Susquehanna Industrial Tool & Die Co. aren’t just the Spinal Tap of pre-rockabilly Americana. They saved this blog’s publicity stunt. They probably would have volunteered for the job if they hadn’t already been chosen for it…as a plan B. Whether you get the trio’s innumerable inside jokes – many of them references to impossibly obscure artists or cultural memes from the 1950s and before – they’re as deadpan hilarious as they were when this blog reviewed their show at Otto’s back in September of 2011. That’s where they’ll be this March 2 at 8 PM. Sit & Die’s shtick goes way deeper than ..read more

It was sometime after midnight in the wee hours of January 8, 2003 at the C-Note, and the East Village club was packed. Earlier in the night, the crowd had been treated to one of the best Americana triplebills of the year. Erica Smith channeled her inner road warrior and shook off the laryngitis which had threatened to derail her solo set, a lustrous and nuanced mix of Appalachian folk tunes and a reinvented sea chantey. She closed with her best song of the night, the soaring retro 60s soul ballad Love You All the Way. Kings County Queens followed with a similarly luminous, low-key hour onstag ..read more

“All the kindest of hearts you always had on display,” Sloe Guns frontman Eric Alter sings, completely deadpan, hitting a jangly peak on his Telecaster. Then lead player Mick Izzo slinks into a subtle, blue-flame slide riff on his Les Paul. “Every night I get down on my knees and pray you’re not my guardian angel.” The Sloe Guns released that genuine classic, which you can download for free at their music page, in 2001. As revenge anthems go, it’s one of the subtlest and most venomous ever. What’s the likelihood that the band would still be together, more than twenty years and a lockdown later ..read more

A half century before the Brooklyn Americana scene exploded onto a national stage, Mimi Roman was representing for the borough. Now in her eighties, she remains a beloved figure in the vintage country music demimonde. The scion of a Brooklyn Jewish pickle empire, she was an outdoorsy girl who grew up riding horses and became enamored with all things western, including country music. By the time she’d graduated college, she’d become an accomplished guitarist and a hell of a singer, won a big talent contest and went on to regional stardom in the emerging medium of tv. Overcompressed digitized ve ..read more

He’s got a hammock hung up between a sweetgum and a piece of PVC He’s a hot dog griller and a cold beer killer and he fights for guns and peace… He pays cash and respects to Merle He’s a single wide dreamer in a double wide world If those lines grab you, you’ll appreciate Aaron Raitiere‘s debut album Single Wide Dreamer, streaming at Spotify. That’s the title track, which opens the record, the band rising from a simple fingerpicked guitar line to a chugging Americana rock groove with tremolo organ. Raitiere is an interesting story: middle-aged corporate-adjacent tunesmith whose road warrior fr ..read more

Rock supergroups in New York are in short supply right now, but the Bastards of Fine Arts are at the top of the list. Guitarists Matt Keating and Steve Mayone are connoisseurs of classic songcraft, from powerpop to Americana to soul. And it’s impossible to think of a more colorful, melodic rhythm section than bassist Jason Mercer and drummer Greg Wieczorek. Keating and Mayone got their start as a duo. After putting out a series of viral videos on a certain social media platform that this blog boycotts, they survived the 2020 lockdown to release their debut album, A Good Sign, streaming at Band ..read more

Halloween is over but the mood persists. Today’s page is about half an hour of snarky memes left over like extra candy corn, plus a couple of short, powerful videos, plus some good tunes. As usual, click on artist or author names for the webpages, click on titles for audio, video or just a laugh at some authoritarian’s expense. The big news today is that the New York Police Department has joined Ring Neighbors, the citizen surveillance network built around Amazon’s Ring spycams. Add facial recognition technology to that and we are in trouble. Hoodies and shades aren’t just for celebs now. In t ..read more

Lara Hope & the Ark-Tones are connoisseurs of retro Americana sounds, from rockabilly to 60s soul music. They’re playing Otto’s on Sept 24 at 10 PM; for those who might say, “Eww, the East Village on a Saturday night,” keep in mind that so many of the touristy types who made the neighborhood a place to avoid on the weekend have left town. Out of all the albums Hope and the band have put out over the years, the very best of them all might be their snarky, irreverent Songs in the Key of Quarantine, streaming at Bandcamp. The core of the band, singer/guitarist Hope and her bassist husband Mat ..read more

Abbie Gardner is one of the most distinctive dobro players in  Americana. She has a seemingly effortless grace and otherworldly precision on an instrument that often bedevils other acoustic guitarslingers. Despite her vaunted technique, she plays with a remarkable economy of notes. She may be best known as a member of well-loved harmony trio Red Molly. but she had fearsome chops before she joined that band. Her new solo album DobroSinger is streaming at Bandcamp As with her other solo records, almost all the tunes are originals. The opening number, Down the Mountain is a steady coal-minin ..read more

Like most good violinists, Lily Henley has been called on to play all sorts of different styles of music. She got her start in New York playing bluegrass and front-porch folk, but also gravitated toward klezmer music. On her latest album Oras Dezaoradas – streaming at Bandcamp – she takes a deep dive into original Ladino songcraft. There’s actually plenty of historical precedent for Henley’s decision to take a bunch of old ballads and set them to new melodies: until the advent of recording technology, folk musicians had been doing the same thing, largely uncredited, for thousands of years. One ..read more