“All you need to write a country song is three chords and the truth.” – Harlan Howard As a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Harlan knew his chords. But his often-quoted formula glosses over a couple of key questions: Which three chords, and when do you use them? This column will offer [...]

(PHOTOS: Danny Clinch) Explore the May/June Issue On the day he moved to Nashville, Tim McGraw stepped off a Greyhound bus with a guitar and a suitcase. He arrived inauspiciously around 3 a.m. on May 9, 1989, and checked into small room at the Hall of Fame hotel, a few blocks off Music Row. The [...]

Not many people, if anyone, can say they played on the Grand Ole Opry and performed on television with Chet Atkins before they were in high school. But Jimmy Melton can. He’s not exactly a household name among Music Row writers, but Melton, who was playing banjo at bluegrass festivals throughout the South and performing [...]

“I’ve always wanted to be Andy Friedman.” Sufjan Stevens said that. The Brooklyn singer-songwriter, illustrator and former New Yorker cartoonist will release his third studio album, Laserbeams and Dreams, which he recorded in a mere 24 hours, on April 5. We asked Friedman about the confluences between his twin crafts, and the last song to [...]

“I’ve paid a whole lot of dues,” Shirley Caesar once told me.