Chuck Hicks

Features

The Wilco You Weren’t Supposed to Hear

At a relaxed distance, in a part of the country where Wilco seldom travels, I can play dumb to all that fan chatter and, taking a cue from John Crowe Ransom, use a little 'formal criticism' to evaluate the 'Demos' in their own context. [6 August 2004]

Dueling Banjos: Scruggs-style vs. the Clawhammer

What Earl Scruggs brought to banjo was a 'little something extra', that being his middle finger . . . In fact, it can be said with a straight face that Scruggs is the father of industrial music, because his home environment had everything to do with his sound. [2 April 2002]

Reviews

The Everybodyfields: Plague of Dreams

Close your eyes, and Quinn and Andrews' keening, close harmonies will transport you to the late 1940s, to that blissful world of battery radios before the Nashville Sound came and sanded the edges off country music. [17 November 2005]

Michael Holland: Tomorrows American Treasures

Holland maintains his extraordinary focus, showing his astute respect for traditional American music while varnishing it with enough trippy nuance to keep it vital. [8 November 2005]

The Bill Monroe Reader by Tom Ewing

To become a legitimate icon - Bill Monroe's real though unconfessed motivation - it was crucial that he become the messiah of a morally wholesome movement, upholding an idea of conduct that he was unable to attain in a few of his personal dealings. [1 January 1995]