ALBUM REVIEWS - Music City Music Magazine

Chris Castino and Chicken Wire Empire: Fresh Pickles

Nancy PoseyJan 2, 20220

Fresh Pickles, Chris Castino’s upcoming release with Chicken Wire Empire, is less a departure from his career with the jam band The Big Wu than a return to his earlier influences. Castino admits that when he started writing songs, he was new to bluegrass. He credits his heightened interest to...

EMILY CLAIR: STRIPPED

Nancy PoseyDec 23, 20210

Canadian country singer-songwriter Emily Clair says she is planning on a simple Christmas this year. From Nacanee, Ontario, she is watching the response to her debut EP Stripped. Like so many recording artists, Emily had to change plans when the pandemic hit. She planned for an EP with some new...

ROGER CLINE: So InClined

Nancy PoseyDec 23, 2020January 22, 20210

When Roger Cline decided to cut a CD, after some prodding from friends and fellow musicians, he wanted a project as varied as his own musical history. With his 2020 release So InClined, he did just that. Raised in Maryland with the Mason-Dixon Line just up the road from his home,...

SUZY BOGGUSS: LIVE AT CAFFE MILANO

Nancy PoseySep 18, 2020September 19, 20200

It didn’t take Suzy Bogguss long to know Nashville was the town for her. She had cut a record in Peoria, Illinois, where she was working six nights a week in bars, listening rooms, and supper clubs. She and two friends wanted to see what Nashville was all about, so...

AMANDA KATE: TIME CD AS A TIME CAPSULE

Nancy PoseyJul 21, 2020July 21, 20200

In the song “Gypsy,” from her new CD Time, Amanda Kate suggests she could be at home anywhere: Can’t seem to land anywhere that I can call my home Cuz I get the itch the move no matter where I go Most of the time though, she feels right at home in...

INTRODUCING AMY JACK

Nancy PoseyJul 14, 2020July 14, 20200

Amy Jack’s Oklahoma musical roots run deep. Her Scots-Irish great grandparents were among the early settlers who took part in the land run to Western Oklahoma before it was even a state. They brought with them the traditional Scottish and Irish music and instruments that influenced the earliest country music....

JULIE AND JOHN PENNELL: KEEP ON WALKIN’

Nancy PoseyJul 4, 2020July 6, 20200

By the time Julie and John Pennell met at an Ontario Bluegrass festival, they had both begun putting down deep roots in Bluegrass. John played with Vassar Clements and in the early years with Alison Krauss and Union Station. Growing up in North Bay, Ontario, Julie came from a big...

KATY MOFFATT RELEASES CHRYSALIS

Nancy PoseyJun 11, 2020June 28, 20200

Chrysalis, the title of the new two-CD release on Sunset Blvd. Records by Katy Moffatt, aptly describes Moffatt’s career, as well as the music appearing on the recording, characterized by transitions. Chrysalis is a two-CD project pulling together three albums Moffatt recorded ten years apart with guitarist Andrew Hardin: 1988’s Walkin’ On...

JONELL MOSSER WITH JOHN HALL: LITTLE BLACK DRESS

Nancy PoseyJun 2, 2020June 2, 20200

Jonell Mosser has been in the music business long enough to know that timing can be everything, so it should come as no surprise that Little Black Dress, her newly released CD, is finding a wide audience now, all songs recorded during a performance by Mosser and John Hall in May 1991...

NATE LEE: WINGS OF A JETLINER

Nancy PoseyJun 2, 2020June 15, 20200

Certainly since the pioneering days of Bill Monroe, nobody has questioned the mandolin’s rightful place in the bluegrass world, but the instrument is too often relegated to a secondary role. In his new solo CD, Wings of a Jetliner, set for a June 12 release, Nate Lee firmly settles his mandolin front...