Posts by Gary Schwind

Ali McGuirk is a singer-songwriter whose smooth, soulful vocals have earned her some renown, particularly in the Boston area. On her first album Slow Burn, she teamed up with Jeffrey Lockhart and other musicians to produce a jazzy album that showcased her vocal talent.  Her new album Til It’s Gone is, like many recent albums, […]

Sometimes you hear a band and all you can think is “How do do they do it?” Specifically, you wonder how the band can do it so well for so long. Clutch is a band that inspires that thought in its fans. The band has been around for 30 years, so it doesn’t require a […]

Nicole Lund with her band lund might be seen as a new artist, but she is not exactly new to the music business. She earned a degree in Music Industries Studies with a concentration in vocal performance. Her vocal instructor is an opera singer, so it’s fair to say that she learned a thing or […]

Dentist is an indie-rock trio from Asbury Park, New Jersey. Other rock and roll stories have started in that fine city, but maybe not quite like the story of this band. The band formed in 2013 after Emily and Justin Bornemann met at a TGI Friday’s. The two immediately bonded and started writing songs together. […]

The Western Express is a duo comprising Stephen Castillo and Phill Brush. The two met via Craigslist in 2018 and immediately bonded over a love of country hits of the 80s and 90s. They started as a band playing at open-mic events and honky tonks, and are ready to release their debut album Lunatics, Lovers […]

Merle Jagger is a country trio from Los Angeles. It’s easy to assume that part of the band’s name is a tribute to Haggard. It is, in fact, a tribute to Merle Travis, who is widely regarded as one of the best pickers ever to play a guitar. It makes sense, when you hear guitarist […]

On his previous album Dying Midwestern, Arlo McKinley showed that he can write an emotional song and isn’t afraid to explore tough topics. It’s true that his songs aren’t always the most cheerful, but they hit so hard because they are so real. His new album This Mess We’re In is not very cheerful either, […]

Slightly Stoopid has never been an easy band to categorize. A lot of the band’s sound is based in reggae, but they also incorporate rock, blues, hip-hop, and more into their sound. One thing is for sure: Slightly Stoopid is a band that does its best work onstage for its legion of devoted fans that […]

If you’re trying to describe Dopapod to someone, you’ll find it’s not an easy task. You could start by saying that all of the album titles (like the band name itself) are palindromes. But then when you try to describe what the band sounds like, you would have to say that there are elements of […]

Edie Carey didn’t set out to be a musician. She planned to go to med school, but life had other plans. While a student at Barnard College, she found a coffee shop where artists like Jeff Buckley and Ani DiFranco performed unplugged shows. Around the same time, she studied Italian and eventually went to Bologna […]

Blue Dogs is a band that was formed in 1987 by bassist Hank Futch and vocalist/guitarist Bobby Houck. The band has always made easy-going Americana that tells a good story and is easy to sing along with. That hasn’t changed on the new album Big Dreamers, produced by longtime fan Sadler Vaden. The album is […]

Geographically, there isn’t a lot of distance between Jamaica and Cuba. Both are Caribbean nations with their own musical traditions. That being the case, it took an Australian to bring the two musical cultures together. Mista Savona is an artist who has released reggae and dub albums. When he visited Cuba, he had the idea […]

It’s not unusual for a musician to moonlight in another profession to fund their passion for making music. What is unusual is for a musician to also be a cardiologist. Suzie Brown is a cardiologist in advanced heart failure and heart transplants at Vanderbilt Hospital. She is also a mother of two, which makes you […]

Nate Bergman is not an artist that can easily be categorized. He is the frontman for Lionize, a band that is groove-heavy enough to tour with Clutch and not feel mismatched. But even with that being the case, Lionize has one album that is heavily influenced by reggae, so it’s not easy to place a […]

A lot of words can be used to describe Andrew Leahey and The Homestead. One of those words is prolific. The band has released three albums since 2016. In that time, the band has shown that it is capable of fist-pumping rock and roll as well as psychedelic songs with harmonies that recall The Beatles. […]

Dana Fuchs is a singer-songwriter who came to the attention of a lot of fans when she played Janis Joplin in the off-Broadway musical Love, Janis. You don’t have to listen to much of her music to know that she was the perfect selection to play Joplin. She has a raspy voice that is tailor-made […]

Joshua Hedley is a devout student of country music. “When my friends went off to college, I went to Nashville.” He has played the honky-tonks since he was 19, and his debut album Mr. Jukebox (Third Man Records) showed that he absorbed a lot playing in those honky-tonks.  While Mr. Jukebox was recorded with friends, […]

Tanika Charles is a Canadian soul singer who has been nominated twice for a JUNO award and it’s easy to see why. On her first two albums Soul Run and The Gumption, she showed that she can lay down some serious grooves with a voice that is on par with the greats of soul. Not […]

We live in strange times. With influencers, news broadcasts and a host of other things, it’s hard to know when you’re seeing something genuine. Luckily, live music has returned, so you can experience something genuine and unfiltered. The Lagwagon show at The Observatory in Santa Ana on Sunday, April 3rd provided a lot of genuine […]

Pennywise isn’t from Orange County, but the band booked five nights at the Garden Amphitheatre in northern Orange County, where they would play one album in its entirety for five shows. When any legendary band does something like that, it doesn’t matter where the shows take place – it’s going to be a big deal. […]