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DAY JOB
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AWARDS & ACCOLADES
In Nashville, most successful songwriters have a fairly short run. On hit, one year, two years, five years. Occasionally, we get one whose career approaches the length of a real career or, more often, one who has a few years success, then slips into oblivion, only to emerge again for another brief era of hit-making.
She speaks softly, not unlike the way she sings --soft, soulful passages, almost like secrets to the closest of friends --punctuated by bursts of exaltation. It's much like the span of emotion in her work, and in her new record, Balm in Gilead, which veers from the pure, naked heartbreak of "Bonfires" to the elation of "Old Enough," to the beautiful "Wild Girl," which celebrates the 21st birthday of her daughter, while simultaneously reflecting on the unchained fervor of her own wild days.
As singer/songwriters go, Robert Earl Keen doesn't seem like the kind of artist who could honestly be accused of sloth. But despite a catalog choked with characters and conversations pulled from a colorful life, he makes that very claim on "Something That I Do," a track where he brags of his ability to not let work get in the way of an otherwise pleasant afternoon.
Townes Van Zandt: Facets, Faults & Fractures
It's 10 o'clock at night on an abandoned Music Row. The year is 1985. In a third-floor office in an old house that serves as the offices for the Oak Ridge Boys' Silverline/Goldline Music Publishing, Steve Earle brings the chair he's leaning back in down hard, flipping his hair out of his eyes for emphasis.