It’s Alex Toth, the trumpet-playing founder of Rubblebucket on the phone. He’s just finishing breakfast in Columbus, Missouri, a long way from home in Brooklyn. His band is touring in support of their latest, Live …

Smokin’ Joe Kubek and Bnois King are a blues band with two lead guitars. In the hyperactive world that is guitar-fronting, twin leads requires checked egos and dissimilar performance styles. Bnois (pronounced Buh-noise) King, from …

“I’ve never entered a contest before. I’ve usually been working too much to pull my head out to do any promotion.” David Rees, 46, is a longtime San Diego musician who lives and works in …

The rise and fall and rise again of the power trio as an art form notwithstanding, the first thing I want to know about the Grass Heat is the name. How did it come to …

By the time Mrs. Magician plays the Belly Up, their Swami Records debut Strange Heaven will have been released digitally. My advance copy reveals a collection of radio-ready indie power-pop tunes, all of them likeable …

“‘Rock ’n’ Roll” Peg Pollard got into radio to marry Bob Seger. She was in the sixth grade, she heard Live Bullet, and Pollard fell in love with the Detroit rocker. “I decided my route …

I ask Joe Louis Walker if Hellfire, the title of his debut release on Alligator Records, is short for “hellfire and brimstone.” He says it could be. After all, he does have a background in …

“I came here to help out at the request of the owners,” says Joe Rinaldi, the Griffin’s new talent buyer. He speaks of creating an image for the venue that was once O’Connells, an Irish-themed …

“My brother Josh and I started the Silent Comedy as sort of a side project,” says Jeremiah Zimmerman. “Sort of a lark.” They were both members of an aggressive punk band at the time. “But …

“You’ve caught me at a milestone in my life.” Meaning the ten-year anniversary of Loud and Clear Records? No, says label owner Brad Lee. “This is my second day in San Diego without a day …

The Dunwells are the latest players in the emerging West London folk scene to come to America. When they play the Belly Up, it will be for the first time. The latest UK folk invasion …

In January Chuck Perrin pulled his Dizzy’s jazz series out of the San Diego Wine and Culinary Event Center in the Harbor Club Towers downtown. “I got a couple of days’ notice that the piano …

Petunia won’t give his real name when he calls from British Columbia, where he lives, which may be a self-protective habit grown of living on the streets and having busked his way across Canada and …

By the end of last year, music journalists were tagging it the Year of the Sax. Why? Because Lady Gaga hired Clarence Clemons to play on “Born This Way.” But that’s not all: Odd Future …

The Features are indie rockers from Sparta, Tennessee, an eighth-grade startup born of small-town boredom. Coming of age in a cultural backwater of less than 5000 had its limitations, and a lot of the Features’ …

If you played electric guitar in high school during the 1970s, you probably had your Steppenwolf and Bad Company and Deep Purple and Neil Young licks down, but you also knew some James Gang. Their …

A haircut changed Rolle Love’s life. At 17, he was a hard-rocking bassist with a crash pad in North Park. “We furnished it with cases of beer, and we drank our furniture.” A major life …

“It’s kind of a trip,” says Donald Vercelli, who plays Mike Ness in the Social D tribute band formerly known as Socially Distorted. “Apparently, Mr. Ness doesn’t like other bands spreading his music around.” In …

“I’ve been a Chargers fan since I was a little boy,” says Quino McWhinney of Big Mountain. “The Denver Broncos have always symbolized evil in my world.” But maybe not so much anymore: “Leap of …

“Popular” has been called an accidental alt-rock radio hit by almost every music writer who has tackled the subject of Nada Surf. It was on the radio for what seemed an eternity in 1996, and …

Daniel Rodriguez tells this story about the origin of his band’s name, Elephant Revival: “Our bass player busked outside the elephant cage at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago,” he says, where two elephants had …

The Dirt Daubers came to be because the organizers of the Raindance film festival in London couldn’t afford airfare for the Legendary Shack Shakers. Colonel J.D. Wilkes is a member of both bands. “It started …

“I had sent him a text around 1:30 in the afternoon.” Lemon Grove prog-rocker Andy Gorman needed a bass player, and Gorman wanted Tim Garcia for the date. That was Thursday, December 22. “I told …

Who’s in the Buddy Blue Reunion Band? All of the original players, says Joe Dyke, aka Sweetlips Mysterioso — with the exception of Blue himself, who died in 2006. “We try to get as many …

Joe Walsh heard a copy of their debut CD and liked it. “He said it was pretty fucking good,” says Steve Bulger — Stevie B — the singer/harpist who fronts 145th Street. The band recently …

Trombonist Fred Wesley would like to be known for more than just funk and soul. Since the late ’90s, straight-ahead jazz has been the focus of his Fred Wesley Group. “But trying to get back …

