Category: Off the Beaten Tracks

AT the end of Part One we left keyboard wizard Keith Emerson announcing that the Nice had ‘outlived their usefulness’ and breaking up the three-man band. None of them wasted any time … Continue readingKeith Emerson, the Hendrix of the keyboards (Part 2)

IN a previous column about the American band 10,000 Maniacs I wondered how many would-be listeners were put off by the name. The same applies to the Canadian outfit Cowboy Junkies. They … Continue readingHooked on Cowboy Junkies

AT the end of Part One we left Tom Waits having fully assumed his seedy, gravel-voiced public persona with the 1976 album Small Change. It was his first to reach the US Top … Continue readingTom Waits Part Two – the Kathleen Effect

I NEVER had the good fortune to witness a live performance by the ultimate guitar showman, but I did get to see Jimi Hendrix’s keyboards counterpart in full flow. Keith … Continue readingKeith Emerson, the Hendrix of the keyboards

AT the end of part one we left the Shawn Colvin story with her 1993 marriage to Richard Thompson’s sound manager Simon Tassano seemingly having brought stability to a life dogged by … Continue readingShawn Colvin – a survivor’s tale part 2

THE name Tom Waits is synonymous these days with a gravelly, world-weary voice described by one critic as seeming like ‘it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in … Continue readingTom Waits – the gruff with the smooth

AT the end of Part One, we left the Incredible String Band in 1970 having released their sixth album I Looked Up. At the same time as this was recorded, multi-instrumentalist Robin Williamson was … Continue readingIncredibles but true – Part 2

LIFE has hardly been a cakewalk for Shawn Colvin. Addiction, anorexia, depression and a long series of unsuitable men, to name but a few of her problems. Yet, as with … Continue readingShawn Colvin – a survivor’s tale

THIS week, our time-travelling Ford Anglia coughs its way into Edinburgh, late 1965. Multi-instrumentalist Robin Williamson and banjo player Clive Palmer, both 22, had spent two years as a duo … Continue readingIncredibles but true

BACK to the heartworn highways this week for another great Texas singer-songwriter, Guy Clark. Like his bosom buddy Townes van Zandt, Clark provided hits for countless country singers while failing to become … Continue readingGuy Clark, heart of Texas