Husband and wife team Brett and Rennie Sparks have been releasing albums under the name The Handsome Family since 1994. In that time they’ve created modern murder ballads, love songs based on the mating habits of insects and crushes on ...

Talking with Webb Wilder always begins with catching up on his music career and ends with a spirited music nerd discussion.

When it comes to free music, Knoxville has an embarrassment of riches. Just about any night of the week you can find great free music happening somewhere.

There was a time that “music sales” meant the sale of sheet music. There are thousands of songs that were published and copyrighted and weren’t really premiered until an amateur pianist or singer sang them for friends or family — ...

It’s pretty obvious that several decades ago something special was taking place in Lubbock, Texas.

“The Next Day,” David Bowie (Columbia): During the 1970s there was no one more ahead of the pack than David Bowie. If every album wasn’t a masterpiece (and most were) they pointed to pop music’s future — at least until ...

Ashley Monroe is one of those artists that you keep rooting for. Ever since she was a 12-year-old living in Halls it was easy to see she had an inextinguishable talent. She sang everywhere. When she and her mother moved ...

“Devil’s Rope,” Tim Lee 3 (www.timleethree.com) There’s something to be said for artists who arrive in a burst of brilliance — musicians who create their best work in their 20s and make you feel the passion and fire of youth. ...

“Twisted Steel & Sex Appeal,” Barstool Romeos (www.barstoolromeos.com)

It’s hard to know just what to call the upcoming CD release show by the group Westwend. The show will celebrate the release of solo albums by Wendy Crowe and Jonathan Maness, who are the singing-songwriting core of Westwend. And, ...

In 2006, actor Johnny Depp and director Gore Verbinski were working on "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," when visionary music producer Hal Willner proposed the duo financing an album of pirate and sailing songs.

In June 2012, longtime alt-rocker Bobby Sutliff had a car wreck near his home in Powell, Ohio. Sutliff, a veteran of the almost-famous 1980s Mississippi college rock favorites The Windbreakers, barely survived.

Jonathan Sexton has a great smile. It's one that doesn't mask anything.

Mike Craver dwells in an odd place in American music. Since his days with the legendary string band The Red Clay Ramblers (with which he regularly played piano) in the 1970s and '80s, Craver has created characters that seemed to ...

Where did funk come from? Perhaps it oozed up with the primordial soup, but only became recognized as an essential element when James Brown and his band summoned it out of the dark, wet ground somewhere near Macon, Ga. Or ...