Shawn Underwood

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The Twangtown Paramours - The Wind Will Change Again

Jan 9, 2025 | twangville.com | Shawn Underwood

You’re no doubt familiar with the idea that two people know each other so well they can finish each other’s sentences. In the case of Nashville couple MaryBeth Zamer and Mike T. Lewis, also known as The Twangtown Paramours, they know each other so well they can finish each other’s songs. As MaryBeth notes, “I felt like I could interpret and deliver Mike’s songs the way he intended them to be.” You can hear that result on their latest album, The Wind Will Change Again.
Iain Matthews - How Much Is Enough

Dec 5, 2024 | twangville.com | Shawn Underwood |Shawn Underwood

A lot of the albums I review are from artists still early in their arc. Part of that is to try to expose less well known acts, but some of it is because what new are you going to say about someone who has 20+ records out in the public for people to hear. So I had to think twice about doing a write-up of Iain Matthew’s 53rd (or is it 54, he’s not sure) record.
Warren Haynes - Million Voices Whisper

Nov 21, 2024 | twangville.com | Shawn Underwood

Although younger than Willie by almost 30 years, Warren Haynes is maybe the last leaf on a different tree. With the recent passing of Dickey Betts, Haynes is now the elder statesman in a large group of southern rock and jam band musicians building on the legacy of The Allman Brothers Band. He just released a new solo album, his 5th or 6th depending on how you count them, called Million Voices Whisper.
Yonder Mountain String Band

Nov 14, 2024 | twangville.com | Shawn Underwood

Although the roots go back further, the progressive, jam grass arm of the itself-upstart bluegrass genre really started hitting its stride about 25 or 30 years ago. One of the handful of bands that’s been around since then is Colorado’s Yonder Mountain String Band. Their 11th studio album, Nowhere Next, has just come out, and […]
West Of Texas - Hot Motel Nights

Nov 14, 2024 | twangville.com | Shawn Underwood

There’s a memorable line in The Blues Brothers movie where Jake asks the proprietor’s wife what kind of music they play and she confides, “oh, we have both kinds, country AND western.” I get that same sentiment from the latest album out of L.A.’s West Of Texas, their sophomore release Hot Motel Nights. Although front man Jerry Zinn notes “I do feel this album has a lot of range”, that’s a relative statement.
Teddy and the Rough Riders

Oct 31, 2024 | twangville.com | Shawn Underwood

If you’ve been to Nashville recently you know the city has grown like a weed. Whether you’re in the music industry, the medical industry, or the bachelorette party industry, everyone is from somewhere else. Everyone, that is, except Teddy and the Rough Riders front men, Jack Quiggins and Ryan Jennings. They actually grew up just […]
India Ramey - Baptized By the Blaze

Oct 10, 2024 | twangville.com | Shawn Underwood

The best new-to-me act I saw a couple of weeks ago in Nashville at AmericanaFest was East Nashvillian India Ramey. Her music is a throwback combination of Bakersfield twang, New Jersey attitude, and Appalachian harmony. She threw in a little spaghetti-western flair and two-step rhythm on her recently released album, Baptized By the Flame. The result is a set list that’s perfect for any honky-tonk in the country.
The Blind Boys of Alabama

Oct 2, 2024 | twangville.com | Shawn Underwood |Bill Wilcox

Friday, November 21, 2014 By Bill Wilcox Eric Bibb is one of a small number of elite blues musicians of his generation that define contemporary blues music.Â Along with Keb’ Mo’, Otis Taylor, Guy Davis, Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood and a handful of others, Bibb has assumed the mantle fromÂ the great Mississippi Delta artists of theÂ early 20th century and the post-World […]
Rebecca Frazier - Boarding Windows in Paradise

Sep 12, 2024 | twangville.com | Shawn Underwood

Back in the aughts, Virginia native Rebecca Frazier started gaining acclaim for her bluegrass flat-picking guitar, first with the band Hit & Run, followed up with her 2013 solo release, When We Fall. Then, as they say, life happened, and a career on the road as a bluegrass musician took a back seat to local ambitions, including family and polishing her already formidable skills.
David Luning - Lessons

Sep 11, 2024 | twangville.com | Shawn Underwood

I think it’s rare when someone can look back on their life and point to a single event that made them change course. It’s more likely a series of things building up to something that becomes the proverbial straw. In the case of Californian David Luning, it was having friends turn him on to the music of John Prine. As David puts it, “It made me realize just how powerful the right lyric can be.” He combined that realization along with a period of self-reflection to catalyze his third album, Lessons.