Toronto alt-country garage rockers the Sadies began sessions for Night & Day with legendary punk-blues wildman Andre Williams in 2008. At that time, Williams was in his seventies and dealing with a plethora of legal troubles as well as pretty heavy substance abuse issues. Eventually the sessions were put on hold while he worked through his legal problems and cleaned up. A few years later, the two factions reconvened to finish work on the album, and the difference in Williams' demeanor and state of being was, as they say, "night and day." This album continues the team-up that began with 1999's collaborative Red Dirt album, and casts Williams' dead center as a greasy narrator or unfiltered barker, humbly backed by the Sadies' respectable but comparatively squeaky clean, garagey (occasionally fiddle-driven) country-blues.

Idaho-bred singer/songwriter Josh Ritter's V2 Records debut follows in the footsteps of 2003's Hello Starling only in instrumentation. While he retains his literate tongue and expressive voice, there is far less humor on Animal Years than on his previous two outings. Producer Brian Deck (Iron & Wine, Modest Mouse) keeps Animal Years intimate but transient, like a circus train crawling through a small town on a busy Saturday afternoon. Essentially built around two startlingly affecting diatribes on the war in Iraq, Ritter utilizes the voices of Peter and Paul, as well as Laurel & Hardy, to eke some kind of explanation from both the Administration and the Creator.

Drive is an album by American banjoist Béla Fleck. The album was produced toward the end of Fleck's New Grass Revival career and before the Flecktones were formed and included an all-star list of bluegrass performers…

Kiefer Sutherland is set to release his sophomore full-length album, Reckless & Me, worldwide on Friday, April 26 via BMG. The 10-track Reckless & Me delivers Sutherland's Americana and country rock-infused songwriting style and highlights his gift of soulful storytelling.

While there are more than a few hardy souls still recording honest-to-goodness country music in the Nash-Vegas era, not many of them are women, so it's a good thing that Heather Myles is around and making records, and her fifth album, Sweet Talk & Good Lies, finds her in typically strong form. Myles' voice is a superb honky tonk instrument, tough but evocative and capable of registering a wealth of emotions, and she and her band have mastered the nuts and bolts of the classic Bakersfield sound without sounding like they've gotten trapped in some sort of retro time warp ("Never Had a Broken Heart" even sounds like it could be a hit if country & western radio was willing to play actual country & western music).

Three on the Trail, the Riders in the Sky's debut album, established their tongue-in-cheek tribute to cowboys and western music. Though the humor is piled on a little thicker here than on their later releases, the music is often quite good and they never deviated from this formula – slightly ironic covers, affectionate jokes and made-to-order originals on any of their subsequent records. They also rarely did it any better.

Originally included as part of the exhaustive Unearthed box set of Johnny Cash's American Records recordings, My Mother's Hymn Book is exactly what it claims to be – songs directly out of Cash's mother's old hymnal. Featuring Cash alone playing an acoustic guitar, this is a stark, beautiful, and simple album. In the liner notes, Cash calls this his favorite record he's ever made and it's clear that learning these songs as a child is what inspired his love of music. In that sense, despite no original material, these are some of the most personal songs Cash ever recorded; he even includes song-by-song commentaries that help illuminate what each track meant to him. For Merle Travis' "I Am a Pilgrim" Cash writes, "It's one of those old country gospel classics that my mother sang, that I knew I would record it someday." Of course, Cash recorded gospel songs before this album, as in 1959 with Hymns by Johnny Cash and again in 1962 with Hymns From the Heart and he usually included one gospel track per album.

Three on the Trail, the Riders in the Sky's debut album, established their tongue-in-cheek tribute to cowboys and western music. Though the humor is piled on a little thicker here than on their later releases, the music is often quite good and they never deviated from this formula – slightly ironic covers, affectionate jokes and made-to-order originals on any of their subsequent records. They also rarely did it any better.

Of the of the earliest albums issued on Rounder in the early '70s, Things in Life is the first solo album by Don Stover, a virtuoso bluegrass banjo player who performed and recorded with the Lilly Brothers, Bill Monroe, Frank Wakefield, Doc Watson, and others. Although born and raised in West Virginia (he actually spent many years working in the coal mines), Stover moved to Boston in the '50s and became influential to a generation of bluegrass players there, most notably Bill Keith. This makes sense, as Stover often adds a subtle melodic element to his driving three-finger-Scruggs and two-finger-clawhammer styles.

