The Montpelier Bridge
Tom Azarian, foreground, pictured in an unnamed newspaper clipping dated 1963–64. Courtesy image.
There is so much more to tell what music and life was like from the 1930s through 1940s before TV and all. I left out many French Canadian fiddlers small town square dances, etc. As poor as everyone was during the Depression, we had one bright spot. That was radio. It seems every family had a radio. We didn’t have cars or phones, we had little food, but radio helped the country through the hardest times.
There have been so many musicians in Vermont it’s hard to list them all. Old time fiddlers, retired farmers, country people of that radio generation now are gone. Thankfully young people are keeping traditional music from going extinct.
Amanda Charchian
By training and persuasion, Joachim Cooder is a percussionist. As a little boy he was gifted a drum kit by his father’s friend, the great drummer Jim Keltner. Joachim tagged along and played at gigs and sessions with musicians from Africa and Cuba, adding hand drums to his rhythmic tool kit. Now he’s a singer-songwriter with a 2020 album doing strong Americana chart business, an album surging with percussive sounds and ideas unlike anything else in the format.
Joachim’s dad is the incalculably important guitarist, songwriter and producer Ry Cooder. And ordinarily I’d be taking pains to show how far the son has come in making his own distinct identity from the famous father. In this case though, that doesn’t exactly apply; theirs is a cross-generational musical partnership that’s been going strong for decades.
Article Contributed by American Stand… | Published on Wednesday, January 27, 2021
Taco Tapes comes to you as it came to us uninhibited, present in the now. Common music industry practice can bog an album down for years in a mire of edits, overdubs, recording sessions. Some of these songs are decades old, but they were recorded less than a month ago.
A team of individuals at the height of their powers arranged, sang, played, mixed and mastered these in a stream of consciousness style, a single take shot. You are hearing fresh-folk, spirited covers, and tuned up & turned on traditional, as if you were in the room.
This Country Music Legend Tragically Committed Suicide
Faron Young is one of Country Music s most legendary names and artists. It was in 2000 that Faron was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, joining other iconic country music artist s like Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, Roy Acuff and Webb Pierce.
There are so many great Faron Young classic s, and perhaps the one people remember most was the hit written by another legend, Willie Nelson, Hello Walls .
Here are 6 interesting Did You Know facts about the life, career and death of the great Faron Young:
1) Many people know that Faron Young was from the state of Louisiana, but
In a year bereft of most live music, recordings took on added import and resonance. I upgraded my home stereo in February, unaware that I’d be spending more hours between the speakers than ever. Given the artistic abundance of our Americana music community, that was no problem at all.
The year’s albums engaged in a fruitful, righteous dialogue with the tumult of the world, including the ones made before the pandemic. Many projects seemed prophetic. Artists channeled their anguish over living under an abusive, dishonest leader by reaffirming their commitment to empathy, honesty and care. There were veterans trying something new, voices from marginalized communities, updates of venerable traditions and exciting debuts. So let’s get to it.