MerleFest, the internationally renowned music festival, wrapped its 37th year last weekend with headliner performances by Bonnie Raitt, the Avett Brothers, and Watchhouse. The festival features “traditional plus” music, a blend of styles based on the “traditional, roots- oriented culture of the Appalachian region.” It’s not just bluegrass though — MerleFest musical genres include everything from Americana

Joan Baez’s protest music is front and center in star-studded tribute In an evening devoted to her music, activist and artist Joan Baez shared the contents of a message she’d just received with a sold-out crowd at San Francisco’s Masonic Auditorium. “I just got a text from one of my friends saying this is the best

Better Than Jail, a new benefit album that contains a 12-track lineup of iconic prison song covers, was released today, Friday, Oct. 4. Bringing together a coveted assemblage of Americana, blues, and country artists, the tracklists shuffles classics from Merle Haggard “Sing Me Back Home,” “I Made the Prison Band”) Bob Dylan (“Hurricane,” “I Shall

Bonnie Raitt is devoting her Sunset Center appearance to supporting journalism. “Never has protecting a free press been more essential,” she says. Bonnie Raitt has long been recognized as a blues-rock icon for her stellar songwriting, silky smooth voice, punchy rhythms, and for her virtuosic electric guitar blues slide technique. The late great B.B. King

This Women’s History Month, Brandi Carlile is honoring Bonnie Raitt. Long before she was the Grammy winner the world knows today, Carlile, 41, says she stood outside of Raitt’s concert at the Puyallup Fair nearby her hometown in Washington because she “couldn’t afford to go in.” “I listened to her lecture rednecks about the environment,”

On Sunday, February 5, Bonnie Raitt took home the Grammy for Song of the Year for her self-penned song, “Just Like That.” “Just Like That” tells a story of a mother’s journey after the loss of a child, the healing power of organ donation and the connection between a donor family and a recipient. Through

My wife Joan deeply loved Bonnie Raitt, as a musician and as a role model. Joan always saw Bonnie as a wonderfully strong, outspoken and progressive, independent woman. Growing up, I admired Bonnie Raitt as well, for her social justice advocacy and activism. My early musical passions, on the other hand, leaned more male heavy,

“The song and the music video are also like prayer offered in ceremony, asking for strength, justice, and preservation” — Winona LaDuke Bonnie Raitt and the Indigo Girls are among the many voices featured on “No More Pipeline Blues (On this Land Where We Belong),” out on Earth Day (April 22nd) via Rock the Cause Records. The track supports the