Bon Iver asked him to cover his new material and he’s teaching Mescal and Josh O’Connor to sing. But the interpreter is more interested in songs than stardom
Sam Amidon grew up in the 1980s, but his Vermont childhood was “almost like a refuge” from the gaudiest decade. His hippy parents were folk-singer educators who frequently travelled south to work with Sacred Harp shape-note singers. “We were still eating granola and tofu stir fry, growing veggies and having potlucks,” he says. “Nobody had a television. I remember seeing a picture of Michael Jackson on somebody’s notebook, but I had no idea what he sounded like.” The family had one Talking Heads cassette, one Cyndi Lauper cassette and one Bob Dylan cassette, albeit of traditional songs. “The idea of the singer-songwriter model just wasn’t in my life.”
Amidon followed his parents into music, becoming a fiddle prodigy and noted folk singer, releasing acclaimed albums for Nonesuch, and collaborating with jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, and folk-pop songwriter Beth Orton, whom he married in 2011. The couple live near the London cafe (incidentally, where Fleabag was filmed) where I meet Amidon in December to discuss his beautiful new album, Salt River, his first for Rough Trade imprint River Lea.
NEW YORK — Garth Hudson, The Band's virtuoso keyboardist and all-around musician who drew from a unique palette of sounds and styles to add a conversational touch to such rock standards as Up on Cripple Creek, The Weight and Rag Mama Rag, has died at age 87. Read More
Why community-based grassroots politics may be key to surviving the next four years. Plus, comfort foods in the run-up to Ramadan
Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week Donald Trump was inaugurated in Washington, and the moment feels familiar but also very different. I spoke to the Guardian US colleagues Marina Dunbar and Adria R Walker about inauguration day and how Black Americans were bracing for a second Trump term. But first, the weekly roundup.
The singer has filed a lawsuit against the media conglomerate for making defamatory claims against him in the 2024 film Chris Brown: A History of Violence
The R&B star Chris Brown is suing the media conglomerate Warner Bros Discovery for $500m (£406m) for making defamatory claims against him in the 2024 documentary Chris Brown: A History of Violence, Rolling Stone reports.
Released in October, the documentary addressed the allegations of misconduct and sexual assault against Brown. It features a Jane Doe who sued him for allegedly drugging and assaulting her at a party in 2020 on Sean “Diddy” Combs’s yacht (the case was dismissed without prejudice). In 2009, Brown assaulted his then-girlfriend Rihanna before the Grammy awards.
Drummer’s band were forced to cancel their planned gig in London, with footage from their earlier performance at the Cavern Club in Liverpool being played instead
An airline passenger has gone viral for posting a video showing her Southwest flight playing "YMCA" upon landing in D.C. on the eve of President Donald Trump's inauguration.
The 36-year-old has already pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm as jury selection gets underway in Los Angeles
After a shaky performance at President Donald Trump's inaugural ball that sparked concern among fans on social media, Billy Ray Cyrus said his onstage mishap was just part of “rock 'n' roll."
Jewel surprised President Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. supporters Monday with a performance at the MAHA Ball at the Waldorf Astoria, Washington, D.C.
Innovative organist with the Band, the rock group who changed the way their contemporaries thought about music
His high forehead and long, bushy beard, suggestive of a country preacher or a backwoods boffin, offered an early sign that Garth Hudson, who has died aged 87, was bringing something different to the world of rock music in the 1960s. As the organist with the Hawks, who backed Bob Dylan on a famous series of concerts before turning into the Band, he looked and sounded like a figure from a different age, or perhaps one in whom many ages and cultures were being magically combined.
Music from Big Pink, the Band’s widely influential first album, released in 1968, bore witness to a process to which each of the five musicians – four Canadians and an American – made a distinctive and equal contribution. Levon Helm, the drummer, awakened memories of the old South. Robbie Robertson played guitar with a rare and pointed economy. Rick Danko, the bassist, evoked the intimacy of backporch music-making. Richard Manuel, the pianist, sang with an aching fragility. And Hudson, an enigmatic figure half-hidden behind his organ console, brought the sound of mystery.
Jim Newman claims band who performed at inauguration is ‘entirely separate entity’ from group he was in
A former member of Village People has distanced himself from the band that performed at Donald Trump’s inauguration events, stating that the current group has “nothing to do with the group that I was a part of”.
Village People, whose song YMCA is widely considered a gay anthem and a favorite of the returning US president’s, performed at several of Trump’s inaugural events over the weekend and on Monday. However, only one original member, the lead singer and songwriter Victor Willis, 73, is still part of the band and participated in the performances.
Are the guitars right? Is Joan Baez sidelined? Who is this Sylvie Russo? And why is it an American shouting ‘Judas’? A Dylan tribute singer, two biographers, a superfan and more weigh in
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