Newgrass guitarist Tony Rice's work for Rounder Records is showcased on the mesmerizing Devlin. Pulling the best new acoustic tracks from his 1980 album, Mar West, and 1981's Still Inside, this compilation highlights Rice's fluid playing and progressive composition as he is backed by players like Sam Bush, Mike Marshall, Todd Phillips, John Reischman, and others. Alternately warm and crisp, comforting and energizing, his startlingly clean playing twirls and waltzes with the other instruments one stepping out while another comes to the spotlight, often culminating in tightly locked passages with interwoven harmonies. These 15 instrumentals are lyrical without words, poetic without stanzas, and a brilliant glimpse into the soul of one of progressive bluegrass' most inventive players.

Released the same year as Varese's The Best of Joe Stampley, Razor & Tie's Good Ol' Boy: His Greatest Hits compliments the other label's collection. Where Varese's 18-track disc focuses on Stampley's early-'70s recordings for Dot/ABC, this concentrates on his late-'70s/early-'80s work for Epic. The two discs share a mere four tracks the Dot singles "If You Touch Me (You've Got to Love Me)," "All These Things," and "Soul Song" and the Epic-era Moe Bandy duet "Just Good Ol' Boys" so they have considerably different feels, and ironically enough, the album covers do not offer a clear indication of which era is covered where, since the Varese features a contemporary photo and it's all old material, while Razor & Tie boasts an older photo and new recordings.

A Very Acoustic Christmas highlights re-imaginings of classic carols such as “Angels We Have Heard On High” from Ray Cardwell and “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear” by Clay Hess to new Christmas songs like “Oh The Joy of Christmas” written by Tim Raybon from newest Pinecastle signee Merle Monroe. Christmas songs are also great vessels for special collaborations. Sister Sadie bandmates Tina Adair and Dale Ann Bradley came together for Jim Reeves’ “An Old Christmas Card”.

Compiled and designed in the manner of Love, Murder, and God, three thematically compiled Johnny Cash anthologies released to wide acclaim in the spring of 2000, Life brings together 18 songs from Cash's back catalog that in one way or another deal with the nuts and bolts of many people's existence – home, nation, work, family, surviving hard times, and celebrating good times. Of course, the nature of this theme is broader and not nearly as cleanly defined as the themes of the three previous sets, and a few of these songs might have fared better elsewhere – "Where Did We Go Right" and "You're the Nearest Thing to Heaven" would have fit nicely on Love, while "I Talk to Jesus Everyday" and "Lead Me Gently Home" would not feel out of place on God. But as a summation of the broad and idiosyncratic worldview of Johnny Cash, Life fares very well indeed; Cash could set a protest song like "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" or "Man in Black" next to the fiercely patriotic "Ragged Old Flag" and see no contradiction, and celebrate the importance of hard work ("Country Trash") while savoring the sweet prospect of punching out the boss ("Oney").

Hello Starling is the third studio album by American singer-songwriter Josh Ritter. As Ritter's previous albums have done, Hello Starling was compared to other Americana greats such as Woody Guthrie, Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan, and Leonard Cohen. His voice on the album was described as smooth with sleepy, rough edges. George Graham praised the lyrics and vocal delivery. Hello Starling was reissued on January 17, 2010 as a two-disc Deluxe Edition. The Deluxe Edition includes the complete original studio album and a second bonus disc. The bonus disc contains solo acoustic versions of all the original tracks (re-recorded by Ritter in Nashville of June 2008) as well as four live bonus tracks, an introduction by Dennis Lehane, and a full color lyric and photo booklet with never-before-seen photos.

Kelly Hogan takes her vast experience working with Neko Case, Andrew Bird, Mavis Staples, Drive By Truckers, The Mekons, and so many others, and molds that into something both new and instantly classic. Kelly curates an ambitious collection of songs, many written specifically for her, from M. Ward, Vic Chesnutt, Stephin Merritt, John Wesley Harding, Robyn Hitchcock, and Andrew Bird among others. She is backed on the album by an all star group of musicians: Booker T Jones, James Gadson, Gabriel Roth and Scott Ligon.