Nick Cristiano

1 month ago | durhamregion.com | Nick Cristiano

The closure of 10 supervised consumption sites across Ontario raises important questions about community safety and public health. While the stated goal is to make communities safer, research suggests that removing these sites may have the opposite effect. Supervised consumption sites provide a safer, more hygienic alternative to using drugs in public spaces, reducing risks associated with unsafe injecting practices and fatal overdoses.

2 months ago | nodepression.com | Nick Cristiano

Jim Kweskin plays old stuff. And it never gets old. Since the singer and guitarist came to prominence with his jug band during the folk boom of the early ‘60s, he has essentially been doing the same thing — mining vintage material, especially early jazz and blues, and filtering it through his string-band sensibility. The result is music with a relentlessly infectious spirit and swing that defies time. At 84, Kweskin shows no signs of slowing down.

Mar 20, 2025 | 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.

Feb 19, 2025 | 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.