Check out our Black Friday Deals! You can do all your shopping with us this year! Music Maker Staff Favorites on sale – half off our staff’s top ten! Free shipping on the Ironing Board Sam Pendant and all Wet Plate Photographs! Listener’s Circle is on sale for $300 ($60 savings!)

We wanted to make sure you know how much we value you, our supporters. Every one of us, from staff to board members to artists, will be thanking you at our tables this year. Your support means that we have spent 20 years revitalizing careers, documenting talented artists, and helping musicians meet basic needs. Thank […]

In 1991, Guitar Gabriel and I were playing at a public radio station where we performed in front of a live audience. After the show, an old black man dressed completely in dot-painted clothing introduced himself as “Sam McMillan the Dot Man.” He was a famous outsider folk artist who had enjoyed our show. At […]

In 1991, I was down in Mississippi visiting my friend David Nelson, who was at the time the editor of Living Blues Magazine. He introduced me to a German postal worker named Axel Küstner. Axel had done the most important blues research out of anyone in the 1970s and 1980s. He had lived with Big […]

Listen: Listen Mr DJ John Lee Zeigler, from Kathleen, GA played guitar upside-down and backwards in a style that directly reflects African griot traditions. In the late 1960s George Mitchell recorded Zeigler, and in the 1990s Tim followed George’s footsteps through the music of the South. During several visits, Tim recorded quite a bit of […]