Search results for

GRAMMY-winning multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello makes her Blue Note Records debut with The Omnichord Real Book, a visionary, expansive, and deeply jazz-influenced album that marks the start of a new chapter in her career. "This album is about the way we see old things in new ways," Ndegeocello shares in a statement. "Everything moved so quickly when my parents died. Changed my view of everything and myself in the blink of an eye. As I sifted through the remains of their life together, I found my first Real Book (a musician’s compilation of lead sheets for jazz standards), the one my father gave me. I took their records, the ones I grew up hearing, learning, remembering. My mother gifted me with her ache, I carry the melancholy that defined her experience and, in turn, my experience of this thing called life calls me to disappear into my imagination and to hear the music."

Rooted in vintage country, Ain’t Through Honky Tonkin’ Yet is an unapologetically beer- and tear-soaked homage to an era when hard-country weepers burst forth from AM transistor radios. “I’m in love with this idea of the real Nashville, " says Leigh. “The idyllic golden age, which, to me, is around 1967, 1968, because of the alchemy, the explosion that occurred, with the best country music songwriters ever, the best singers in country music.” The album’s country roots run deep, with guests like Marty Stuart and Rodney Crowell and a lineup of top-flight musicians. It will be released on June 16th, and she makes her Grand Ole Opry debut on the 24th. “Brennen can out play, out sing and out write just about anybody. She’s been dropping a lot of new music these days and we’re real lucky for it.” – Charley Crockett

This week we feature solo albums from two Mipso members in a row! On Monday it’s this one, whose label Sleepy Cat Records says “features talking roses, screaming oaks, and the fortune-telling powers of persimmons. Terrell’s songs bring to life a mystical landscape that calls you to pay attention. As he sings in “Whisper,” “All the ordinary silence is a radio if you listen.” Guests include Libby Rodenbough (our Tuesday feature), Tatiana Hargreaves, and Tift Merritt.

He may have gotten his start among Lester Flatt and Johnny Cash, but the self-described “radical preservationist” of Country music has lately been focused on that Cosmic American side of the Bakersfield/West Coast sound, with this new one that picks up where 2017’s “Way Out West” left off.

What do you get when you put members of The Meters, The New Mastersounds, Greyboy Alstars, and The Nth Power together…in incredible studios in Iceland? This. It’s the 2nd record in the “Floki Sessions” series following the great 2022 release from The New Mastersounds.

Lukas digs deeper into his country roots on this one, with a dozen strong, often hilarious songs. “I started to realize that all of my favorite songs that I’ve written are written for what I love to do live,” he says. “And what I love to do live is play country soul funk. Something with a nice backbeat, something you can move to, and something that makes you want to sing along and shout out at the top of your lungs.”

In our 2nd spotlight of solo releases from members of the North Carolina band Mipso, we present this one from Rodenbough, who played violin, viola, guitar, and keys here, and wrote all of the songs. “Like always, I find myself looking backward at the paths these songs traveled to find themselves shoulder-to-shoulder as “an album.” I wrote most of them in the period where my mom was very sick and immediately after she passed away, but I wouldn’t say they’re grief songs. Mostly they’re about trying to keep the faith—believing life can be new and even better.”

You may have heard of this central Kentucky native, thanks to his work with Americana/country acts Sturgill Simpson and Tyler Childers. But this is the first time Miles has stepped out from behind his drum kit to release this debut album, primarily as a singer, songwriter, and guitarist.

Rooted in vintage country, Ain’t Through Honky Tonkin’ Yet is an unapologetically beer- and tear-soaked homage to an era when hard-country weepers burst forth from AM transistor radios. “I’m in love with this idea of the real Nashville, " says Leigh. “The idyllic golden age, which, to me, is around 1967, 1968, because of the alchemy, the explosion that occurred, with the best country music songwriters ever, the best singers in country music.” The album’s country roots run deep, with guests like Marty Stuart and Rodney Crowell and a lineup of top-flight musicians. It will be released on June 16th, and she makes her Grand Ole Opry debut on the 24th. “Brennen can out play, out sing and out write just about anybody. She’s been dropping a lot of new music these days and we’re real lucky for it.” – Charley Crockett

It’s Delta Blues meets psychedelic rock on this, the Reverend’s 17th(!) release. Add to that his spiritual insights gained from studying Buddhism: The album’s title is derived from sung poetry forms characteristic of the tantric movement in both Vajrayana Buddhism and Hinduism. Reverend Freakchild visited us in Studio B in 2018, and his main musical mentors are blues legend Blind Boy Fuller and The Grateful Dead, so there’s no surprise he has a home here at WNCW.