A chronicle of the Upstate South Carolina music community and beyond
By DAN ARMONAITIS As the drummer for Ranky Tanky, a Charleston-based group that specializes in jazz-influenced arrangements of traditional Gullah music, Quentin E. Baxter was recently honored with his first Grammy Award. The group won in the Best Regional Roots Music Album category for its latest effort, “Good Time,” and Read More
By DAN ARMONAITIS Nine years ago this week, a teenage Noah Guthrie nervously stepped in front of a microphone at Little River Coffee Bar in downtown Spartanburg for his first public concert. “I didn’t know anything about playing in front of people or anything really,” the Greer-based Guthrie recalled recently. Read More
By DAN ARMONAITIS A few weeks ago, Nashville-based singer-songwriter Jason Ringenberg was escorted through the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum by former Spartanburg resident Peter Cooper, who now serves as its senior director, producer and writer. Ringenberg was visiting with his wife and daughters, who were given the Read More
By DAN ARMONAITIS As Randy Foster left the stage following his “There Goes the Neighborhood” album release concert at the Chapman Cultural Center in Spartanburg last February, he did so in a typically unassuming manner. “When it was over, I was just focused on packing up my gear,” the Hub Read More
By DAN ARMONAITIS As a ninth grader at Byrnes High School in 1972, Spartanburg resident Michael Buffalo Smith received his introduction to the Allman Brothers Band. A fellow student “brought the ‘At Fillmore East’ album to school,” Smith recalled recently. “We had a really cool teacher who would let us Read More
By DAN ARMONAITIS In 2011, the website UltimateClassicRock.com produced a list of the “Top 10 Southern Rock Songs” of all-time. At No. 1 was “Can’t You See” by the Marshall Tucker Band. The song appears as the second track on the band’s eponymous 1973 debut album, which kicked off with Read More
By DAN ARMONAITIS Sunny Sweeney has been churning out no-nonsense country music for the past decade and a half, impressing audiences with a powerful sound that’s commercially accessible yet filled with a renegade outlaw spirit. “I’ve always been an independent artist and then for a couple of years I had Read More
By DAN ARMONAITIS After several years as a restless troubadour who spent most of her nights sleeping in a touring van, acclaimed indie folk singer-songwriter Ira Wolf has somewhat settled down. “Just about a month or two ago, I finally bought a house here in Nashville and have kind of Read More
By DAN ARMONAITIS On New Year’s Day 1953, the life of one of the most important figures in country music history came to a tragic end. The legendary Hank Williams died in the backseat of a baby blue Cadillac in Oak Hill, West Virginia, as he was being driven to Read More
By DAN ARMONAITIS As Dirty Grass Soul prepares to host its New Year’s Eve Festival on Tuesday, Dec. 31 at Grassy Pond Arena in Gaffney, it’s worth noting that the wildly entertaining alt-country band recently returned home from its first-ever international gig. Dirty Grass Soul was a part of Country Read More