NPT Music Monthly September 2010: Tori Amos, Cachao López, The Carter Family and More

Not since the great female songwriters and performers of the late 60s, had there been such an influx of influential women in rock as we saw in the early to mid-90s. To this day, if you check the influences of aspiring women singer-songwriters and artists, odds are one of these artists’ names will pop up. In 1993, we saw the arrival of Sheryl Crow‘s first record, Tuesday Night Music Club. That same year, although she had been recording for a number years, Sarah McLachlan gave us her breakthrough, Fumbling Toward Ecstasy. In 1995, Alanis Morisette‘s Jagged Little Pill took us inside a theatre and shook the foundations of popular music, while Ani DiFranco, who had already released a number of independent records, found her most mainstream success with Not a Pretty Girl. No female artist of the first half of the decade, though, was as unique as Tori Amos. Sure, she borrowed a bit from Joni Mitchell and had touches of some of her ethereal contemporaries, but 1992’s Little Earthquakes was still chill-inducing in its honesty, and a feast for the senses in its arrangements. Standout tracks “Crucify” and “Silent All These Years” were stealth punches to the gut. If you made music in 1992, or were considering it, you could not ignore what Amos was doing, both on record and on stage.

Amos has only continued to grow as an artist, with close to a dozen albums and multiple Grammy Awards. Live From the Artists Den moves to Wednesday nights this month, and we’re proud to have Amos live from the The Veterans Room of New York City’s Park Avenue Armory on Wednesday, September 22 at 11:00 p.m. where she performs a career-spanning set featuring classics from her debut through her latest, Abnormally Attracted to Sin.

Dierks Bentley‘s also on Live from the Artists Den, On Wednesday, September 1; Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings are on Austin City Limits on Saturday, September 4; and we’ve got an encore broadcast of our own documentary, The Carter Family: An American Original, on Friday, September 24.

It’s another great month of music programming on NPT. For a complete list of programming in September, please visit the schedule link at wnpt.net.

Read the Rest of the NPT Music Monthly September 2010 in newsletter form. It’s the complete listing of all the music programming coming to NPT this month.  Subscribe for free, and view a complete list of programming for September at wnpt.net.