No Depression: Roots Music and Culture Journalism

“I’m gonna walk away from a bad day,” Rayland Baxter sings on the aptly titled “Real Bad Rut” off his first new record in four years, True Violet. And in many ways, that is just what he did, going off the grid to cope with a hard time and coming out the other end with a slew of bright-eyed, clear-headed songs to show for it. The 11 he whittled it down to for True...

The Felice Brothers have been called rootsy, ragged, and raucous since they descended from the Catskills to become scruffy New York City buskers. Two decades into their career, they have earned another descriptor — influential.

A new tribute album, Felice County Fair: A Celebration of The Felice Brothers, illustrates just how widely influential the band has bec...

Editor's Note: Miko Marks, whose new LP titled Hell or High Wayer is due out October 30 via Redtone Records, is No Depression's Spotlight Artist for October 2026. Stay tuned all month for more about this genre-spanning roots musician.

Change is transformative, by its nature. For worse sometimes, other times for better. Getting...

On JP Harris’s latest release, fans won’t encounter the tough-as-nails twang of albums past. They won’t hear the razor-edged, fork-tongued honky tonk that has soundtracked a decade of hard-ridden ballads and last-ditch elegies. Listeners will instead unearth something far more innate on Shaving A Dead Man. 

The shadowy country songsmith recently cracked open a ...

On her third album for Oh Boy Records, Appalachia — recorded at Dreamland Recording Studios with Grammy-nominated producer Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman) — Emily Scott Robinson opens herself up to experimentation and sings in her crystal-clear voice about resilience, love, grief, and hope.

Sponsored by Oh Boy Records