As far as voices go, Sam Beam has one of the more distinctive vehicles within indie folk. It’s been hailed as “intimate,” “unadorned,” and — interestingly — “limited,” the latter description coming from an earlier observation he…
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Following Donald Trump’s election, a growing chorus of voices began to request—if not require—something more from cultural art forms. Say something meaningful. Use your voice to inform, dissent, disrupt. Comedy has always been a space…
At first glance, Kenny and Keith Lucas, aka the Lucas Bros, seem quintessentially chill. In fact, if “chill factor” existed on a scale, there’s little doubt which end they would occupy. Their laidback demeanor,…
Marty Stuart’s catalog reads like an ode to the American landscape, even if that reverence arises more through sound than song title. “You’re talking to somebody who will build around a tree instead of cut…
Any reliable definition of Baton Rouge’s local independent music scene first begins with a discussion of what it is not. Thanks to surrounding cities like New Orleans and Lafayette, whose musical identities have not…
Béla Fleck has explored chapter and verse over the course of his tome-length music career, but there remained one role he had yet to play — father. The world’s most inventive banjo player took…
It takes only one hand to count the number of times a UK comic’s Netflix special has been released globally. Two fingers, to be exact. Jimmy Carr’s Funny Business marked the first, and now Katherine…
The repertoire for mandolin and piano isn’t exactly teeming with arrangements. Compared to other duets, those two specific instruments haven’t conversed with one another as often, but consider that dearth a starting point from…
Before Oh, Hello rang the doorbell on the Great White Way, Comedy Central’s pipeline to Broadway was non-existent. Broadway may have borrowed from novels, from movies, from all manner of forms to feed new…
Stand-up comedians require a certain kind of demon to do the work—or at least that’s been the generalizing trait associated with the form and its players for many a year. Think of Richard Lewis’s…
A nomadic impulse hums through the very heartbeat of American music, and, by extension, its newer occurrence of Americana. Many a name, from Merle Haggard to Miranda Lambert, have sung about the rambling spirit…
Kevin McDonald, perhaps best known as one-fifth of Canadian comedy troupe Kids in the Hall, is the poster child for physicality. On screen and stage, the laughs he gets arise largely from how he…