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Music is a personal matter. Your favorite songs, the tracks that make your heart pump and your soul swell, may not do anything for anyone else. They may just be your own sense of pride or salvation. But music can also be passed down through the generations, too. Vinyl records, a favorite bootleg live performance, can be handed from adult family members to kids, and while individual songs or refrains may not stick to each person who indulges them, there is a good chance that, between kin, something will be loved in common. And for the outstanding musical duo of twin sisters Tegan and Sara Quin, that reality occurred early in their lives.  

The two were born to young parents, who were 21 and 22 years old when the twins came into the world. So, of course, music was everywhere in the household, as is the case for many young couples. There was dancing and lip-syncing by all, including the kids. And this early introduction sparked something in the twins, who later ventured out on the road after high school, signed with Neil Young’s record label, and have since gone on to earn accolades out the wazoo. Tegan and Sara recently shared the release of their new LP, Crybaby (out in October), their second release of 2022 (Still Jealous came out earlier that year), the world is as open as ever to them. Sometimes it even resembles a luxurious “buffet.” 

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One syllable and you know it’s John Fogerty. His voice utters a note, a refrain and it comes out like lightning striking gravel. “Bad Moon Rising.” “Proud Mary.” “Fortunate Son.” These are just a sample of the songs that, thanks to Fogerty’s voice, have landed in the musical lexicon in the United States and abroad. These are the sinews and bones that make up a legendary body of work. And as it does for many legends before and since Fogerty, the magical journey of creation began even before he could speak—even before he was born in Berkeley, California, in 1945.

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Musician Harry Connick Jr. started young. That’s not always the case, of course, for every legendary songwriter and performer, but it was so for the New Orleans-born crooner. For as anyone who has ever visited the Crescent City knows, the bayou births songs. Melodies are in the ether. Rhythms emanate from the cobblestone streets. This is the world that Connick Jr. came into as a young person, and he took it just about as early as humanly possible. In New Orleans, anyone who is interested in music has immediate access to some of the greatest versions of it around, especially live performances. Artists roam the streets with instruments in tow, capable of playing and passing a hat at any moment. But for Connick Jr., his education, in a way, began even before that. Before he was born, his parents owned a record store. It was tradition for them to have albums playing in the house seemingly at all times. So, Connick Jr. began to play his own songs beginning at 3 years old.

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Bob Boilen works to bring music to the masses.

Whether on the weekly NPR program All Songs Considered or via his Tiny Desk Concert series, Boilen has jumpstarted the careers of countless acts, like Tank and the Bangas and Fantastic Negrito. He’s also showcased myriad songs to listeners who, like him, are constantly in search of what’s new, fresh and interesting in the sonic world.

Boilen doesn’t just reside on the media side of the music business. He’s also a songwriter, composer, and artist, himself, who creates textured, sometimes somber tracks that swirl and hover in a listener’s ear. Songs that display a lifetime of music appreciation as well as a hope to chisel out something surprising for music lovers to sample. To wit, Boilen’s latest solo offering is a new six-track, nearly 30-minute album he released on Bandcamp on January 14. Titled Brick Walls & Blue Skies, the project is as much a product of a lifetime of listening to songs as it is a call-and-response between Boilen and his favorite engineering software. 

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Legendary 86-year-old musician Buddy Guy wants to keep the blues alive. It’s been his mission his entire life to honor and participate in the significant musical style. Even before he could put words to the cause, he was constructing makeshift instruments out of wires.

“There are very few old blues cats hanging around,” he tells American Songwriter. “Every little bit helps.” As a kid, he was born so deep in the Louisiana countryside that his modest home didn’t have running water or electricity. In the summers, it would get excruciatingly hot. But there was no air conditioning. His mother put up screens in the windows to keep air flowing in and the mosquitos out. At one point, though, she noticed the bugs getting inside the house. She checked the windows and saw the screens had been fiddled with, stripped of their wires. Why? Because the young burgeoning musician had taken the wires out to make his own makeshift guitar. That’s the tradition from which Guy comes and the type of foundation that makes his newest album, The Blues Don’t Lie, which he dropped last year.

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