Wood, one of the UK’s most intimate family festivals and now in its 18th year, takes place on the 15th-17th May 2025 at Braziers Park, near Wallingford, Oxfordshire, in the beautiful setting of the Chilterns National Landscape. The festival is organised by the family-run team at Wood HQ. A previous winner of awards from everyone from Festival Kidz to The Oldie, and a multiple Greener Festival award winner, Wood was recently awarded “

On her latest single award-winning singer-songwriter Mia Kelly, from Gatineau, Quebec, takes a critical eye to the structures that shape our lives.  The rules and the regulations, the societal preferences and conventions, and finds that they may not describe a world run as a pure meritocracy.   It's almost as if the rules have been created to ring-fence and protect the interests of a particular group - as Mia kelly sings: "

The uplifting 'Bring Me Back' is the latest single from Juana Everett, following the release of the atmospheric 'One Million Dollars'. Full of yearning, the song imagines a romanticised past and the coming-of-age memories that have become a nostalgic place Everett wants to return to. It's a theme we can all associate with as we dream of escaping back to what we perceive to be simpler times.

These days, Sheryl Crow lives in Nashville, which makes perfect sense for an act whose music was always country-inflected. Nobody called her americana when she emerged in the 1990s at the vanguard of Women In Rock, but her voice nestles within the groove of roots music, and she was a great choice of headliner for Black Deer in 2024. Famously a backing vocalist for Michael Jackson on his Bad tour, thanks to the propensity for guitars, either acoustic or electric, Crow’s catalogue can mostly be classed as melodic rock.

The "Garcia/Grisman" album was recorded in 1991, and chances are you never heard these two master musicians sound as good as they did on this record. Jerry Garcia's tasteful picking on this album is inspired and timely. As for David Grisman, his soloing on 'Friend of the Devil' is fabulous; it's the best version of the song, slower and more longing.

A dozen quiet, questioning songs full of gorgeous melodies and harmonies.  “Some Other Stories” is the second album from South London duo Crew and Palmer, who are life partners as well as musical ones, and they each supply songs written individually to this 12-song project. Six songs are credited to Palmer and five to Crew. Palmer’s composition ‘Winning Ticket’ opens the album, setting the mood of quiescence and calm, with lyrics full of resignation: …

Ace Records has announced the release of “Highway of Diamonds – Black America Sings Bob Dylan” on 30th January 2026. It is the follow-up to the similarly themed 2010 compilation “How Many Roads”. Since he recorded his first self-composed song, ‘Song To Woody’, in November 1961, Bob Dylan has written and published more than 350 songs and is the third-most-covered songwriter in the history of popular music, with just short of 9,000 versions by more than 5,000 artists.

The final entrant in Twang Factor 4 is Hannah Crossrose, an alt-country singer-songwriter from Australia. Melbourne-born alt-country singer-songwriter Hannah Crossrose has been crafting heartfelt, intimate and bewitching songs on windswept Bunurong coastlines since the age of 13. With her soaring, ethereal voice and grounded, haunting poetic storytelling, she offers a soft landing for sensitive souls — creating music that feels both timeless and resonant.

An unexpected foray into americana yields classic sounds with a fresh twist. Music’s winding road sometimes takes unforeseen turns. Sam Salmon & the Grand Manan Bandits is one of those projects that seemingly appear out of nowhere, making you glad for such detours. Formed by the members of Canadian punk trio Motherhood (Brydon Crain, Penelope Stevens and Adam Sipkema) and guitarist Keith Hallett, the band share their love for alt-country with their debut album…

Recovering from the knee op has meant I have spent a lot of time at home over the last three weeks. We live in a small village in middle England in a dead-end street. From the lounge window, I can see every vehicle that drives up and down our street. It's not a long road, mainly two up two downs built late 1800s for workers of the shoe factories that filled the area way back then.

Prime creator of the Stax sound in the 1960s and keeper of its flame. The world lost one of its most influential guitarists on December 3rd 2025, when Steve Cropper passed away in Nashville, marking the end of his sixty-plus-year career. Through his role as a producer, songwriter, and guitarist with Booker T & the MGs, he was a key architect of the Southern Soul sound of the 1960s through his work with artists like Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, and Otis Redding, and over the subsequent decades, he has played with everyone from Levon Helm, Neil Young, Leon Russell, Mavis Staples, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Delaney & Bonnie, and John Prine, to name only a few.

The latest single from Eric Bibb is the third taster from his new album "One Mississippi", and finds the three time-Grammy nominated singer questioning what it is to be free.  From the basics of being free to have enough to eat, to have shelter and warmth to the more complex freedoms of being able to dissent from a party line, to have some freedom of speech.

