Posts by Mike Smyth

A gambler rolling into a casino is always on the lookout for that lucky seat. Turns out the luckiest seat on Sunday September 15th at Reno’s Grand Sierra Resort was a ticket inside it’s Grand Theater for a fantastic evening of musical payouts. The fashionable Gary Clark Jr. commands any stage he walks on with […]

“Get out here Silas, this is a festival and there’s about to be a whole lotta pickin’ goin’ on”, beckoned a smiling and bundled up Vince Herman to his mandolin-playing son, who was waiting just offstage. The younger Herman was summoned early on to join his dad’s jamgrass band, Leftover Salmon as they headlined the […]

Railroad Earth visited some familiar territory last week for a three-show run that started in Lake Tahoe and concluded with a pair of nights at the UC Theater in Berkeley, CA. While the shows had been confirmed for some time, the last-minute announcement of a trio of guests joining them for the run turned out […]

[rating=7.00] Sister Sparrow’s outrageously big soul vocals have been wowing audiences out front of the horn-fueled Dirty Birds worldwide for over a decade.  While her known talents were already more than enough, Arleigh Kincheloe has stepped outside of her comfort zone with Gold to establish her own personal sound.  She’s built a brand with her […]

[rating=9.00] “We’re experimenting with some new sounds”.  Those were the words of 22-year-old Marcus King when this author spoke to him back in March of this year. Patiently answering my questions via cellphone about his upcoming gig with Chris Robinson and “As The Crow Flies” from gate B3 in the Nashville airport, he was nice enough […]

Marcus King probably tired of hearing it long ago. The comments about how talented a guitar player he is, with the qualifier that he’s only 19, then 20, then 21, and now just 22 years old. He’s good, really good, and with an outstanding band with him on stage each night, they are a treat […]

The Dave Matthews Band made their regular late summer Bay Area appearance Saturday, September 8th at Shoreline Amphitheatre in the land of Google – otherwise known as Mountain View, California. DMB has always been well supported in Northern California, owing to their string of multi-night runs over the years at both Shoreline, and 30 miles […]

Having had the good fortune to spend a few weeks hiking around Europe during July, a funny thing happened.  I listened to none of the playlists I had prepared on my phone.  Not even one song.  So when I returned to the states in early August and noticed that Amanda Shires’ new record, “To The […]

Rachael Price’s jazzy, blue-eyed soul vocal has always been the glue that binds the poppy riffs of Boston’s Lake Street Dive.   On June 2nd at the Montbleu Resort and Casino in Stateline, NV the band revealed an addition to Lake Tahoe fans, while closing out the first leg of their Free Yourself Up Tour, […]

Raised in the slower paced South and now calling Northern California home suits the laid-back 51-year-old version of Chris Robinson.  But don’t mistake the chill NorCal vibe relieving him of his ever-present restlessness.  Last summer, with some open space on the calendar of his psychedelic jam band outfit, The Chris Robinson Brotherhood, he decided to […]

Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real just completed what seems like the unthinkable from their perspective.  They took two weeks off.  The band has logged enough miles to match most artist’s entire year thus far in 2018, with visits to ten countries and three continents in just three months. Nelson and POTR kicked off […]

Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real kicked off night two or their San Francisco run at Great American Music Hall in true collaboration style with Bob Weir joining them to open their set on April 24th. Nelson recently joined Weir across the Golden Gate at Weir’s Sweetwater Music Hall in Marin for the late John […]