Interviews

“Being creative, it’s easy to feel counter to the current,” says Yves Jarvis, one half of the esoteric Canadian folk-rock duo Lightman Jarvis Ecstatic Band. That is certainly the approach he and bandmate/partner Romy Lightman took when they resided at Tree Museum, an outdoor art gallery about a two-hour drive north of Toronto, where they […]

Passions and dreams never really leave us. No matter what age we are or what profession we chose to pursue instead, they always linger somewhere in the back of our brains egging us on, that there is still time to do what we’ve always wanted to do. It may be a timeless cliché but for […]

The band Wanderlust’s story is a particularly interesting one because it pits an aspiring band against the sudden interest and support of the music industry only to experience the unsteadiness of that position and the breakup which naturally followed. The sheer newness of the band in 1994 when their in-process demos got them signed by […]

Long before JP Harris came down off the mountain in rural New England and settled into Nashville; before he toured the country playing stripped down, country music free of pretentiousness; he was playing traditional Old-Time music on a homemade banjo at fiddle conventions with likeminded musicians. And we’re not talking square dance numbers or “Oh […]

When you hear bass player Tony Franklin for the first time, it’s pretty mind-blowing. What he can do with those bass strings, the places he can take the listener, makes you wonder why bass players aren’t given more credit for making songs great. We already know that they are the foundation of any piece of […]

Former burlesque performer, comedian, and multi-media storyteller Scout Durwood released her first musical album from Blue Elan, titled Take One Thing Off in 2017, and it quickly morphed into a massive raft of interrelated videos that accompanied the music and tied a story together, illustrating the album’s narrative whole. When it came to her next […]

Bay-Area band The Rubinoos have come to embody that increasingly elusive idea of true “Power-Pop” because of their lifelong identity as a vocal group. Those who stray too far from that vocal foundation rarely convey the energy of the term, but as their recent album, From Home, Produced and co-written by Chuck Prophet, shows, they […]

If the Cranberries late singer Dolores O’Riordan fronted a folk punk band, there’s a very good chance they would sound a lot like Emily Davis And The Murder Police. On the El Paso band’s sophomore effort, Never A Moment Alone, the band deftly melds the seemingly disparate worlds of folk and punk and flexes their […]

One of the finest albums you will hear this year is the latest release from Jeb Loy Nichols, which dropped on June 10th. Titled simply Jeb Loy (ORDER), the album finds this veteran singer-songwriter giving us one of his most soulful and lyrically poignant collections of tunes to date. Those familiar with Jeb Loy Nichols […]

British born and now international, the electronic-infused band Losers are introducing us to their new direction in music via song releases every six weeks, the first four of which are going to be gathered together as EPO1 on June 28th. So far, the singles “Wake Up” and “Lost in Translation” have been released and give […]

For his third solo album, Billy Gibbons got down and dirty in the California desert, conjuring up some Texas spirituality that he mixed with Voodoo sonics, gritty guitar grooves and heartfelt reflections. And it just may be his best solo album yet. Hardware has everything you could possibly want from the ZZ Top head honcho. […]

Kris Rodgers is a pianist, vocalist, songwriter, and total geek in various ways, and with his band, The Dirty Gems, has become part of Little Steven Van Zandt’s Wicked Cool Records family. It started out by getting serious attention for their cover single “Every Little Crack” that became a vinyl single release from Wicked Cool, […]

Like nearly all artists, Kasey Anderson was sidelined by the pandemic as he was forced to put what was supposed to be his final album To the Places We Lived (now due this fall) on hold. Suddenly, things changed for the self-professed “Gradually Retiring Songwriter” when his anthemic rocker “The Dangerous Ones” (from the 2018 […]

James Allison has been a name in underground and indie music for over a decade, and he’s finally stepping out on his own. Some may recognize him for his work with Electraplay studios (especially the Live At Electraplay video series), most will remember him for his electro-synthetic pop project Digisarus who valiantly carried the “our […]

Atmospheric instrumental band Lanterna released their seventh studio album, Hidden Drives, on June 4th (via Badman Recording Co.) – but as frontman/guitarist Henry Frayne explains, these new tracks actually emerged from material that he first wrote several years ago. “I have a notebook of chord charts and song ideas, so in 2016 I sat down […]

You are never too old, or too young, to try different things. And for an artist, it’s the true goal, to never allow yourself to become stale, stagnant, or boring. Quinn Sullivan began that explorative journey on his 2017 album, Midnight Highway, and he continues to do so on his new 12-song release, Wide Awake, […]

Teke::Teke started out as a cover band performing the music of one of their heroes, Takeshi Terauchi, but after adding vocals to the band, they began experimenting to develop their own sounds and ideas. The experience of recording their first EP together convinced them that they were heading in the right direction. Approaching their new […]

In the world of the jam scene, The High Hawks are something of a supergroup. Featuring the robust lineup of Vince Herman (Leftover Salmon), Tim Carbone (Railroad Earth), Chad Staehly (Hard Working Americans), Adam Greuel (Horseshoes & Hand Grenades), Brian Adams (DeadPhish Orchestra) and  Will Trask (Great American Taxi), these musicians who have jammed together on […]

Cindy Alexander released her 10th studio album, While The Angels Sigh, from Blue Elan Records in April, and has gradually rolled out a fleet of videos that will eventually cover each song on the album. It’s an interesting and innovative idea specifically geared to take some of the space filled by a lack of touring […]

On June 18th, San Francisco Bay-area band The Jenny Thing will reach a significant personal and professional milestone with the release of their third album, American Canyon, their first release together since 1999. Their return to making music together has been built on interesting new modes of songwriting and recording that celebrate an experimental approach […]