Blog

**Digging Up Roots: A Deep Dive into Michaela Anne’s “Bright Lights and the Fame”** When I sat down to write about one of America’s lesser-lit county roads—the ones far afield from the bustling highways of mainstream country—I traveled back to the rainy spring of 2016. There, I rediscovered Michaela Anne’s “Bright Lights and the Fame,” […]

**Still, by Michael McArthur (2019): Finding Shelter in the Quiet** Music finds us in peculiar places. It’s not always the stadium-filling anthems that offer sanctuary; sometimes it’s the whisper, the cracked voice trembling between lines, the indie roots record that never made a ripple beyond its modest circle. Michael McArthur’s 2019 album, *Ever Green, Ever […]

**Finding Grace in the Cracks: A Personal Dive into Kelsey Waldon’s “I’ve Got a Way”** We all have an album that comes to us in a moment we aren’t expecting. For me, that moment came in early spring, 2017, when Kentucky-born Kelsey Waldon’s “I’ve Got a Way” first hit my headphones. Released quietly in 2016 […]

**Dwelling in Quiet Places: A Personal Review of Michaela Anne’s “Bright Lights and the Fame” (2016)** It’s a blessing and a curse to have been raised on the tail end of analog. I grew up listening to country music on cassette tapes hurriedly flipped when the house got too quiet—when the silence pressed in and […]

**Finding Solace in Margo Cilker’s “Pohorylle” — A Personal Journey (2021)** Every so often, I stumble upon an album that doesn’t only whisper into my ears, but seems to recognize something in my chest that has long been dimmed. In late autumn 2022, while searching for country albums that slipped beneath the mainstream radar, I […]

**Finding Lost Highways: A Personal Journey with Kelsey Waldon’s “I’ve Got a Way”** There are albums that slip into your life quietly, like midnight trains you weren’t expecting to catch, but years later you wonder how you ever got anywhere before their arrival. Kelsey Waldon’s 2016 album “I’ve Got a Way” is one such train. […]

**Long Road, Quiet Heart: Digging Into Caitlin Canty’s “Reckless Skyline”** What makes an album linger inside you days after hearing it for the first time? I asked myself this, sitting in the late glow of a Tuesday, my brain running its old loops—restlessness, a furtive grief, a little hope. Digging through forgotten corners of country-Americana […]

**Review: The Healing Grit of Kelsey Waldon’s “I’ve Got a Way” (2016)** Sometimes music that deserves to etch itself into the American canon ends up only a secret handshake among a small audience. Kelsey Waldon’s 2016 album “I’ve Got a Way,” quietly released on Oh Boy Records, is one of those rare country gems that […]

**The Unseen Light: A Deep Dive Into Dori Freeman’s “Letters Never Read” (2017)** I came upon Dori Freeman’s “Letters Never Read” one sleepless winter after an endless scroll through Bandcamp’s dustier shelves. Released in 2017, this is a record that should be referenced in every conversation about modern American country music. And yet, for reasons […]

**The Spiraling Grace of Ordinary Life: A Personal Journey with Kelsey Waldon’s *The Gold Mine* (2014)** There’s an elusive beauty in the overlooked. I’ve spent much of my life searching for meaning in the margins—old lyrics scribbled on napkins, the way a rainy morning can mark the start of something small but important. It’s no […]