Posts by Bryan Rodgers

Saturday’s Bonnaroo bands faced a daunting task: To somehow follow up the already legendary Paul McCartney performance from the previous night. But with a new day comes new opportunity, and it ultimately proved to be the wildest day of the festival in more ways than one. Friday night, McCartney managed to overwhelm the audience on […]

Friday morning at Bonnaroo 2013 broke with the news that Jack Johnson, already on the farm because of his appearance with ALO, would be filling the freshly-vacated Saturday night headlining spot for Mumford and Sons. Attendees reacted with wildly varying levels of excitement and disappointment, but generally took the news in stride. After all, a […]

For one weekend each year, Manchester, Tennessee becomes the musical capital of America thanks to the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. Before the music royalty moved in, a warm-up like no other took place on Thursday night. Bonnaroo’s 2013 headliners include greats from rock music history, but Thursday was a celebration of artists – not […]

A recent wave of announcements about the 2013 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival stoked anticipation for the 12th iteration of the event, with fans and performers alike getting in the spirit. In the span of just a couple of weeks, the festival announced the last round of artist additions, the late-night shows, the lineup for the cinema tent, the festival schedule, and the “café stage” schedule, sending online message boards into frenzy. After a miserable winter and loads of bad news, American music fans are hyped for festival season and the good times within. Bonnaroo, happening June 13-16 in Manchester, TN, is going to be a Summer solstice all its own, with an international lineup of music legends, a cavalcade of important bands from nearly every genre, comedians, cinema, and vaguely controlled chaos at every turn.

Any music fan with knowledge of San Francisco’s turn-of-the-nineties “acid jazz” scene knows that Charlie Hunter and Scott Amendola share a lengthy and profound musical history. From the much-loved T.J. Kirk project to several of Hunter’s own records and other one-off collaborations, the pair has met frequently in their orbits through the music industry. In October 2012, they released a duo album (Not Getting Behind Is The New Getting Ahead) and they’ve been touring behind it since. Billsborough Music Hall in Hillsborough, NC (just outside Chapel Hill) hosted Hunter and Amedola on a bustling Friday night and found the pair in a loose, jovial mood.

Listening to a They Might Be Giants album can be a bit like homework. That's probably not what the two Johns (Linnell and Flansburgh, respectively) envisioned when they started the band over thirty years ago. By now though, as the duo have released their 16th studio album, Nanobots, there's no denying that it takes some work to fully appreciate this band.

Foals have become one of the biggest bands to arise from the fruitful Oxford, England scene as of late, and their third album Holy Fire finds them carving out a sizeable international space for themselves. The album is a natural progression from the dense math-rock of their debut, Antidotes, through the spacious creations of breakthrough record Total Life Forever, and into something bigger and somehow more infectious.

Here are a few things you need to know about Matt Pond and his latest release, The Lives Inside the Lines in Your Hands. For starters, he is now just Matt Pond and not Matt Pond PA. Second, his new album is essentially a pop record by way of the singer-songwriter tactic of wearing his heart on his sleeve about relationships. Finally, it is a pleasant release, but there isn’t a ton of variety here.

Bad Religion brought their crisp, concise, relentlessly melodic punk sound into the studio for the 16th and possibly final time on True North, and it's no major knock on the veteran band that the album doesn’t sound drastically different from their first album.

The legendary Ziggy’s name now adorns a new, larger space on the outskirts of downtown, and fans flocked to see the first Umphrey’s show in the Camel City since April of 2003. It also happened to be the 10th anniversary of the band’s first show with drummer Kris Myers, so a celebratory vibe prevailed even during the band’s birthday hangover.

After a relatively low amount of guest sit-ins in 2011, the event returned to form this year. There was collaboration at every turn. The set-list became an article unto itself during the first hour of the show and grew into a monster by the end of the eight-hour affair. The Jam can unfold in countless ways, with a limitless amount of song possibilities, so it's engaging enough just to see what Haynes has concocted. Though the increasingly rare appearance by String Cheese Incident drew the most attention from the heavily partisan crowd, the entire night proved noteworthy, if not always riveting, and large portions were indicative of the unique magic the Christmas Jam fosters.

Fans who found their way to Raleigh's Lincoln Theater for Acoustic Syndicate's unofficially annual Thanksgiving show may have been surprised at what they heard – that depends on their recent history seeing the band. Acoustic Syndicate continues to move forward with alarming insistence, not exactly shunning their previous existence but at least regarding it from afar. They drew a nice crowd of holiday weekenders and longtime fans together for a traditional gathering on one of the coldest nights of the season, but the show was far from nostalgic.

It’s a safe bet that very few of the folks who attended the Jimmy Herring Band/Victor Wooten Band double bill at Durham’s beloved Carolina Theater thought they would leave the building with any other performer’s name on their lips. As much as everyone marveled at the blatant and inspiring display of musicianship put on by Herring, Wooten, and their bands, no one could seem to stop talking about vocalist Krystal Peterson.

The Infamous Stringdusters traffic in a particularly gripping style of bluegrass, and listening to their new album, Silver Sky, is like sitting on the edge of your seat at the end of a great suspense flick.

Raleigh's Lincoln Theater felt just a little like Manchester, Tennessee when the Bonnaroo 365 tour stopped there on the first day of November. It wasn't because of heat or odors, but high-quality music. White Denim, who proved to be one of the real festival's biggest hits this past summer, anchored the show along with fast-rising Chicago quartet Maps and Atlases and brand-new Brooklyn duo Tiny Victories.

There are many things to love about the way The Hold Steady does business in the live setting. Among them: The no-nonsense equipment setup, the case or so of Tecate that waits on stage, and the band's apparent inability to offer anything less than maximum effort. They can turn any situation into a dizzying life experience full of the vibrant characters and relatable tribulations that inhabit Craig Finn's songs.

There are but a few certainties when it comes to the Hopscotch Music Festival: Attendees will experience music they’ve never experienced before, their tastes and perceptions will be challenged by much of this music, and they’ll love every shin-shattering city street step they take while doing it.

Patterson Hood excels at crafting lyrics about southern despair and human fallacy. His third solo album, Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance, is a gripping listen, full of the desperate and downtrodden characters he’s so adept at understanding. Much like his work with the Drive-By Truckers, the songs here are full of hard times, hard liquor and hard lessons; the titular weather occurrence is just about the least dramatic thing that happens during this loose 12-song narrative.

Herring fans often wish the note-mongering master would strike out on his own more often, and this intimate-sounding album should give them plenty to chew on for a while.

On an unusually pleasant August night, Perpetual Groove returned to Raleigh's Lincoln Theater for their second visit of 2012. With school not yet in session, the show was somewhat sparsely attended, but about 100 spirited fans still soaked up the band's dependable jam-rock sounds and blazing light show.