Show Reviews

Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country mothership docked at Portland, Oregon’s Wonder Ballroom on Friday, February 7th for just the second date on their extensive 2025 winter tour.  There was a palpable excitement in the air in anticipation of seeing and hearing the young guitar slinger and his able band (Nathan Aronowitz on keyboards, Will McGee on […]

With their latest record, Norther, in tow, Shane Smith & The Saints have continued their tour in support of the new album into 2025. The Austin country crew recently stopped in Michigan, playing to a packed, energetic house at Royal Oak Music Theatre. Here are five moments that stood out from the show:  A Dramatic Entrance  Taking […]

The group of friends who make up the band Travis has been around, as lead singer Fran Healey shared, for 34 years – a remarkable feat. Rising in the early 1990s, the band led the post-Britpop wave, arguably setting the stage for bands such as Radiohead and Coldplay. In a career spanning 10 albums, the […]

Clad in a brown suede tuxedo jacket with a black peak collar and five-button surgeon’s cuffs, the legendary Stanley Jordan graced the stage at 118 North in Wayne, Pennsylvania, on February 2nd, 2025, with a performance that was both a retrospective and a revelation. Forty years after releasing his groundbreaking debut album, Magic Touch, Jordan […]

The Dirk Quinn Band didn’t just play the Beatles’ Abbey Road at the Zlock Performing Arts Center in Newtown, PA on January 31st, 2025; they inhabited it, exploring its hidden corners and presenting a fresh perspective that both honored the original and showcased their own unique musical identity. The show constituted a conversation between generations […]

The New Orleans long-running funk outfit Galactic pulled into Brooklyn Bowl on Friday, January 31st, for the first gig of a two-night stand in Williamsburg that wrapped up their mini Northeast winter tour. The group was firing on all cylinders as they played new jams, tasty covers, and tried and true crowd favorites.  Opening up this night […]

In this increasingly fast-moving world, most of us should be so lucky to find a job we love doing and stick with it for thirty-five years. This is exactly what the members of Moe. have done, taking a steadfast, working-class approach to being in a band that has allowed them to persevere for over three […]

If you want to experience the warm embrace of music, go to a Railroad Earth show. There isn’t a better way to sum up the feeling of catching the New Jersey jam grass outfit, which has been stirring up good vibes for well over twenty years now. Though the group’s last album (All For The […]

In our current moment of marketable nostalgia and an almost relentless amount of tours with bands using the anniversary of a landmark album to drive ticket sales, one could easily assume that the band who released at least one of the most celebrated albums of the early aughts would do just that. This was certainly […]

Are the Disco Biscuits in their renaissance era? Old school fans might kvetch that you had to be there during the early aughts when the so-called “transfusion” scene was thriving and the Biscuits were doing more experimental shows like live scores and their elusive Hot Air Balloon rock opera. But it was also during those […]

In pre-Internet times, teenagers used to make time capsules in school. (Nowadays, I guess kids just gather ‘round the Wayback Machine?) For the uninitiated, you’d fill a box with items from that moment in time, then bury it with the expectation that somebody would dig it up decades later. At the same time, your class […]

What would the universe look like if DJ Lollipop Man had never taken to the airwaves from the Mothership? Think about it: if not for the Long-Haired Sucker, we’d know nothing of Starchild, the Mothership Connection, or the Thumpasorous. We’d never have learned the history of Dr. Funkenstein and Sir Nose d’Voidoffunk (the Cro-Nasal); of […]

After starting their year-end run in New Haven on the 28th, Gov’t Mule returned to the Beacon Theatre on December 30th. They hadn’t played at the venue in a year, and NYC fans were psyched to have them back. Unlike previous stands, however, the upper balcony was unsold. It would be a shame if younger […]

For jam band fans, the days leading to New Year’s Eve and the night itself may be the holiest of holidays. This is when the bands they love lay down roots in a chosen town and play multi-night runs of shows that are often filled with surprises. This might mean guests, stunts, costume parties, or […]

Worldtown Soundsystem has perfected the art of synthesizing global music with EDM and shining the result through the singular lens of Philly soul and hip-hop; and the result is something awesomely unique and uniquely Philly. While the project has served as a platform for each member of the group to spread their individual sets of […]

In the latest Wannabe, artist Chris Prunckle offers his illustrated commentary on Little Rock, Arkansas venue White Water Tavern’s annual Holiday Hangout, in his signature six-panel comic strip form. This year’s event, which took place on December 6-8, featured Aaron Lee Tasjan, Adam Faucett, Emily Fenton, Tim Easton, Slobberbone, and more. Click on the image for full […]

The Seattle-based Polyrhythmics septet made a rare New York City appearance on a frigid Saturday Night, December 7th, in Greenwich Village. While the temperatures were below freezing outside, the band’s hot mix of jam band experimenting, tight grooves, and horn-based instrumental funk kept the packed club Groove cooking all night long.  Before the headliners took […]

On Friday December 6th, Aimee Mann and Ted Leo (a.k.a. Ted Leo and Aimee Mann) bestowed a holiday miracle upon the good people of Collingswood, New Jersey: they opened their set at the Scottish Rite Auditorium with what many have called the worst Christmas song of all time – Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” – and […]

“How high can we go?” sang Pat Bilodeau, drummer and one of three lead singers in The Warhawks, on December 4th at the Foundry in Philadelphia. If this show is any indication, then the sky’s the limit for The Warhawks. Gloucester City, NJ’s finest, The Warhawks, are now one of those “overnight sensations,” but their […]

Any artist with over 100 million Instagram followers, critical acclaim, a diehard, obsessed fanbase, and the ability to sell out arenas in minutes, should reasonably come with high expectations for their performance. This is especially true for Billie Eilish, who has spent the last decade catapulting from teen sensation to the upper stratosphere of pop […]