bob-dylan

Price unveiled her new band and her new signature model at a recent performance at the Gibson Garage in Nashville.

Photo courtesy of Gibson

The Grammy-nominated alt-country and Americana singer, songwriter, and bandleader tells the story behind the creation of her new guitar and talks about the role acoustic Gibson workhorses have played in her musical history—and why she loves red-tailed hawks.

The Gibson J-45 is a classic 6-string workhorse and a favorite accomplice of singer-songwriters from Bob Dylan to Jorma Kaukonen to James Taylor to Gillian Welch to Lucinda Williams to Bruce Springsteen to Noel Gallagher. Last week, alt-country and Americana artist Margo Price permanently emblazoned her name on that roster with the unveiling of her signature-model J-45. With an alluring heritage cherry sunburst finish and a red-tail-hawk-motif double pickguard, the instrument might look more like a show pony, but under the hard-touring and hard-playing of Price’s hands, it is 100-percent working animal.

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For the first time in the band’s history, the Dawes lineup for Oh Brother consisted of just Griffin and Taylor Goldsmith (left and right).

Photo by Jon Chu

The folk-rock outfit’s frontman Taylor Goldsmith wrote their debut at 23. Now, with the release of their ninth full-length, Oh Brother, he shares his many insights into how he’s grown as a songwriter, and what that says about him as an artist and an individual.

I’ve been following the songwriting of Taylor Goldsmith, the frontman of L.A.-based, folk-rock band Dawes, since early 2011. At the time, I was a sophomore in college, and had just discovered their debut, North Hills, a year and a half late. (That was thanks in part to one of its tracks, “When My Time Comes,” pervading cable TV via its placement in a Chevy commercial over my winter break.) As I caught on, I became fully entranced.

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English singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock is as recognizable by tone, lyrics, and his vibrantly hued clothing choices as the sound of Miles Davis’ horn.

Photo by Tim Bugbee/tinnitus photography

The English guitarist expands his extensive discography with 1967: Vacations in the Past, an album paired with a separate book release, both dedicated to the year 1967 and the 14-year-old version of himself that still lives in him today.

English singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock is one of those people who, in his art as well as in his every expression, presents himself fully, without scrim. I don’t know if that’s because he intends to, exactly, or if it’s just that he doesn’t know how to be anyone but himself. And it’s that genuine quality that privileges you or I, as the listener, to recognize him in tone or lyrics alone, the same way one knows the sound of Miles Davis’ horn within an instant of hearing it—or the same way one could tell Hitchcock apart in a crowd by his vibrantly hued, often loudly patterned fashion choices.

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