Best of Roots Rock

Lindsey Adams Buckingham (born October 3, 1949) is an American musician and producer, best known as the lead guitarist and male lead singer of the music group Fleetwood Mac from 1975 to 1987 and 1997 to 2018. In addition to his tenure with Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham has released seven solo albums and three live albums. As a member of Fleetwood Mac, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Buckingham was ranked 100th in Rolling Stone's 2011 list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Buckingham is known for his fingerpicking guitar style.

Fleetwood Mac, the band that gave Buckingham his greatest exposure, had been around since the late 1960s, beginning as a British blues outfit led by Peter Green. After Green left the group, they experienced several tumultuous years without a stable frontman. Buckingham was invited to join the group in 1974; they had recorded in the same studio, and the band was lacking a guitarist and male lead vocal. As a stipulation to joining, Buckingham insisted his musical and romantic partner Stevie Nicks also be included. Buckingham and Nicks became the face of Fleetwood Mac during its most commercially successful period, highlighted by the multi-platinum album Rumours, which sold over 40 million copies worldwide. Though highly successful, the group experienced almost constant creative and personal conflict, and Buckingham left the band in 1987 to focus on his solo career.

Mudcrutch was an American southern and country rock band from Gainesville, Florida. They are best known for being the band that began Tom Petty's rise to fame.

Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend (; born 19 May 1945) is an English musician. He is co-founder, leader, guitarist, second lead vocalist and principal songwriter of the Who, one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s.

Townshend has written more than 100 songs for 12 of the Who's studio albums. These include concept albums, the rock operas Tommy (1969) and Quadrophenia (1973), plus popular rock radio staples such as Who's Next (1972); as well as dozens more that appeared as non-album singles, bonus tracks on reissues, and tracks on rarities compilation albums such as Odds & Sods (1974). He has also written more than 100 songs that have appeared on his solo albums, as well as radio jingles and television theme songs.

The Traveling Wilburys were a British-American supergroup consisting of Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty. Originating from an idea discussed by Harrison and Lynne during the sessions for Harrison's 1987 album Cloud Nine, the band formed in April 1988 after the five members united to record a bonus track for Harrison's next European single. When this collaboration, "Handle with Care", was deemed too good for such a limited release, the group agreed to record a full album, titled Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1. Following Orbison's death in December 1988, the Wilburys continued as a quartet and released a second album, titled Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3, in 1990.

Paul Frederic Simon is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and actor whose career has spanned six decades. He is one of the most acclaimed songwriters in popular music, both as a solo artist and as half of folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel with Art Garfunkel.

Sir George Ivan Morrison, known professionally as Van Morrison, is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose recording career spans seven decades. He has won two Grammy Awards.

Bruce Springsteen with The Sessions Band: Live in Dublin is a 2007 video and audio offering that captures in-concert performances from the Bruce Springsteen with The Seeger Sessions Band Tour recorded in November 2006 at The Point Theatre in Dublin, Ireland. The release consists of a concert DVD, a Blu-ray Disc, and separate two-CD audio set. A "special edition" of the CD set includes the concert DVD as well. The album is dedicated to friend and Irish show-business giant, Jim Aiken.

Clyde Jackson Browne (born October 9, 1948) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and political activist who has sold over 18 million albums in the United States.

Emerging as a precocious teenage songwriter in mid-1960s Los Angeles, he had his first successes writing songs for others, writing "These Days" as a 16-year-old; the song became a minor hit for the German singer and Andy Warhol protégé Nico in 1967. He also wrote several songs for fellow Southern California bands the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (of which he was briefly a member in 1966) and the Eagles, the latter of whom had their first Billboard Top 40 hit in 1972 with the Browne co-written song "Take It Easy".

