Singer-songwriter Ryan Adams started out as the leader of Whiskeytown, one of the most highly regarded alt-country bands of the late 1990s. By 2000, he was a solo artist, delivering a mostly acoustic set of Dylanesque tunes on HEARTBREAKER. By the ti…

When pioneering alt-country band Uncle Tupelo split in the mid-1990s, they broke off into two camps. Jay Farrar started the rootsy, twangy (if lyrically elliptical) Son Volt. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Jeff Tweedy, who co-led the band with Farrar, e…

Formed in Belleville, Illinois, USA in 1987, Uncle Tupelo revolved around childhood friends and songwriters Jeff Tweedy (b. USA) and Jay Farrar (b. Belleville, Illinois, USA). Primarily influenced by punk, then the blue-collar folk and country of Gra…

From the ashes of seminal alt-country band Uncle Tupelo arose two great 1990s bands fronted by Tupelo's two visionaries. Jeff Tweedy started the Stones/Big Star-loving Wilco, and Jay Farrar led Son Volt, a band that delved further into UT's country r…

Along with Uncle Tupelo, the Jayhawks were part of the 1980s wave of alt-country (as opposed to 1970s-style country-rock) bands, filtering the influence of artists like Gram Parsons through an alternative rock sensibility. The band's first three albu…

This Texas, USA-based band initially formed part of a second wave of grittier, grass roots country rockers inspired by the breakthrough of bands such as Uncle Tupelo and Green On Red, although they are compared to the Replacements and Clash as much a…

Lucinda Williams started out recording acoustic covers of classic folk and blues songs, but her own idiosyncratic songwriting soon came to the fore. Her mixture of rock, country, blues, and folk endeared her to a wide audience. Williams's self-titled…

Elliott Smith started out as the leader of Portland-based alt-rock band Heatmiser, who made three mid-1990s albums achieving good reviews but disappointing sales. Eventually Smith reinvented himself as a solo singer-songwriter, and his first couple o…

Bob Dylan began as a Woody Guthrie acolyte, imitating the dust-bowl balladeer as faithfully as a baby boomer from Hibbing, Minnesota, could. It wasn't long before he found his own voice, spearheading the early-1960s folk revival as well as the singer…

Steve Earle did for country in the 1980s what Waylon Jennings did for it in the '70s--released it from the shackles of commerciality and overproduction by introducing a bad-ass, rock-friendly outlaw aesthetic. Besides his talents as a singer/songwrit…

Johnny Cash was part rockabilly rebel, part campfire storyteller, part outlaw in black. Cash made country and rockabilly history on the Sun label in the 1950s. During the '60s, the ruggedly charismatic Cash rose to superstardom, ending the decade wit…

Tom Waits started out in the early 1970s as a piano-based barroom balladeer with a penchant for beat poetry and West Coast jazz. By the late '80s he had mutated into a brilliantly adventurous artist whose style suggested an amalgam of Howlin' Wolf, K…

Though Jeff Buckley was adamant about not being compared to his father Tim, his voice and free-floating, improvisatory folk/rock/jazz style bore inescapable echoes of genetic heritage. The Michael Jordan of singers, he had a voice that could soar or …

Iron & Wine is the artistic alias of Florida singer/songwriter Sam Beam, who crafts delicate songs full of poetic lyrics and simple, haunting melodies. Beam delivers his tunes in a hushed, Nick Drake-like voice and frames them with spare, mostly acou…

Bright Eyes is the brainchild of Omaha, NE singer-songwriter Conor Oberst, around whom the band (which has at times consisted solely of Oberst) revolves. Part of an Omaha indie scene centered around the Saddle Creek label, Oberst learned at the feet …

Gram Parsons was one of the prime movers of country-rock. After forming one of the first country-rock groups, the International Submarine Band, he led the Byrds down a similar path on SWEETHEART OF THE RODEO before splitting with Byrd Chris Hillman t…

Billy Bragg stands with one foot in the American dustbowl of Woody Guthrie and one in the anarchy of British punk. Bragg's early records from the 1980s were a revelation: the power and fury of punk transmitted via the age-old medium of a man alone wi…

Like the Band, Neil Young eschewed his Canadian roots to create a sound rooted in American folk and country, which he mixed with visionary, poetic rock in Buffalo Springfield and on his solo albums. He played the crucial fourth wheel role in Crosby, …

A side project for members of Soul Asylum, the Jayhawks, Run Westy Run, Wilco and the Honeydogs, the real names of those involved in the indie band Golden Smog were kept a closely guarded secret on the release of their debut album in 1996. However, t…