizes the ideal of the American folk singer. Ever since rising to national prominence in the early ‘60s, she’s stood at the crossroads of music and social protest, adhering firmly to the belief that music can in fact change the world. Baez cut her teeth as a singer in the Cambridge, Massachusetts folk [...]

Makin’ Stuff Up: “Change I Can Believe In”

“What has changed in the music business since you started your career?” This query – one of the FAQs I field on an almost-weekly basis – is deserving of a 100,000-word tome, for sure. Still, my standard reply nearly always begins with two succinct, quite contradictory words: “Everything …” and “nothing.” Elucidation to follow … [...]

Legendary Guitars: Ry Cooder’s Martin 000-18

Ry Cooder is known for being an obsessive instrument tinkerer, but for the 1984 soundtrack to Wim Wenders’ film Paris, Texas, the California native apparently turned to a classic Martin: the 000-18. Cooder grew up around Los Angeles as a folk and blues player and prior to being tapped to play on Captain Beefheart and [...]

Lyric Contest Winners: January/February 2012

1st Place “Dear Jimmy Buffett” Matt Hoggatt Gautier, Mississippi www.americansongspace.com/matthoggatt Lyrics 2nd Place “Walk A Day” Todd Storinge Liverpool, New York Lyrics 3rd Place “Staying Single, Seeing Double” Michael Waters, Jr. Brooklet, Georgia Lyrics 4th Place “Please Correct Me If I’m Wrong” Michael Joyce Chicago, Illinois Lyrics Honorable Mentions “Stolen From Them” Jeffrey Martin Eugene, [...]

Legendary Guitars: Robert Johnson’s Kalamazoo KG-14 and Gibson L-1

Illustration by Jeremy Okai Davis Robert Johnson probably played whatever guitars he could get his hands on. Johnny Shines, one of Johnson’s traveling companions in the mid ‘30s, said in interviews before he died that Johnson liked the Kalamazoo guitar, a budget brand made by Gibson, and also Stella guitars. In the first photo the [...]

Legendary Guitars: John Jorgenson’s Takamine JJ325SRC

To call John Jorgenson a musical phenomenon is a bit of an understatement. As a founding member of the Desert Rose Band in the late 1980s with Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen, Jorgenson, who was a Nashville outsider, set the country music world on its ear with his guitar playing and arrangements. Later, as a [...]

Behind The Song: “Wichita Lineman”

Imagine pitching this song idea in 1968: There’s this guy who works on telephone poles in the middle of Kansas. He’s really devoted to his job. Rain or shine, he’s committed to preventing system overloads. It’s really lonely work, and he misses his girlfriend. Does this sound like a hit to you? When Jimmy Webb [...]

House Of Cash: The Legacies Of My Father, Johnny Cash

House Of Cash: The Legacies Of My Father, Johnny Cash John Carter Cash (Insight Editions) Rating: Stuffed to the brim with family pictures, handwritten notes, setlists, and discarded lyric sheets, this 150-page coffee table book paints the The Man in Black as a colorful guy. John Carter Cash takes us into his dad’s personal archives [...]

Kathleen Edwards: Voyageur

Kathleen Edwards Voyageur (Zoë/Rounder) Rating: It’s against my feminist nature to define a singer-songwriter in the shadow of her boyfriend, so I’m pleased to report I’m not the biggest Bon Iver fan. Nevertheless, Kathleen Edwards and Justin Vernon brought out the best in each other this year. I’m going to credit his sleeping with the [...]