Show Reviews

The Montclair Jazz Festival, held in downtown Montclair, NJ (12 miles from NYC) rightfully bills itself as “the largest free jazz festival on the East Coast.” Estimates of 30-35,000 attendees lined the city’s main artery, Bloomfield Avenue, which transformed into a pedestrian way, filled with craft vendors, food trucks and two major performing stages on […]

Just several blocks away from 1325 Commonwealth Avenue, the Bad Boys from Boston, Steven Tyler (vocals), Joe Perry (guitar), Tom Hamilton (bass) Brad Whitford (guitar), and John Douglas who replaced an ill Joey Kramer on drums – finally got the green light to bring the band’s Boston’s 50th-anniversary show to Fenway Park. The anniversary shows […]

There’s palpable dampness in the mountain air this Sunday evening – September 4th – as the congregation politely files into the building. The cavernous hall is about to play host to a long sold-out and equally anticipated metal spectacle. This triple threat tour is scheduled to wind its way through North America until the end […]

One of the premier outdoor concert venues in Manhattan, Pier 17, hosted world-class songwriters and performers on Friday night (9/2), gloriously kicking off Labor Day weekend in the Big Apple. Under perfect weather conditions, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit delivered their mix of Americana, folk, and Southern rock with the picturesque backdrop of the […]

Beach Road Weekend on Martha’s Vineyard in its second year has somehow managed to put on the ideal festival. Three days of great lineups. Two stages with music running continually. Decent food for a festival. Excellent and varied beverage choices. Good vendors. Friendly and low-key staff and security. And the right number of festival-goers with good […]

In just over 24 hours Spoon announced a surprise intimate club show and then took the stage to deliver the goods at a sold-out Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn. The band was prepping for their upcoming tour with Interpol and delighted their fans on this hot and muggy Tuesday night (8/23) in Williamsburg.    The entrance […]

Tedeschi Trucks Band has brought back their sprawling Wheels of Soul road show after taking a timeout during the pandemic. Their tour stop at The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on August 19, 2022, included impressive opening sets by keyboardist Gabe Dixon (also a member of TTB) and longtime friends of the band, Los Lobos. […]

Tempe, Arizona-based Roger Clyne, and the Peacemakers made a return to the Launchpad in Albuquerque after a several-year hiatus this past Friday, August 19th. As is usually the case in Albuquerque, however, things did not exactly go according to plan. What was originally intended to be a performance by the entire band ended up being […]

Pilsen has long served as a historical haven for Chicago immigrants on the lower west-side of Chicago, first for the German and Czech population who gave the neighborhood its name, and then most notably as the Mexican American cultural center of the city in the second half of the 20th century. Gentrification, however, has pushed […]

Friday, August 12th was the fourth of five sold-out nights of the Public Service Announcement reunion tour featuring Rage Against the Machine and Run The Jewels at Madison Square Garden. Originally scheduled for 2020, fans had to wait an extra two years for the energetic event to kick off.  Opening the show to a slowly […]

Even for those who believe bluegrass doesn’t get nearly enough attention, it’s hard to comprehend the skyrocketing success of Billy Strings. Over the course of a few years (the bulk of which were during a pandemic, remarkably), the guitarist has gone from a respected presence in the jam grass scene to an artist selling out […]

The first of five California stops along the Trombone Shorty Voodoo Threauxdown tour took place at the historic Hollywood Bowl on August 10, 2022. A gloriously beautiful, warm-summer night and a cross section of supremely talented New Orleans musicians drew a large crowd of Los Angeles music lovers to the Bowl. The bands that were […]

The COVID-19 Pandemic-delayed Stadium Tour featuring ‘80s heavy-weights, Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard, Poison, and Joan Jett kicked off the second leg of the massive tour at Fenway Park in Boston on August 5th. The bill also featured a hot, new band, Classless Act as the token opener. After finally getting the green light to set […]

The annual taste-making festival Pickathon made a grand return August 4-7 for the first time since 2019, and though the location of Pendarvis Farm just outside of Portland, Oregon remains the same, attendees were greeted a fully reformatted layout. This is due to the rapid development that has been happening all around the farm over […]

Following a memorable Newport Folk Festival, the weekend prior that saw the return of Joni Mitchell and Paul Simo, Fort Adams State Park certainly was playing host to many a memorable gig during Summer 2022. Yet the Newport Jazz Festival itself holds its own iconic history as it was originally billed as The First American […]

One of the most commercially successful bands in the history of modern popular alt-rock returned to their SoCal hometown for a blowout show at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, on July 31, 2022. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are in the midst of a worldwide tour and the sellout crowd of 70,000 enjoyed three different […]

What do you get when you gather four middle-aged dudes who like to smoke weed and have close to a century of cumulative music experience? You get a little band out of Asheville, NC, called The Beard, and despite the many reasons why this shouldn’t be anything extraordinary, it is.  Asheville has a long and […]

Phish closed out an impressive two-night stand at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD on Sunday evening (7/31) with a pair of inspiring sets that mixed a healthy dose of older material along with some more recent compositions and was littered with a surplus of exploratory instrumental odysseys that oozed psychedelia, proving that, even after […]

Odesza is back with an energetic vengeance that will likely see them continue to grow in justifiable popularity.     After a three-year touring hiatus, the Seattle-based electronic duo of Clayton Knight and Harrison Mills have launched a tour on the back of their new album, The Last Goodbye. With a live show that will animate the […]

They say all good things must come to an end, and sadly that also holds true for this year’s Lollapalooza festival, which once again transformed Chicago’s Grant Park into an epic entertainment mecca of great music and beautiful people in a way that only Lolla can. It had no doubt been a fun, action-packed first […]