The remarkable true story of how two best friends in Laramie, WY started a YouTube channel and ended up changing Americana music.
The Rise Of Brandi Carlile: How Her Emotive Songwriting & Delivery Made Her One Of Americana's Most Versatile Stars
Brandi Carlile's seven nominations at the 2023 GRAMMYs epitomize the superstardom she has achieved in recent years — the kind of success she's been destined for since her 2005 debut.
Willi Carlisle’s ‘I Won’t Be Afraid’ is Both a Respite from the World and a Mantra with Which to Take it On
"I Won't be Afraid," the simplest track on Peculiar, Missouri, is essentially an acoustic guitar and vocal number with a straightforward message: it's okay to be yourself.
These Tiny Succulent Plants Are Being Poached by the Thousands
Succulents are popular with collectors and amateur houseplant enthusiasts alike. They’re also a heavily-poached plant and their habitat loss could have huge implications for the future of ecosystems.
Starting a new life in a foreign country is hard and many refugees feel isolated and struggle to adapt. Dallas-based non-profit Break Bread, Break Borders, a refugee-run catering company gives refugee women practical job skills, a community and a way to share their stories.
*All photos by Meredith Lawrence
The youngest band ever to play Warped Tour is an all-girl, teenage, pop-punk trio from Frisco, TX, managed by Bowling for Soup’s Jaret Reddick.
A Deeper Truth
The writing from Roxy Gordon, the little-known Choctaw poet, musician, and Native American Indian activist (who described himself in those terms), is deliberately unsettling and challenging, and often sharply critical of American culture. At times incongruous, painful, dissonant, and violent, his album Crazy Horse Never Died, first released in 1988, feels intensely and innately of the moment.
Listening to Willi Carlisle’s sophomore album, Peculiar, Missouri, is like speeding through a folk music history exhibit curated to critique contemporary culture.
11 Charley Crockett Songs That Prove He’s a Singer for the Ages
Renewable Ranching
In Texas, a father-daughter ranching duo are re-thinking their ranch with the environment in mind.
*All photos by Meredith Lawrence
Confronting the long, uneven path to gender-based asylum in the US
There is no one clear path for women fleeing gender-based violence to get asylum in the US. The reason why is complicated, but the process might get a bit clearer, soon.
Toilet Seat Artist and Former Museum Owner Dies at 98
After refusing to pay a taxidermist to mount the antlers of a buck he shot, Barney Smith affixed them to a toilet seat himself. He became renowned for his quirky art works, using the lids as blank canvases on which to display the odds and ends he amassed throughout his life.
With a chameleon-like ability to shift from country to blues to jazz to western swing, Melissa Carper writes simple, profound songs with a distinctly vintage sound palette.
Walker's music often elicits comments of "I don't like country music, but I like this," from new fans. That's because it doesn't sound like the mainstream country music of the past few decades.
A subculture with roots on the American frontier thrives today, struggling with, and sometimes embracing, the 21st century world.
*Folio best long-form feature award winner; LA Press club award finalist
Kent Reeves is a leader in a rancher collective fighting climate change and repairing California’s native grasslands using an unlikely tool: cows.
Afraid he would be killed if he stayed in his home country, a Kurdish journalist left his home and family to seek asylum in the United States. For five years he waited for a decision, unable to support himself financially, while a series of red-tape mishaps landed him in detention and made him consider suicide…
Three Dallas-area music friends started a management company to lift up local musicians.
Morgan McEwen, an ex-Met Opera dancer was tired of the mistreatment and misogyny she encountered in the ballet world, so she started her own company to change it.
*all photos by Meredith Lawrence
Women have always been essential to country music, here are 5 women country acts who are writing the genre’s future, too.
Zach Bryan’s Massive Breakout Year
Bryan's music feels raw and intimate — it'd be easy to imagine him jamming on your front porch on a summer evening, but these days he's selling out multi-thousand seat venues.
Across the nation, country music with a more classic sound, often labeled “Americana,” is making a comeback. In Dallas, Texas, the resurgence has been cooking for some time, and is mostly driven by young country musicians.
*Cover photo by Meredith Lawrence.
Stress is killing farmers - sometimes literally, but these Texas farmers are still making it work…for now.
*All photos by Meredith Lawrence