David Cantwell

You Ain't Talkin' to Me, a three-disc set that collects 40 sides from Charlie Poole alongside 32 cuts from the banjo plunker's contemporaries and descendants, is a great next step for anyone interested in exploring the roots of country music beyond Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. Some will want...

It's been a decade since Uncle Tupelo released its major-label swan song, Anodyne. In the passing years, the Belleville, Illinois, band's two front men -- the sullen, grieving and earnest Jay Farrar and the eager, hoarse and earnest Jeff Tweedy -- have seen an entire genre, called alternative country, emerge...

James Merritt, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, told [President George W.] Bush he had been chosen by God to lead the nation in the fight to protect America and the world against terrorism. 'I believe you are God's man for this hour,' Merritt said. 'God's hand is on you.'...

Here's how you find Nappy Roots. Leave Atlanta, where Outkast reigns. Then head northwest through Tennessee, the state Arrested Development once employed as a metaphor for black (nay, human) tradition and transcendence. Keep going, and eventually you'll wind up in the presumably unlikely stomping grounds -- western Kentucky! -- of...

The Mavericks Trampoline MCA Mavericks lead singer/songwriter Raul Malo has always harbored ambition as soaring as his gorgeous voice. But for him and his band, the focus of those ambitions is constantly shifting. On their major-label debut, 1990's From Hell to Paradise, Malo possessed the unfettered ambition to write Bakersfield...