Guitarist Ry Cooder, country music songbird Sharon White, and country and bluegrass musician Ricky Skaggs are combining forces for a national road show. The three music vets have announced the "Cooder-White-Skaggs" tour, their maiden voyage as a musical trio. The tour kicks off in Salt Lake City on June 16 and continues with scheduled performances in Denver, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, New York City, and more. "You are going to hear four-part singing from the heart," says Cooder, "the finest and best instrumental activity in the land, songs you know and love and to top it off, the indomitable Buck White on piano who will turn your money green. Now who's happy? That's the way we're gonna stay so knock on wood!"

Two classics albums from World Circuit Records are now available on vinyl: the 2001 reissue of Orchestra Baobab's much sought-after 1982 debut, Pirates Choice, and Ali Farka Touré's Grammy Award-winning 1993 collaboration with Ry Cooder, Talking Timbuktu. Each is available on double 180-gram vinyl LPs from World Circuit, distributed in North America on Nonesuch Records, and can be found at your favorite local record shop and in the vinyl section of the Nonesuch Store.

Carnegie Hall has announced its 2015–16 concert season, and featured among the performers taking the esteemed hall's stages are a number of artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal, including Brad Mehldau, Ry Cooder, Kronos Quartet, Timo Andres, Jeremy Denk, and Audra McDonald, as well as the New York premiere of a new work by John Adams.

Austin City Limits (ACL) heads to Nashville for a special broadcast featuring performance highlights from this year’s Americana Honors & Awards. ACL Presents: Americana Music Festival 2014 premieres this Saturday, November 22, on PBS and includes performances from Robert Plant (with Patty Griffin) and Ry Cooder (with Flaco Jimenez and as part of the evening's house band), among many others. The show was recorded live at the Americana Music Association's 13th Annual Honors & Awards ceremony at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium in September.

Ry Cooder's first live record in more than 35 years, Live in San Francisco, is featured in an article from The New Yorker's Alec Wilkinson titled "Ry Cooder, Live Again." Wilkinson traces Cooder's career through his studio recordings—"Cooder’s catalogue, reflecting his capacious intelligence, is the broadest and deepest in popular music"—to the new live album. "The solos open like rooms, one into another," writes Wilkinson. "Some of the rooms are still as night, and in others the audience shouts like congregants cheering a preacher."

Ry Cooder's new album, Live in San Francisco, his first live album in more than 35 years, was released earlier this month. He spoke about the new album on the 4 O'Clock Report with Jon Wiener on Pacifica Radio's KPFK 90.7FM Los Angeles yesterday afternoon; the show also includes four tracks from the new album: “Crazy ‘bout an Automobile,” “Do Re Mi,” “Lord Tell Me Why,” and “School Is Out." The Morton Report says of Cooder's new album: "Once this man hits the high beams and races into it, there is A+ action guaranteed ... It's called live music and there is nothing better."

Ry Cooder’s first live record in more than 35 years, Live in San Francisco, is out now. The album, produced by Cooder, was recorded in 2011 during a special two-night engagement with the Corridos Famosos band and a ten-piece Mexican brass band at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall, and includes original songs and interpretations of other material from across his career. "One of those nights when you wish you’d been in Row A," says the Sunday Times of London. Guitarist magazine calls it "sublime, spirited slide 'n' soul from a past-master of the art."

Nonesuch / Perro Verde Records release Ry Cooder’s first live record in more than 35 years, Live in San Francisco, on September 10, 2013. Recorded in 2011 during a special two-night engagement with the Corridos Famosos band at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall, the album was produced by Cooder and includes original songs and interpretations of other material from throughout his career, plus Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs' "Wooly Bully" and Lead Belly’s "Goodnight Irene." The vinyl edition includes the complete album on two 140-gram LPs with a CD in the sleeve. Nonesuch Store pre-orders on vinyl and CD include an instant download of the track "Lord Tell Me Why"; preview the track here.

Congratulations to all of the Nonesuch artists who were nominated for the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, announced last night by The Recording Academy: The Black Keys, Dan Auerbach, Amadou & Mariam, Björk, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Ry Cooder, Dr. John, Brad Mehldau, and Pat Metheny. Together, these artists have garnered an astounding 14 nominations, including a remarkable five nominations for The Black Keys' latest album, El Camino. You can hear music from all the nominated albums on the new Nonesuch Radio channel "2012 Grammy Nominees."

There's still more than a month to go before 2012 comes to a close, but already the music magazines have begun to weigh in on the year's best music. Uncut, Mojo, and Paste have all published their lists of the Best Albums of the Year, and included among them are a number of Nonesuch releases: the latest from The Black Keys, Ry Cooder, Dr. John, Jonny Greenwood, Punch Brothers, Carolina Chocolate Drops, and much more.

Ry Cooder, recently featured in the New York Times, was the guest on PBS's Tavis Smiley show on Monday—fittingly, Labor Day—to discuss his timely new album, Election Special, the specific stories behind some of its tracks, and the broader political and social climate that compelled him to create it. Watch the episode here. Cooder and Smiley continue the conversation with Cornell West on PRI's Smiley & West, a program that inspired one of the songs on the album.

Ry Cooder is the guest on today’s episode of the BBC World Service's The Strand. He talks about his new album, Election Special, and what motivated him to speak out through its songs. "Here we are in the middle of an incredibly critical Presidential campaign ... and all these issues are brought to the front," says Cooder. "Martin Luther King used to say do something if you can, something you could do. If it was writing a speech or a book or singing or marching, do it, when the need is there. So that’s what I’m doing."