Here’s some the best Americana and roots-type music releases for October 16th, 2026. Click the artist or album links to find out more. The artist’s names link to their websites and the CD title links go to either Amazon, iTunes, Bandcamp or the artist’s site for ordering or downloading. A + sign means although not a featured release, it’s a notable album that’s still worth checking out. Also, this page will be updated as I find out about other new releases so check back again.
Bruce Cockburn
The Blood Of Others (Sunset Blvd Records)
Blood of Others is almost exclusively just Cockburn on acoustic guitars, which he plays beautifully in service to the songs, which cover gospel, blues, ballads, folk, and jazz genres. This is Cockburn’s 39th album, and his first album of covers, songs that have influenced or inspired him over his musical life, which largely started at the esteemed Berklee School of Music in Boston in the mid-60s when he was 20 years old. Cockburn has explained that certain songs have been drifting around in his mind for many years, and some have been chosen as they work very well as exercises in his fingerstyle. Cockburn has probably flown under most people’s radar, but just put this album on, retire under some decent headphones and wallow for an hour in this brilliant album, an outlier in Cockburn’s huge catalogue, and come out mesmerized by his interpretive ability and his guitar mastery. (edited from Americana UK review)
Charlie Parr
Roaming House (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)
It’s hard to believe that Minneapolis-based blues-roots artist Charlie Parr has now released 20 albums. First hailed for his blues-roots fingerpicking guitar, Parr has long since become a fully fledged troubadour with a world-weary voice, a champion of the downtrodden, perhaps best realized on this new folk opera, Rooming House. In our current time of inflation and the affordability crisis, Parr takes the economic crisis to the extreme, setting his album in a boarding house where the desperate characters find ways to survive while building a community. Parr is essentially conveying two themes. His story symbolizes a larger meditation on America’s worsening economic insecurity. Secondly, a sense of community becomes all that people under duress can hang on to. We witnessed this during last winter in Minneapolis. A rooming house is just a microscopic view of the same. (edited from Glide Magazine review)
Also new this week…
Dave Alvin – Blackjack David (Deluxe Reissue) (Craft/Concord Records)
Mary Bragg – Secrets to Strangers (Single Lock Records)
Spencer Burton – Spencer Burton (self-release)
Madeline Edwards – low hanging fruit (Mississippi Rain Records)
Béla Fleck – Live Heart: My Bluegrass Heart At The Ryman (Béla Fleck Productions)
Mynd Reader – Sunday Drive (self-release)
The Southern Tiers – Cookin’ Up Trouble (self-release)
Lyal Strickland – Shooter of Truth (Shedding Dog Music)
Dave Sutherland – Just Like A Black and White Film (self-release)
Richard Thompson – Hippies, Thugs, & Heroes (New West Records)
Coming out soon… Grey DeLisle, JP Harris, Willi Carlisle, Kaitlin Butts, Lydia Loveless, Josh Rouse, Sam Burton, Jim Kweskin and more!