Here's the video premiere for 'Shelf', the latest single from Duluth singer-songwriter Breanne Marie Tepler and her band The Front Porch Sinners. The band create a full sound with absorbing layers and depth. Over Tarek Makky's bass, Evan Tepler's guitar and Matt Groom's percussion, Johnny Peterson's pedal steel and Dicky Brooks' keys float up in gorgeous, warmly melodic waves.

Well that’s it from us for another week dear reader. If you’re an AUK supporter, your monthly newsletter will be with you at 5pm with our exclusive end of year best of 2025 playlist which we collectively pulled together without resorting to violence. Once again, if you haven’t perused our new community forums yet then please do drop in and say hello, and remember to check out our weekly…

And now the sweating starts, the raised heartbeat rate, the stark all all-encompassing, totally overwhelming fear...yes, there are less than three weeks to go to the Big Day.  How does this happen every single year?  Or, maybe, it's all going fine - the presents are purchased, the meal has been planned and budgeted for, all that remains is to get out and about and enjoy one, or two, or three or...however many...of the Yule themed gigs and tours that more and more spring up  in this season. 

An excellent reclamation of far-scattered folk songs. On his second album, Edinburgh's Sam Shackleton continues to display his love of and mastery of American folk music while infusing it with an unmistakable Scottish presence. His debut album "Causeway Recordings" found inspiration in the likes of Woody Guthrie and Scottish musicians such as Alex Campbell and Shackleton maintains this fusion on "

Earlier this year, the late-great LA singer-songwriter Warren Zevon was finally inducted into the 'Rock and Roll Hall of Fame'. With a recording career that spanned twenty-three years, culminating in thirteen studio albums and a string of songs that became cemented in the very DNA of the singer-songwriter scene of West Coast America during the 1970s, Zevon delivered a unique style of writing.

With a storm behind us and the promise of snow in the near future, it was clear that we're heading towards the Winter, a time of chill that drives a need for the embracing of the "cosy", a time when the chill can provide crystalline clarity but also can mistily obscure. What better time, then, for the delicate, intricate folksong of Natalie Wildgoose?

The next entrant in Twang Factor 4 is Jon Harmon, who is a singer-songwriter based in Velletri, Italy.  Harmon has been performing and writing songs for years, but found his true voice only lately. "I am a child of the greats of the past and present, with a sound influenced by James Taylor, Johnny Cash, Jason Isbell, John Moreland, Cat Stevens, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell and too many others to name".

A packed show this week as Keith interviews South Korean band Wednesdayoff, as well as Editor in Chief Mark Whitfield. There are tracks from Luke Tuchscherer, James Hodder, Richard Thompson, David Ford, Michael Weston King, and more, as well as a new album announcement from The Delines and a play of the first track from it. Christmas comes early!

Our new playlist of the best new Americana we’ve heard over the last month is out later today exclusively for AUK supporters which includes new tracks by Mavis Staples, Mariel Buckley, The Dreaming Spires, Aimee Mann and Tyler Ramsey among others – as always we trawl through the best Americana we’ve heard recently so you don’t have to. Plus we're including an exclusive playlist of the best americana we've heard in 2025 as chosen by our writing team collaboratively.

The thing is, you listen to a new song by Midlake, and it sounds great from the start. Naturally, they are a tight band, and they know what they are doing - that blend of one step aside from reality, folk influenced, psychedelically infused that is pure Midlake. And then you listen again. And again. And those hidden depths that somehow you'd skated over the first couple of times start to reveal themselves.

Check out the latest single from West Sussex artist Serious Child, the musical moniker of Alan Young. Co-written with Neil Connor, 'Veneer' is simply gorgeous. The instrumentation is lush and layered, delicate and precise, including sweetly sliding violin from David Grubb. This fine musicianship is a compelling foundation for Young's impressive voice, which winds through unexpected melodic paths, lifted by ethereal backing vocals from My Girl The River.

Under Andy Short’s recent Top 10, there was praise from a reader for his choices that had “objectivity and historical context” as opposed to others, which had been “Some songs I like”. The reader, it has to be said, did enjoy all the lists, though. Unfortunately, this is back to “Some songs I like”. Well, love, really. Objectively, the list should consist of songs that are very popular and that have, perhaps, had a great influence.

The word ‘legend’ is overused in the world of music writing; too often applied as a lazy label to someone who is merely well-known or a favourite of a particular scribe. In the case of Alice Gerrard, however, it’s entirely appropriate. Whether as a performer, historian, publisher or just someone who was there at special times. Gerrard’s presence casts a long shadow over the world of old-time music in the American roots world.