Tracy Shedd’s “Whatever It Takes” at first sounds as if it’s going to turn into one of those über-positive “don’t let life get you down” girlpop rants, but no. It’s more about evading the suffocation …

Those who may have searched Bonham’s auction website in the days following November 29 for news about “sale 19037, lot 373W” found a cryptic message posted in red: “This lot has been withdrawn.” Lot 373W …

When Mickey Schiff rings from Los Angeles, I ask about his voice. If he’s not using a megaphone or something like that, it sounds like it must hurt to sing. “There’s no real tricks,” he …

Last year, when the Far West band went looking for a place to record, they settled on the American Legion post in Encinitas. “Our drummer, Tony Sanborn, lives just south of Oceanside,” says Lee Briante. …

The rough cut of Eric Rife’s rockumentary Garageland begins with the shrill alarm of “Walk the Beat” by the Penetrators. And rightly so — some local rock historians say that the Penetrators, in 1978, were …

“That douchebag was definitely not at our show.” It’s James Smith, the Drowning Men’s singer on the phone from Boston. On November 18, a Friday night, the Oceanside band’s van was hit by a drunk …

Spin Magazine’s critic called Boxer Rebellion the “Best Men in Black,” following their performance this year at SXSW. Was that a reference to Johnny Cash? Will Smith? No. Spin tagged Boxer Rebellion as a standard …

In due time, all things pop music eventually get recycled. Punk, girl bands, new wave, rockabilly, jam bands, metal, fusion, funk — you name it. Granted, some artists merely repurpose rather than recycle. Moby’s first …

Who is Chris Isaak? The crooner of heartbreak ballads, a fashion icon, a comic television host, or all of the above? He’s always been a hard target; I’ve never known how to assimilate his act. …

Comparisons to Blondie, says Jesper Anderberg, are to be forgiven. “I think there’s a slight similarity between us.” Anderberg plays keyboards and guitar in a Swedish indie-rock band called the Sounds. “I mean, we have …

“I had my moment as a rock star,” says Larry Groupe. “I now equate being on tour with the directions on a bottle of shampoo: lather, rinse, repeat.” When Groupe, a San Diego–based composer/keyboardist chanced …

In October, Music Choice announced the launch of SWRV (“swerve”) TV with Cox Communications in San Diego. Promoted as the first 24/7 interactive music video network, SWRV is available on Cox cable channel 900 as …

O’Brother, a five-piece from Atlanta, has three guitarists and a huge sound. I ask Johnny Dang how O’Brother manages to sound like a big stack of amps crammed into a small bag. “We don’t try …

“We think that we make pop songs, but definitely with a certain kind of twist.” It’s Artturi Taira on the phone from Madrid, talking about his band Rubik. “You might wanna call it art rock …

“At this point, we’ve done so many of them, I really couldn’t pinpoint it,” Chet Cannon says in response to a question about when, exactly, he began putting on benefit concerts. Cannon, 59, a harpist …

When Thom Beebe landed a part in the television drama Renegade, filmed in San Diego during the 1990s in Mission Beach, he was cast as a drug-dealing thug. It was not typecasting, although the San …

For their Halloween party this year, the Soda Bar picked a headliner with a demon’s name: Sirhan Sirhan. It’s a band back from a graveyard of rockers gone but not forgotten. When Sirhan Sirhan was …

The Drowning Men, I was told, were a band to catch next time they played in town. So I did, at Bar Pink, I believe, and here’s what I witnessed: cheery music, bleak lyrics. “I …

The Bronx frontman Matt Caughthran says the inspiration for starting a new band that specialized in the playing of norteño-flavored punk music came out of thin air one day. “It was in the name of …

Lou Curtiss opened Folk Arts Rare Records on Adams Avenue more than 30 years ago. Over the years, he’s promoted folk concerts at SDSU, coffee shops, and, later, the roots festivals staged in the street …

On Wednesday, August 24, federal agents and SWAT officers raided the Gibson factories in Memphis and Nashville. To an outsider, it might have looked like a drug bust. But in this case, the agents weren’t …

By the time blues guitarist Ben Powell arrived in Colorado, his load had been lightened by a few grams. “I had a little Border Patrol incident in Arizona,” he admits. “They decided that they wanted …

“It just kind of hit me one day a few years ago,” says Donald Vercelli when asked exactly when it was that he decided to impersonate Social Distortion frontman Mike Ness. “I sang ‘Ball and …

“It’s a concept that’s been tried before, but I don’t think quite successfully.” Wayne Riker, an Encinitas guitarist and author of nine guitar-instruction books, says that his own compilation CD, Guitar Decathlon, will be different, …