He seems to own a measure of calm, but one watches Steve Earle in the same manner you’d track storm clouds. Long of beard, aging into his own vision of himself, Earle, 62, is like …

Parental advisory: Wheeler Walker Jr is possibly the filthiest country singer on record. “But tonight it’ll do,” sings Walker Jr, about a man facing thin odds and even poorer options on the tail end of …

Surf rock, as written and performed by players who were raised on grunge. Otherwise, the Buttertones are all over the place, with sonic influences from bands like the Gun Club all the way back to …

Blackberry Smoke looks like they just stepped out of a 1960s promo photo shoot — wardrobe, hair, and all — that one where the band Blue Cheer posed on a pier with their mountain of …

“It’s the quintessential classic-rock tour.” Paul Cowsill checks in by phone from his home in Oregon. He and the band are on a little break from the Happy Together tour, a road show that travels …

Hip-hop, yes, but with a tuba player. Not many acts working the genre use live instruments like the Roots do, but then again, I love bands that focus more on groove than form. The main …

Los Angeles used to be the center of the music industry, back when there was one. Now, that distinction in the post-digital era belongs to three towns: Austin, Nashville, and Brooklyn. And you’ve got to …

“Let’s get a house/ you and me/ and your 12 cats,” sings Ron Gallo. “You’ll gird my mattress with nails/ one for/ every time something psycho came out of your mouth.” Remember Neil Young and …

“Each day on the trail was the only possible preparation for the one that followed.” — Cheryl Strayed, from her introduction to Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

How these things sometimes get started: in the case of the Black Lips, from Dunwoody, Georgia, the lo-fi garage-rock band may have never come to exist if two of the founding members had not been …

In 1996, when Luther and Cody Dickinson started the North Mississippi Allstars, blues-festival promoters and record-label hacks alike saw the band as the potential salvation of a very stale blues scene (i.e., better ticket and …

Imagine the world Chris Potter saw when he stepped into the role of Next New Jazz Tenor Saxophonist. He was 18 when he broke out in New York and by then there was virtually no …

Pass This Way, the new Holla Pointe song collection, reminds me a little of the John Spencer Blues Explosion: guitars frying on overdrive that melt away into the larger grip of some concussive, sexy, groove-blues-rock …

Three years out of a stint with Procol Harum, Robin Trower in 1974 released an album that would accomplish many things all at once. Bridge of Sighs introduced pop culture to the actual prison bridge …

The pedigree is deep and jam-packed with true musical genius for this genre in which Marcia Ball specializes, meaning roadhouse New Orleans swamp boogie. It’s a music that comes out of another time and place …

Who the hell names their brand new little baby boy Dweezil? That’s a rhetorical question. I know the answer, and so do most of you. Frank Zappa and his wife Gail is who. The two …

The Wedding Present is all about David Gedge: he’s been the one constant member of that band. It’s been 35 years since he and a friend plugged in their amplifiers and began making records that …

“Where’s that place in San Diego where they have all those little galleries and restaurants — is it the Gaslamp?” Richie Kotzen asks. “Is that what they call it?” He checks in by phone from …

They’ll be here a couple of weeks ahead of the release of their latest full-length album The Weather when they next play San Diego. Pond is a band out of Perth, Australia, a gene pool …

“I am both. I’m Mexican, and I’m American.” Gustavo Alcoser says Jarabe Mexicano’s pending release of an old Bob Marley protest song came together as the result of a number of factors. First inspiration, he …

You’ve got to wonder about that mind of Joe Lovano’s. He wanders onto a stage with the rumpled demeanor of a grandfather or a favorite uncle and for a spell, if the mood strikes him, …

A band with a couple of directions: one is old-timey country-western and one is swayed by the look and feel of the rock-and-roll music that Great Britain exported to the U.S. 50 years ago. The …

“We had humble beginnings for sure,” says Michael Misselwitz of an event he cofounded and that he now describes as “one of those things that really can’t be explained.” The original Mustache Bash, he says, …

“Your soul will be saved if you dance.” This is the motto of a large stage-band that averages around 20 members at any given time. Billed as a 1930s New Orleans musical show, Vaud and …

Make no mistake about it, San Diego is home to its share of top talents in pop, rock, jazz, and blues. The Reader’s music crew cast its net to find out why these music makers …

A true tale of homemade music: through social media, Drew, a bassist, met Lucky, a band-less rock singer. Drew had a vision, and he shared it with Lucky: he wanted to start a combo, and …

