Nick Cristiano

1 month ago | nodepression.com | Nick Cristiano

Kinky Friedman’s posthumous album opens with the title song, “Poet of Motel 6,” a tribute to a fellow late legend of the Texas troubadour tradition, Billy Joe Shaver. “He’d stay up all night/ He would drink and he would fight/ Ah, but every song he’d write was the story of our lives,” Friedman sings in his conversational rasp, framed by producer David Mansfield’s tangy acoustic arrangement and Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s high harmonies.

2 months ago | nodepression.com | Nick Cristiano

Paul Thorn opens his new album, Life Is Just A Vapor, with a terse but timely sermon. “Tough times don’t last, tough people do,” the 60-year-old Tupelo, Miss., native sings over a loping, horn-accented R&B groove. Then he goes on: “If they can do it, maybe we can too.”It’s quintessential Thorn: facing up to hard truths, but also offering hope. And doing it with an infectiously down-home music and plainspoken, humor-laced profundity that make his faith sound undeniable.

Jan 22, 2025 | nodepression.com | Nick Cristiano

The last we heard Charles “Wigg” Walker on record was more than a decade ago, when he fronted the Dynamites, a soul and funk outfit whose big, horn-infused attack can only be described as explosive. Walker was nevertheless a commanding presence, his grit and power reflecting the strengths developed over a decades-long career that saw him sharing stages with the likes of James Brown, Etta James, and Otis Redding as he moved from the States to Europe and back to his native Nashville.

Jul 31, 2024 | nodepression.com | Nick Cristiano

“I’m a rovin’ soul,” Joe Ely confesses on the haunted opening to “Drivin’ Man,” the number that opens and sets the thematic tone for his sparkling new album, Driven to Drive. Since bursting out of Texas in the ‘70s like a Lone Star Springsteen, his rocking dynamism colored by country accents, Ely has been fascinated by the road.

Jun 19, 2024 | nodepression.com | Nick Cristiano

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