Archive
Music: every article
18 articles, newest first.
23 September 202618 pieces
- MusicLearning an Instrument After Sixty Is Good for Your BrainTwenty minutes a day, the right instrument for your hands, and a hymn you already know by heart. That's the whole plan.
- MusicThe True Stories Behind the Patriotic Songs You Think You KnowA poem scribbled on Pikes Peak, a tune borrowed from a London club, a bugle call rewritten in a Virginia camp, and why the anthem is so hard to sing.
- MusicWhat Actually Matters When You Buy Your First AcousticSolid top, straight neck, low action, honest price. Almost everything else on the tag is there to separate you from your money.
- MusicBuild a Road Trip Playlist One Decade at a TimeSeventeen songs an hour, six decades deep, and a running order that survives hour nine somewhere outside Amarillo.
- MusicThe Women Who Built Country Music and What They Teach YouFrom Maybelle Carter's thumb to Lainey Wilson's CMA trophy, a listening path through the women who wrote the rules and the songs.
- MusicClassic Rock Albums That Hold Up From Track One to the EndTurn off shuffle, give a record forty-five minutes of your actual attention, and find out which ones were built to be heard whole.
- MusicStart a Vinyl Collection Without Torching Your BudgetThe turntable matters more than the records, the thrift bins are better than you think, and the suitcase player is quietly eating your albums.
- MusicRoots Music Isn't a CostumeDel McCoury sang with Bill Monroe in 1963. Billy Strings learned Doc Watson songs from his dad. The line is unbroken, and you can join it.
- MusicJohnny Cash Never Served Time in PrisonThe straight version: the pills that nearly killed him, the gospel records nobody bought, and the four months between June's funeral and his own.
- MusicHow to Take Your Family to a Concert and Actually Enjoy ItEar muffs, curfew math, and the kind of shows that work with a seven-year-old in tow. Plus the mistake most dads make at the merch table.
- MusicBuild a Home Stereo That Actually Sings for Under $1,000Spend it in the right order, put the speakers in the right place, and a thousand dollars buys you a system you'll keep for twenty years.
- MusicClean Music a Teenager Will Actually Turn UpThe playlist loses the second you call it clean. Here's what to play instead, artist by artist, and how to get it past a fifteen-year-old.
- MusicTurn a Story Into a Song Without Losing the StoryThe craft behind a three-minute country, gospel or bluegrass song, from the one-sentence test to the line you'll have to cut.
- MusicHow to Get Into Bluegrass and Actually Start Playing ItFive instruments, one 1945 band that started the whole thing, and a listening order that takes you from Bill Monroe to Billy Strings without getting lost.
- MusicTwelve Minutes a Day Beats an Hour of ArguingCount repetitions instead of minutes, fix the bench height, and stop asking a nine-year-old to be the one who remembers.
- MusicThe Stories Behind the Hymns You Sing Without ThinkingA telegram reading "Saved alone," a slave ship captain, and a father who lost everything in two days. The hymnal is full of people having the worst week of their lives.
- MusicCountry Songs Worth Memorizing Before Someone Hands You a GuitarFive songs you know cold beat fifty you half-remember. Here's what to learn, what key to sing it in, and the verse everybody forgets.
- MusicThe First Ninety Days of Learning Guitar as a Grown ManFifteen minutes a day, four chords, and one song you can play for your kids by Easter. What actually works, and what wastes your first month.