Every year we take the hour-plus journey to Manchester, Tennessee for Bonnaroo, where we are inundated with free booze, incredible music and you-had-to-be-there moments. Here are ten of our favorite highlights from this year’s festival. One Wing(s) Watching Paul McCartney’s band members enjoy Wilco’s jam-heavy set from the wings. I mean really enjoying it, by [...]

ALO Friday at Bonnaroo is always exciting. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that the festival is just getting started, but there is a strange kind of optimism in the air. For the past several years Bonnaroo has had noticeably nicer weather, and though it did get mighty hot at some points during the day, this has [...]

Jason Isbell Southeastern Southeastern Records/Thirty Tigers Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars Much of the press surrounding Jason Isbell’s new album has been focused on the fact that, in the interim between this first solo effort and his last release with his band The 400 Unit (2011’s Here We Rest), he got sober and [...]

 Southeastern is an album about the big and, more often than not, serious things in Jason Isbell’s life: sobriety, marriage, inner demons, self-realization … to name a few. The personal and poetic lyrics combined with the first absence of Isbell’s band the 400 Unit since 2007 give Southeastern an intimate and solemn tone. Which isn’t to say Isbell’s rock roots [...]

“I like rap. I like country music. I like anchovies. I like waffles. I feel like somebody’s always trying to put anchovies on my waffles.” -Twitter and Facebook status update ninja Jason Isbell  

Festival Yearbook: Hangout Music Festival 2013 Since nothing says “summer” more than a trip to the beach, we called up staff writer Andrew Leahey and asked him to head south, stopping only when he hit Gulf Shores, Alabama. The assignment? Attend the Hangout Music Festival, the world’s first major music fest held on a beach, [...]

Various Artists You Don’t Know Me:Rediscovering Eddy Arnold (Plowboy) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars The title of this tribute to the singer known as the Tennessee Plowboy says a lot. Eddy Arnold is ripe for rediscovering, especially when the data about his career shows him to be one of America’s most commercially popular country [...]

RSVP HERE If you’re in Austin, Texas this week, naturally you’re looking to see some great bands and attend some amazing parties. Look no further than The Billy Reid Shindig, an annual event which tops itself this year with another stellar lineup. American Songwriter’s latest cover subjects, the mighty Dawes, will headline Wednesday’s showcase at [...]

American Songwriter is proud to announce the lineup of The Billy Reid Shindig, a two-day musical extravaganza in Austin, Texas, later this month. The event will be held March 13-14 from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Weather Up, and features must-see artists like Dawes, Jason Isbell, Drivin’ N’ Cryin’ and The Weeks. Johnny Fritz [...]

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit Live from Alabama (Lightening Rod/Thirty Tigers) Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars The timing of ex-Drive-By Trucker Isbell’s first full concert album — there was a previous live EP — couldn’t have been better. He just won the Americana Music Awards and Honors song of the year for [...]

PBS will air a new episode of Austin City Limits this Saturday. Filmed in Nashville, it focuses on the eleventh annual Americana Honors and Awards ceremony, held this past September at the Ryman Auditorium. Alabama Shakes, Booker T. Jones, Richard Thompson, Hayes Carll, The Mavericks, and Jason Isbell are among the eighteen artists who perform [...]

In a random hotel room not too long ago, six guys in a band, while in the midst of a tour, were thinking seriously about quitting. On the road since 2006, they had five albums to their name – albums slippery with booze, lush with the memory of different women in every town and buoyant [...]