Encouraged by his successes writing songs for others, Browne released his self-titled debut album in 1972, which spawned two Top 40 hits of his own, "Doctor, My Eyes" and "Rock Me on the Water". For his debut album, as well as for the next several albums and concert tours, Browne started working closely with The Section, a prolific session band that also worked with a number of other prominent singer-songwriters of the era. His second album, For Everyman, was released in 1973, and while it lacked an enduring single, has been retrospectively assessed as some of his best work, appearing highly on several "Best Album of All Time" lists. His third album, Late for the Sky, was his most successful to that point, peaking at number 14 on the Billboard 200 album chart. His fourth album, The Pretender, continued the pattern of each album topping the previous by peaking at number 5 on the album chart, and spawned the hit singles "Here Come Those Tears Again" and "The Pretender".

Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes are an American musical group from the Jersey Shore led by Southside Johnny. They have been recording albums since 1976 and are closely associated with Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band. They have recorded or performed several Springsteen songs, including "The Fever" and "Fade Away". Springsteen has also performed with the band on numerous occasions and in 1991 guested on their Better Days album. During the band's formative years Steven Van Zandt acted as the band's co-leader, guitarist, songwriter, arranger and producer while other E Streeters including Clarence Clemons, Max Weinberg, Garry Tallent, Ernest Carter, Patti Scialfa and Soozie Tyrell have all performed, toured or recorded with the Jukes. The band's horn section – the Miami Horns – has also toured and recorded with Springsteen. More than one hundred musicians can claim to have been members of the Asbury Jukes, including Jon Bon Jovi who toured with the band as a special guest during 1990. Bon Jovi has also cited the band as an influence and Jukes' Bobby Bandiera and Jeff Kazee have also toured with Bon Jovi. Other notable band members include Mark Pender and Richie "La Bamba" Rosenberg who have played regularly with the Max Weinberg 7 on both Late Night with Conan O'Brien and The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.

Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN) were a folk rock supergroup made up of American singer-songwriters David Crosby and Stephen Stills, and English singer-songwriter Graham Nash. When joined by Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young as a fourth member, they are called Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY). They are noted for their lasting influence on American music and culture, and for their intricate vocal harmonies, often tumultuous interpersonal relationships, and political activism.

CSN formed in 1968 shortly after Crosby, Stills and Nash performed together informally in July of that year, discovering they harmonized well. Crosby had been asked to leave the Byrds in late 1967, and Stills' band Buffalo Springfield had broken up in early 1968; Nash left his band the Hollies in December, and by early 1969 the trio had signed a recording contract with Atlantic Records. Their first album, Crosby, Stills & Nash, was released in May 1969, from which came two Top 40 hits, "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" (No. 21) and "Marrakesh Express" (No. 28). In order to tour the album, the trio hired drummer Dallas Taylor and session bassist Greg Reeves, though they still needed a keyboardist; Ahmet Ertegun suggested Neil Young, who had played with Stills in Buffalo Springfield, and after some initial reluctance, the trio agreed, signing him on as a full member. The band, now named Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, started their tour, and played their second gig at the Woodstock festival in the early morning hours of August 18, 1969. The first album with Young, Déjà Vu, reached number one in several international charts in 1970, and remains their best selling album, going on to sell over 8 million copies with three hit singles: "Woodstock", "Teach Your Children", and "Our House". The group's second tour, which produced the live double album 4 Way Street (1971), was fraught with arguments between Young and Taylor, which resulted in Taylor being replaced by John Barbata, and tensions with Stills, which resulted in his being temporarily dismissed from the band. At the end of the tour the band split up. The group have since reunited several times, sometimes with and sometimes without Young, and have released eight studio and four live albums.

James Vernon Taylor (born March 12, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A six-time Grammy Award winner, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 100 million records worldwide.

Taylor achieved his breakthrough in 1970 with the No. 3 single "Fire and Rain" and had his first No. 1 hit in 1971 with his recording of "You've Got a Friend", written by Carole King in the same year. His 1976 Greatest Hits album was certified Diamond and has sold 12 million copies in the US alone. Following his 1977 album JT, he has retained a large audience over the decades. Every album that he released from 1977 to 2007 sold over 1 million copies. He enjoyed a resurgence in chart performance during the late 1990s and 2000s, when he recorded some of his most-awarded work (including Hourglass, October Road, and Covers). He achieved his first number-one album in the US in 2015 with his recording Before This World.

