Of Note
“I don’t like to be told to turn my amp down.” This is Andrew McKeag on the phone. “People don’t understand how much fun it is to hear a loud rock band.” Some of you …
“It’s a celebration of my new music,” is how pianist Joshua White describes 13 Short Stories when he checks in by phone. “The new album, it tells a story of the band, of us as …
Chad VanGaalen’s got a troubling voice. The Canadian singer/songwriter sounds like a cross between another Canadian named Neil Young and a smoke alarm. He uses that singing voice to bait a listener into simple-sounding little …
Blues for millennials. Which is another way of saying blues for an audience that doesn’t necessarily dig the blues. Or gospel either, for that matter. No bad on millennials. Blues, gospel, and soul is not …
Different, yes, but not so much so as to strand a listener in that “I want to like this band, but...” purgatory. The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to …
I used to think the Black Crowes were a loud band until I experienced Mastodon. The back story: I’d been granted a working-category stage pass back when San Diego still hosted Street Scene weekend concerts. …
“I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’/ Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world.” Not surprised to hear Bob Dylan early in the soundtrack of …
I’m going out on a limb to say this, but I hear echoes of ABBA here and there in Walter TV. Which is not meant as a bad thing. In fact, it’s the haunted-house version …
“They’ve been calling me blues all these days,” says Len Rainey. “But I do a lot of R&B, some soul, some rock. I even used to play jazz fusion,” he says, sounding a little surprised …
“The band never went all the way away.” Vaden Todd Lewis would know. As one of the Fort Worth band’s founding members, he is also one of its survivors. The band broke out in 1994 …
Southern Avenue is the name of a street in Memphis. On it, at 1932, is Soulsville, the original home of the legendary Stax Records. It is also the name of a band, a brand new …
After publishing this preview, the Dennis Quaid and the Sharks show was canceled so a benefit could be held for the victims of Hurricane Harvey. Art imitates life, which is busy imitating art: not exactly …
Thundercat claims Miles Davis as an inspiration, along with jazz bassist Ron Carter and a pianist named Mary Lou Williams who was mostly active during the golden era of jazz, but you’d have to dig …
If there is any truth to the rumor, the last thing Joey Ramone heard in this life was U2’s In a Little While. He died in a New York hospital in 2001. But, there are …
Pure and greasy, raw, nasty, sexy, down-home Texas-style blues: there are possibly three or four authentic blues performers in San Diego, and Lafayette Falkquay is at the top of the stack. He’s a product of …
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 …