“I love the Belly Up. That’s kind of a home for me. We got our start there, opening for Buddy Blue.” When Steve Poltz says “we,” he is speaking to his breakout band the Rugburns. …

Charles McPherson says Dizzy’s when asked about a favorite local venue. “Through the years, I have self-promoted my own gigs there.” Approaching 78, McPherson is considered the nation’s preeminent bebop alto saxophonist. He lives in …

“The Kraken is a wonderful, sweaty, worn-out, smelly, old-school surf bar just north of Solana Beach.” Guitarist Joey Harris grew up in Coronado. One of his first bands was called Fingers. They started that band …

“Hmmmmm...that’s a hard one,” Diana Death says when asked who her favorite local band is. Finally, she narrows it down to a name: “I’ve gotta give mad props to Deadbolt. It’s pure, old-fashioned three-chord rock …

“I have to kill all of my cells.” In the weeks leading up to Christmas break, Dr. Christie Eissler talks about shutting down her experiments at the Zhou Lab in the Ludwig Institute for Cancer …

Messy, free-ranging, raw-boned music that sometimes comes with an explicit-language warning. Big Thief makes music that hangs together on a thread of workman-like monotony, using chords in progressions that were hoary and predictable way back …

That old Coen brothers feature film titled O Brother Where Art Thou was in part responsible for the second coming of bluegrass music in America. The soundtrack, built almost entirely from Depression-era folk music, won …

Straight out of the 1970s, with all the commingled smells of sweat and polyester and a big fat four-on-the-floor beat like God’s metronome, and soaring above it all is a lovely, lithe voice: that’s the …

Miguel Zenón is not your grandmother’s jazzman — so many of them are, for better or worse. Ever since a handful of the perkiest among them invented bebop in the 1940s, followed by the next …

It turns out that Robert Pinsky is also a sax player. We spend minutes talking about the beloved Buescher 400 series tenor sax he once owned but that got stolen. “Tenor sax,” he tells me …

The Lemon Twigs sound like a rough cut of the Beatles from way back before the Fab Four had gotten tight from playing all those marathon gigs in Germany. Throw in some Bay City Rollers, …

The Revivalists (no, they don’t live up to their name, but we’ll get to that later) are among the crop of indie rockers who have discovered soul and R&B and in their own DIY way, …

The word “lemuria” can mean many things. Lemuria is a Belgian band, for example, or was a religious holiday celebrated in ancient Rome, or is a song title recorded by a Swedish symphonic metal band …

“A few steps behind the times” is how one reviewer describes the band American Wrestlers; the comment is spot-on. Who uses a drum machine anymore, right? Or, a timeworn tape recorder? There are a few …

You could possibly generate earthquakes with this band’s music cranked at high volume. It’s like nothing you’ve ever heard, unless you listen to the Beatles and Kansas and Genesis and the Mars Volta and Frank …

“We’re gonna do the album from start to finish,” Ariel Levine tells me by phone from his Middletown apartment. Levine is a singer/composer/guitarist transplant from New York. “I’ve lived here for five years now.” The …

Rock radio in the years leading up to Van Halen was overwhelmed with the sounds of a format called new wave, otherwise known as synth pop. A lot of that music was exported from Britain. …

They’re a good three decades late to the dance, but don’t paint them into the retro corner. This is a living, breathing band, fresh, and coming off the launch pad as if they could restart …

“I never thought you’d be a junkie/ because heroin is so passé.” Who would think to give the smack nation its own pink and yellow television-style game show, complete with burning luxe cars, dancing syringes, …

Fiddle music played by four traveling Mennonites. Put it that way and you might think that the Steel Wheels would not be a band that could chart and get radio play after scoring accolades at …

I read somewhere that the reason you’re sad around Christmastime is because it’s a reminder of what you’ve lost since childhood: the belief that the world is a magical place that is interested in your …

Another band that’s in lust with the pop music of the 1960s. And why not? It was good material, and most all of it distinctive. Tele Novella has been compared to the girl groups of …

A hit with the younger crowd — this, after four decades of pounding the road and getting older all the while. Lee Fields is 65. And the irony is, the better he gets, the more …

From a handwritten “artist statement”: “Gogol Bordello’s task is to provoke audiences out of post-modern aesthetic (illegible word) into a neo-optimistic communal movement towards new sources of authentic energy.” This, from a singer/songwriter and former …