Renaissance Man may be an overused label, but it fits Jeffrey Lewis — snug but comfortable, like those old T-shirts he wears in Youtube videos that have him singing the histories of Chinese Communism and New York punk
The Year in Music: DailyKemp’s Top 10 Favorite Albums of 2022
These 10 albums, the best of them conceptual works, were my personal favorites in 2022.
Black-Alternative Music Fest: Reclaim Your Space
A talented and energetic young singer-songwriter named Le Anna Eden decided that Charlotte, North Carolina, needed a Black alternative music festival. So she gathered her tribe and made it happen.
Gregg Allman: The Road Stops Here
At the end of a road that was supposed to go on forever, Gregg Allman sat down with Acoustic Guitar magazine in 2014 to talk about The Allman Brothers Band’s rocky journey.
North Carolina Hardcore: Paradise Lost
It seemed ironic to me that two of the loudest, most prolific, and most politically vocal bands on North Carolina’s so-called new music scene of the mid-1980s represented a silent minority, shunned as if they were the black sheep of the South’s new musical family.
Cleo Jones: Redeeming Rap
Tamara McIlwain remembers a time when powerful young female rappers ruled the airwaves with positive messages. It was the late ’80s and early ’90s. The queens were Latifah, MC Lyte, Yo-Yo, and the sassy Salt ‘n Pepa. “Women like that — they had something to say,” says Mcllwain
The Indie-Rock of Ages: Christian Bands Change Their Tune
The handful of fans has swelled into a formidable crowd, swaying along to the intense squall of guitars, hands waving in the air, eyes tightly shut as if everyone is praising God. Everyone is.
The Coup: Sorry to Bother You
This Oakland outfit continues to create danceable manifestos for the masses: “I got scars on my back, the truth on my tongue,” front man Boots Riley raps. “Tell Homeland Security we are the bomb.”
Death: For the Whole World…
Death was just another African-American R&B act from Detroit before the Stooges and the MC5 changed their lives
Phil Ochs: Song of a Soldier
A highlight of my career as a music journalist was being asked to write liner notes to a box set of music by my all-time favorite singer and songwriter, Phil Ochs — and then getting a Grammy nomination for my work.