Warren William Zevon was an American rock singer, songwriter, and musician.

Samuel Stephen "Steve" Forbert (born December 13, 1954) is an American pop music singer-songwriter. Bob Harris of BBC Radio 2 said Forbert has "One of the most distinctive voices anywhere."

His 1979 song "Romeo's Tune" reached No. 11 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and No. 13 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary Chart. It also spent two weeks at No. 8 in Canada. His other singles have all charted on Billboard. Forbert's first four albums all charted on the Billboard 200 chart, with Jack Rabbit Slim certified gold. In 2003, his Any Old Time album was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Traditional Folk category. Forbert has released nineteen studio and three live albums.

Forbert's songs have been recorded by several artists, including Rosanne Cash, Keith Urban, Marty Stuart and Webb Wilder. In 2017, a tribute album, An American Troubadour: The Songs of Steve Forbert, was released, with covers of his songs by twenty-one artists.

Neil Percival Young is a Canadian-American singer and songwriter. After embarking on a music career in Winnipeg in the 1960s, Young moved to Los Angeles, joining the folk-rock group Buffalo Springfield. Since the beginning of his solo career, often with backing by the band Crazy Horse, he has released critically acclaimed albums such as Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969), After the Gold Rush (1970), Harvest (1972), On the Beach (1974), and Rust Never Sleeps (1979). He was also a part-time member of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, with whom he recorded the chart-topping 1970 album Déjà Vu.

John Eddie (born 1959, Richmond, Virginia) is an American rock singer. Eddie moved to New Jersey in the 1970s and became a popular club circuit musician there, occasionally performing with Bruce Springsteen.

John's first studio presence was singing backing vocals on Bryan Adams' song "Somebody" on the 1984 album Reckless. John then signed with Columbia Records and released two albums including his 1986 self-titled debut, John Eddie. The first single, "Jungle Boy", from John Eddie peaked on Billboard at #17 Rock and #52 Hot 100. At the label's behest, his long-time band, the Front Street Runners, was replaced for the album by members of Springsteen's E Street Band. He opened for Bob Seger and The Kinks in the late 1980s but was dropped by the label early in the 1990s after the release of his second album, The Hard Cold Truth. He then signed with Elektra Records where he was chosen to represent Elektra on their 40th Anniversary record called Rubaiyat with his version of The Cure's "In Between Days" and recorded a third album, Still in the Same Cage, which, after a lengthy legal dispute, was never released. Since then Eddie has recorded independently and toured extensively; his career saw a resurgence when independent radio promotion person and long-time fan Michele Clark became his manager in 2000. Clark secured a record deal for Eddie with Lost Highway Records and executive produced the 2003 release of Who the Hell is John Eddie? The album subsequently produced three top 10 singles at the Triple-A Radio format. Kid Rock has covered "Lowlife", "Forty" and "Happy New Year" all written by John Eddie.

Richard Clare Danko (December 29, 1943 – December 10, 1999) was a Canadian musician, bassist, songwriter, and singer, best known as a founding member of the Band, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

During the 1960s, Danko performed as a member of the Hawks, backing Ronnie Hawkins and then Bob Dylan. Then, between 1968 and 1977, Danko and the Hawks, now called the Band, released seven studio albums before breaking up. Beginning with the group's reformation in 1983 and up until his death, Danko participated in the Band's partial reunion.

Danko was born on December 29, 1943 in Blayney, Ontario, a farming community outside the town of Simcoe, the third of four sons in a musical family of Ukrainian descent. He grew up listening to live music at family gatherings and to country music, blues and R&B on the radio. He especially liked country music, and often his mother would let him stay up late to listen to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio.

Declan Patrick MacManus, known professionally as Elvis Costello, is an English singer-songwriter and record producer. He has won multiple awards in his career, including two Grammy Awards in 1999 and 2020, and has twice been nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Male Artist. In 2003, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Costello number 80 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.