FEATURE: ROBIN NOLAN
Filtering Gypsy jazz through his rock, blues, and fusion-jazz influences, Robin Nolan pays tribute to the tradition while incessantly pushing its boundaries. [More]

FEATURE: GREAT GUITAR TOWNS
Acoustic Guitar examines eight US cities where the guitar is king. [More]

PRIVATE LESSON: FRANCO MORONE
The Italian fingerstylist combines traditional old-world and new-world styles with contemporary alternate tunings. With audio. [More]

FEATURE: GUITAR CONSTRUCTION BASICS
Explore the acoustic guitar anatomy to discover how it works and which ax is right for you. [More]

NEW GEAR REVIEW: ALVAREZ-YAIRI WY1TWR
Fishman Aura–equipped thinline acoustic makes daring style statement in a performance-ready package. With video. [More]

NEW GEAR REVIEW: CRAFTER TMC035/N
Prewar style and up-to-date electronics come together in an OM packed with practical performing features. With video. [More]

NEW GEAR REVIEW: AAD CUB AG-100
Bass amplifier specialist offers an uncommonly portable acoustic guitar amp that packs a punch. With video. [More]

DOLLY PARTON, Backwoods Barbie
At 62, with all hope of radio airplay far behind her, Dolly Parton is still making great country music. Backwoods Barbie, her first mainstream album in a decade, includes one certifiable gem (Craig Wiseman and Betsy Ulmer’s “Jesus & Gravity”), two unlikely covers (Fine Young Cannibals’ “Drives Me Crazy” and Smokey Robinson’s “The Tracks of My Tears”), and nine new songs by Dolly, with only one (“Better Get to Livin’”) making any concessions to today’s market. The rest sound like classic Dolly Parton, with hopeless romantics (“Somebody’s Everything”), lonely wives (“Only Dreamin’”), cheating husbands (“Made of Stone”), and women scorned (“Shinola”). It’s a great lesson in how to make three-chord country songs come to life, especially old-fashioned heartbreakers “Made of Stone,” with its layered guitars by Tom Bukovac, Paul Franklin, Biff Watson, and Kent Wells, and “I Will Forever Hate Roses,” anchored with period perfection by Nashville cats Lloyd Green on pedal steel and Pig Robbins on piano. The performances here are beautifully outsized, delivering an aching vulnerability with an iconic, larger-than-life persona, and the songwriting remains strong as ever. Even now, still fighting to be taken seriously as a writer, she remains focused on the craft itself—not the makeup. “I’m just a backwoods Barbie in a push-up bra and heels,” she sings in yet another song about growing up poor while dreaming of a better life. “I might look artificial, but where it counts I’m real.” (Dolly Records, dollypartonmusic.net)
—KENNY BERKOWITZ

NELS ANDREWS, Off-Track Betting
Like the restless hero of Into the Wild, Andrews spent years following his own winding road from Alaska to New Mexico. On his second record, this former carpenter from Albuquerque chronicles the small-town and big-city fringes with cinematic imagery that rolls out like a blue-sky drive through the desert. Strong vocal hooks and classic chord progressions form the core of every song. But like Lyle Lovett, Andrews upends folk conventions by sneaking surprising details between the familiar elements. Though pedal steel, accordion, and traditional tools of twang are used to set a southwestern scene, on songs like “Sunday Shoes,” Andrews and producer Todd Sickafoose (Ani DiFranco) layer harp and klezmer banjos to add eerie atmosphere to a single chord pulsing on acoustic guitar. Looping melodies roll through the background like tumbleweeds. Metal hammers clang out a backbeat in the distance as if you're driving past Tom Waits’s Bone Machine band rehearsing in a metal foundry. But on more straightforward Americana ballads like “Shoot Out the Stars,” his husky southern drawl sounds more like a weary Ryan Adams. Unlike the Whiskeytown singer, Andrews’s point of view is less introspective and more journalistic. And in the end, it’s the slowly unfolding lyrical details that make this record worth repeated listens. (Reveal Records, reveal-records.com)
—DREW PEARCE

For more CD reviews, go to acousticguitar.com/playlist.

JANUARY 2009: Lesson feature with nylon-string wizard Earl Klugh; a history of Washburn Guitars; reviews of the Taylor GS6-12 and the Córdoba Fusion; and music to Townes Van Zandt’s “White Freight Liner Blues” and the Everly Brothers’ “Gone Gone Gone.”

FEBRUARY 2009: Jack Johnson sits down with Acoustic Guitar to discuss his rhythmic guitar style; OM guitar feature; reviews of the Eastman AC320 dreadnought and the Fishman Solo amp; and music to Otis Redding’s “(Sitting on) The Dock of the Bay” and Wilco’s “I’m the Man Who Loves You.”

MARCH 2009: Folk icon Joan Baez reveals the story behind her new record, which was produced by Steve Earle; dreadnought die-hards; reviews of the Santa Cruz 12-fret dreadnought and the Lowden Baritone; and music to Merle Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home” and the White Stripes’ “Hotel Yorba.”

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