DelFest 2025 Showcases The Best in Bluegrass and Beyond
DelFest, held on Memorial day weekend each year in Cumberland, Maryland at the Allegheny County Fairgrounds is now in its 16th year and going strong.
Review
Album Review – Morgan Wallen’s “I’m The Problem”
“I’m The Problem” sounds like 37 slightly different versions of the same song over and over. resulting in a grayish goulash of a mono-genre sound for many of these tracks.
Album Review – Sam Stoane’s “Tales Of The Dark West”
Even if you weren’t a fan of country and Western music previously, after a spin through “Tales Of The Dark West,” you’ll be wearing out your friends and family about its beauty. Like the feminine version of Colter Wall.
Album Review – Dan Lepien’s “The Honky Tonk Traditional”
Oh bless this guy’s heart. He thinks it’s still 1990 and you can release a country record without any snap tracks, trap beats, tractor rapping, Auto-tune, or other wiggety wah wah and still get people to go wild over it.
Album Review – Kat Hasty’s “The Time of Your Life”
‘The Time of Your Life’ is unabashedly Kat as she overshares about her struggles with impulse control, failed love interests, and her utter inability to be anything but herself. There’s a folk hero appeal to her.
Album Review – Bryce Leatherwood (Self-Titled)
Everywhere you turn these days, it seems there’s a new country traditionalist crooning out killer music you can immediately warm up to, and with a cut to their jib that assures you this isn’t some interloper.
Album Review – Olivia Ellen Lloyd’s “Do It Myself”
Some albums you simply enjoy. Then other albums you listen to, and you feel like you’re living inside of them, and they live inside of you. You carry their sentiment and melodies with you throughout the day.
Album Review – Kristina Murray’s “Little Blue”
This album is very moody and brooding, but this also what makes the listening experience so enveloping and intoxicating. Kristina Murray’s music and story prey on your musical empathy, and suck you in.
Album Review – Caitlin Cannon’s “Love Addict”
Few if any songwriters exhibit the fearlessness towards the art form that country music’s Caitlin Cannon does. Unfiltered, and in certain cases, uninhibited, she’s willing to go to the places that all of our minds do.
Album Review – Christopher Seymore’s “King of Nothing”
It’s ten kick ass, easy-to-love country songs that sound just like country music always has, and always should. But if you want to delve a little bit deeper, you’ll also discover its quiet genius.
Album Review – Willie Nelson’s “Oh What A Beautiful World”
Why in the world is Willie Nelson still recording and performing music at the age of 91? Or even more perplexing, how is he even still alive, especially after the life he’s lived? The question and the answer are probably one in the same.
Album Review – Pug Johnson’s “El Cabron”
Pug Johnson explores the regional dialects of Texas and their intertwined nature, resulting in tasty and sometimes unexpected moments that has many buzzing about their next favorite artist.
Album Review – Country Honk’s “Bad Decision”
No record label. No publicist. No big time producer. No problem. They’re still kicking out killer country music. Country Honk might have one the most generic names in the country universe, but you can’t say it’s not accurate.
Song Review – Ernest’s “Gettin’ Gone” (feat. Snoop Dogg)
When word leaked out that Ernest had been spotted in downtown Nashville recently with Snoop Dogg shooting a video, you expected the worst. But as bad as this could have been, it doesn’t sound bad at all.
Album Review – Jon Pardi’s “Honkytonk Hollywood”
As the rest of country music seems to be following Jon Pardi’s lead, Jon Pardi himself seems to be staying static, if not heading in the other direction ever so slightly.
Album Review – The Wilder Blue’s “Still In The Runnin'”
If you’re looking for relief or reparations from the ills of life, you can reach for alcohol or other intoxicants to inoculate you from life‘s fickle and sometimes debilitating moods, or you can reach for the music of The Wilder Blue.
Album Review – The AM’s – “Here Comes That Broken Heart”
Good music never goes out of style. People’s tastes do. Then when they wisen up and the music of the day turns so cacophonous they can’t stomach it anymore, they come back to the stuff that’s always been good.
Album Review – Matt Daniel’s “The Poet”
Matt Daniel is one of those artists clearly touched (or cursed) by the need to perform country music to unburden his soul, but blessed with immense talent to write and express it.
Album Review – Alison Krauss & Union Station’s “Arcadia”
“Arcadia” might not be the best album to introduce your friends to the power of bluegrass, but it might be the ideal specimen to introduce them to the beauty of it.
Album Review – Lola Kirke’s “Trailblazer”
Ready to explore her country noir impulses in full force, she intermixes country songs with more indie rock treatments in an album that is eclectic and explorative, and always forthright and engaging in the writing.
Album Review – The Moran Tripp Band’s “Jumpers Hole”
They call themselves a rock and roll band, but they’re bursting with country blues, Southern textures, and even some straight up country songs that will fit right in with your sensibilities.
Album Review – Jason Boland & The Stragglers – “The Last Kings of Babylon”
On “The Last Kings of Babylon,” Jason Boland tries to summarize the last 25 or so years in music, from the personal and the professional, to the sacred and the profane.
Album Review – Charley Crockett’s “Lonesome Drifter”
“Lonesome Drifter” gives you another good haul of original Charley Crockett songs that are immediately entertaining, and that endear you ever further to the man and the mythos.
Album Review – Jason Isbell’s “Foxes in the Snow”
Writing and recording divorce records in the era of non-disclosure agreements has to make for a difficult task. But if there’s any wordsmith out there in the world capable of navigating those hurdles, it’s probably Jason Isbell.