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Taylor Swift: The Garden In The Machine

“Country music is truly music for everyone,” said Tim McGraw, as he and his wife Faith Hill prepared to announce the Country Music Association’s 2009 “Entertainer of the Year” award. “And that’s never been more apparent than with the diversity of tonight’s nominees.”

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Jessica Lea Mayfield: Look At Miss Ohio

“Things are starting to get weird.”

Jessica Lea Mayfield, whose Nonesuch Records debut Tell Me is in stores now, is on the phone from her home in Ohio and we’re having a good laugh over her recent success. It’s beer o’clock on both ends of the phone, the last interview in a long week of talking to complete strangers for the two of us.

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Cadillac Sky

Cadillac Sky should be a lot more tired. It’s early Saturday afternoon at MerleFest and the band–Bryan Simpson, Matt Menefree, Andrew Moritz, Ross Holmes and newest addition David Mayfield–has already logged two performances on the day....

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Sessions: David Bazan

It was pretty slow. I mean, I played [the songs] on acoustic guitar for a long time, but I didn’t know how to transfer them to the other format. I didn’t want it to be a solo acoustic record. I wanted there to be bells and whistles and full band arrangements even if I didn’t want it necessarily to be electric guitar rock....