Posts by Leslie Michele Derrough

“It’s a little dreary today but the temperature is nice and I’m actually outside in my backyard right now. I don’t mind it,” said Caleb Crosby with a laugh. Crosby, drummer for Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown, doesn’t have as many backyard-with-his-feet-up kind of days like he used to; not with the band burning a […]

It was just in her DNA that Elizabeth Cook would end up standing behind a microphone and singing. Her mother sang honky tonk and her father played stand-up bass so music was always a part of her life. She sang as a child but it wasn’t until later on as an adult that Cook would […]

Leah James has a unique musical gift: that her vocals and melodies contain a beauty not often found without enhancement in today’s modern music world, where over-the-top chanteuses prefer the outrageous over the intimate. It is a natural beauty that emanates from the vocal cords of James, whose first solo album, While She Sleeps, came […]

He may be young but Marcus King has the fastest old blues fingers around today. With only three recordings under his belt, the just-turned 22-year-old from South Carolina has already made a name for himself in the blues/jamband scene, having shared stages with the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Widespread Panic, Blackberry Smoke and Warren Haynes, who […]

The highly anticipated follow-up to Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite’s 2013 collaboration, Get Up!, will finally hit shelves on March 30th and it is every bit as emotional, dramatic, fun and entertaining as their first time out. Maybe even more so because with No Mercy In This Land the duo has gone deeper into the […]

Ty Tabor wasn’t planning to do a double album; he actually just wanted to gather up some of his online-only songs and put them together onto a CD for the fans. But the creativity started cooking and before he knew it, new songs were coming to him. So the Best Of changed over to a […]

Since 2010, Myles Kennedy has been pulling a non-stop double-duty workload as a singer for guitar player Slash’s solo band and Alter Bridge, the band he joined in 2004. Not many vocalists can pull something like that off but Kennedy has – recording and touring with both bands, alternating as one entity took a break […]

Up until 2015, David Duchovny was known primarily as an actor, the star of several hit TV series – The X-Files and Californication – and movies like Kalifornia and Return To Me. But 2015 turned pivotal for the native New Yorker as it was the year he not only published his first book, Holy Cow, […]

When I first heard Dolly Parton sing as a little girl, it was a heartbreaking ballad about a dead child. When I first heard Loretta Lynn, she was singing about coal mines and honky tonk angels; Tammy Wynette was lonely in Apartment #9; and Reba McEntire was pining for a straying husband in New England. […]

Although Duane Betts is already well-known as a guitar player, having toured with Dawes a few years ago, was in Backbone 69 with Cisco Adler and Christopher Williams, and has jammed with the likes of Gov’t Mule, The Doors’ Robby Krieger and his father Dickey’s old band, the Allman Brothers, he is ready to make […]

Don McLean wrote (and sang) perhaps the most iconic song in American rock & roll, “American Pie.” Yet, he has done so much more than that one song which propelled him to fame, fortune and sold out concerts the world over following it’s release in 1971. McLean, a prolific songwriter, had hits throughout his fifty […]

There are two things you need to know about Blackberry Smoke: 1 – When they play a show anywhere near you, go. Do not hesitate, do not worry about the ticket price or what time you will get home; just go. 2 – If their new song “Flesh & Bone” is an indication of what […]

Frank Hannon wasn’t planning to do a record. He was setting out to improve his voice, challenge it, explore it in different ways. But a record is what he eventually found himself in the midst of once his little personal project kept spiraling full-ahead. That record, the first of three volumes, is called From One […]

They are the band that would not die. Panned by critics but loved by fans and musicians alike, Anvil has had the last laugh in all the naysayers’ faces. After forty years and sixteen albums, they are still out there playing and recording and doing interviews and having a grand old time the whole way. […]

On February 28th, Clearwater, Florida, will be hosting a rocking show at their Capitol Theatre, as that’s the night the reunited original Dixie Dregs will hit the stage for the first time in forty years. The band that recorded 1977’s Free Fall – Steve Morse, Andy West, Rod Morgenstein, Steve Davidowski and Allen Sloan – […]

Joe Satriani is releasing his sixteenth solo album this month. That’s almost insane. But considering that Satriani seems to have an endless well of licks and melodies stored up in that brain of his, it’s no wonder he keeps putting out incredibly intense, other-worldy music that never ceases to amaze us. On January 12th, he will […]

If you’ve heard the single, “Young Adult,” from Inara George’s upcoming album, Dearest Everybody, you can tell that a lot has been on the mind of the wife and mother of three young children, and none of it really revolves around Hollywood parties or hanging with rock stars. That’s because her family has been her […]

When best of the year lists start popping up in December, they are mostly filled up with well-known established artists and on-the-rise youngsters starting to make a big noise for themselves. Older musicians still out there making music rarely see their names on the lists but that doesn’t mean they aren’t just as noteworthy. Like […]

We have so many things to be thankful for that Tom Petty had done in his career and one of his last, most beautiful contributions was producing Chris Hillman’s new solo album, Bidin’ My Time. Capturing the singer and master mandolin player in his finest glory is a testament to both men, that great music […]

I was first introduced to Black Sabbath back in my early years of high school when I learned a guy I was smitten with loved the band. Prior to that, I’d kind of avoided their scary dark image and clung tightly to my beloved Rolling Stones. But things always change when a cute boy comes […]