Posts by Leslie Michele Derrough

It’s the voice that grabs you first. That big, whiskey-flavored tonsil showdown that can kick your butt one minute and soothe your ills the next. Once she has caught your attention, Dana Fuchs will proceed to give you a piece of her heart with her arsenal of songs that were built from feelings, experiences, some […]

When you think about a rock & roll band, the keyboard player is not exactly the first musician that comes to mind. But Michael T. Ross is ready for that to change. He is calling out his fellow brothers-in-arms to make a move, get excited, slam the keys and rock out just as hard as […]

Musicians are notorious gypsies, traveling around the world, never liking to stay in one place too long. Some musicians are content to stay with one band their whole lives while others love the thrill of new vibrations. There is a little of both in guitar player Keri Kelli. Reading over his portfolio you get the […]

“The Doors message is uncompromisingly loud,” says the announcer at the beginning of the British documentary, The Doors Are Open. “Do not adjust your set.” On November 11, Eagle Rock Entertainment finally released Feast Of Friends. This long ago film created by The Doors themselves back in 1968, has never been officially released until now. […]

Free’s legendary bass player Andy Fraser really doesn’t consider himself a bass player. He began his musical noodlings on a piano when he was around five, moved on to the guitar before his teens and ended up taking up the bass simply because no one else wanted to do it. He is one of those […]

There’s no question about it. When you need a drummer, you call Brian Tichy. A monster drummer, he has been the number one go-to drummer when a band is in need of someone behind them with power. And he has been summoned by some mighty big names: Billy Idol, Slash, Zakk Wylde, Steven Tyler, Whitesnake, […]

“Maybe we stayed around so long we outlasted all the bullshit,” Scott Ian philosophizes near the end of his new autobiography, I’m The Man: The Story Of That Guy From Anthrax. “We outlasted everything, and now we were considered a legendary band – members of the Big 4.” No one is a bigger fan of […]

AC/DC said it best: “Rock & Roll ain’t noise pollution. Rock & Roll ain’t gonna die.” And for so many bands, truer words have never been spoken. Take The Doors. Born in the California of the sixties when political tensions were heating up and the youth were on the borderline of getting angry and getting […]

So it’s 1997, right amidst the heated baseball runs for the playoffs; Roger Clemens is still an active pitcher and the wild card Florida Marlins will eventually win the World Series. But while all eyes are focused on Mark McGwire racing towards Roger Maris’ 61 home runs, a different babe is being born who seventeen […]

There comes a point in every man’s life when he sits down and starts contemplating his life’s decisions. Did he provide enough for his family? Did he make his parents proud? Did he keep the right ones out and let the wrong ones in? Did he follow his dreams? It’s a rite of passage for […]

The book cover of Joe Perry’s new autobiography is perfect: He looks like a true rock god but you get the impression this legend doesn’t say a lot. His music has always done all the talking and why not? With a flamboyant mouthpiece like Steven Tyler fronting his band, he had the luxury of just […]

There are plenty of bright lights popping up in the music world these days. Everyone from hard rockers to singer-songwriters are shining through the rubble and emerging to breathe some fresh new air into their genres. Toby Lightman is one of those lovely breath mints. With the release of her fourth, and most accomplished, body […]

“Let’s dive in,” Devon Allman says with a big smile. After playing an electrifying set with his solo band at the third annual Bogalusa Blues & Heritage Festival last month, the young singer/guitar player/songwriter/producer is excited to sit down and talk about his new album, Ragged & Dirty, which hit shelves on the 14th. For […]

When guitar player Marc Ford joined the Black Crowes, the band was still running hot from their debut album, Shake Your Money Maker. With their high-rising singles “Hard To Handle,” “Twice As Hard” and “She Talks To Angels” garnering plenty of radio and video airplay, the southern rock band were sitting on top of the […]

Music has always been a bitches brew of spontaneous seduction and pounding vibrations that often caused the soul of the listener to go mad with fever. It’s all over the blues and Jazz and especially in the realm of rock & roll. The obvious spell that Pan has weaved over his musical children has gone […]

Not a day goes by that classic rock radio stations don’t play a Randy Bachman song. Whether it’s the Guess Who tearing through “American Woman” or Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “Takin’ Care Of Business,” the songs of the seventies that Bachman helped create are a staple of everyday radio. For the Canadian-born guitar player, this is a […]

Who wouldn’t want to go on tour with their favorite band? Getting to hang out by the side of the stage watching them perform, sitting in the car next to them as they are sped to their next destination, privy to their private backstage foibles. It’s a dream that almost never comes true. But for […]

When Motley Crue made the announcement early this year that they were going to cease being a band following a big farewell tour, some fans actually cheered because it meant that bass player Nikki Sixx would have more time to devote to Sixx:AM, the band he put together with vocalist James Michael and guitar player […]

Nestled in amongst some trees and long stretches of highway is a community which has over the past couple of years been building a small oasis by bringing some music to their laid back part of the state in Louisiana. A hidden little gem known as the Bogalusa Blues & Heritage Festival, it doesn’t need […]

For a band to hang around long enough to produce seventeen studio albums, plus live records and various compilations, they have to have something that music listeners never get tired of hearing. For Judas Priest, they have been thrilling audiences with eardrum splitting, twin-guitar screaming, studded-out leather rocking for four decades. From 1974’s Rocka Rolla […]