Kim Ruehl

Many people know Dom Flemons as one-third of the original membership of groundbreaking revivalist stringband Carolina Chocolate Drops. Indeed, with the CCDs, Flemons achieved international acclaim and earned award nominations from organizations like the Americana Music Association and the Grammys. But, before the Chocolate Drops made their debut, he was ...

The relationship between songs and poetry is often symbiotic, with some songwriters going so far as to lift entire verses from poems. Della Mae musician Celia Woodsmith discovered an intergenerational connection between her family and the poem "The Hound Of Heaven" by Francis Thompson. Her grandfather ...

So much of music is about longing, navigating life's unexpected moments with curiosity, searching for clarity and better understanding. All of this is pieced together beautifully on Ray Bonneville's new album, Easy Gone.

Bonneville recently told Folk Alley that the song "Where Has My Easy Gone" came from watching a ...

The Infamous Stringdusters' members have been a major part of the bluegrass world since their debut, Fork in the Road, back in 2007. Now on its sixth studio album, Let It Go, the group has just returned with more great progressive acoustic music.

This song, "I'll Get Away," is peppered ...

The folk- and roots-music world is full of cross-generational collaboration. But it usually takes the form of folksingers pairing up with other folksingers, borrowing from a long musical tradition. It's another thing altogether to take words written long ago and give them musical life. Leyla McCalla does just that on ...

Don't let Cahalen Morrison and Eli West's simple two-man sound fool you. The music itself isn't simple so much as an exercise in artful restraint. The Seattle duo's new album, I'll Swing My Hammer With Both My Hands, is packed with exquisite instrumentation and close country harmonies. But the stories ...

There have been few artists in the history of American folk music who impacted the world beyond folk music with as much power as Pete Seeger. From the Almanac Singers (dedicated to labor songs) to the Weavers (bringing folk into the mainstream) and through the decades of his ...

The best folk music released in 2013 was, almost without exception, of the intensely personal variety. These remarkable albums struggled with addiction and death, coming of age, faith and the unstoppable rhythm of change. Three of these releases came from well-loved artists making music in ways that nobody saw coming. ...

The Colorado band Elephant Revival has made a few records that mix jam, bluegrass and folk music. But its latest, These Changing Skies, finds what seems to be its sweet spot. With banjo, bass, guitar, fiddle and washboard balancing the many disparate influences, songs like "Birds and Stars" capture the ...

It's no surprise that Brent Truitt was the producer on tap for Nora Jane Struthers' new second album, Carnival. Truitt is best known for his work with Dixie Chicks, Alison Krauss and Dolly Parton — three artists whose music, if you could melt it ...

Pharis and Jason Romero live in a tiny town called Horsefly. This might sound like some relic of the old west, preserved through Hollywood movies and antiquated lore, but it's a real live town in British Columbia. And the music they make – though it, too, sounds like it's been ...

Listening to The Milk Carton Kids on an album is one thing; watching the band work its magic live is another. This performance of "Hope of a Lifetime," the opening song on The Ash & Clay, was filmed at the Folk Alliance conference in Toronto. With its elegantly phrased ...

Anaïs Mitchell has a knack for mythology that flies over the heads of most modern songwriters. From her adaptation of the Orpheus myth on Hadestown — an arresting "folk opera" wherein Orpheus and Eurydice struggle through a post-apocalyptic economic depression — to the nuanced interweaving of Biblical and Greek mythology ...