Tunes
Q&A
A Virginia native who cut his musical teeth on the same San Diego coffeehouse circuit that produced Jewel, singer-songwriter Jason Mraz, who recently spoke via phone from a “high tech transportation vehicle” in New York City, i...
Tunes
It’s suggestive that the quotations on the back cover of The Last Holiday: A Memoir, the new autobiography penned by writer and singer Gil Scott-Heron speak to Scott-Heron’s significance as an artist and not the importance of t...
Q&A
When Gordon Mayer first set up a shopping cart on his website where he sells his hand-made ukuleles, he initially thought it would be a “technical challenge,” but when he got an order the very next day, he knew he was onto some...
Q&A
It’s been almost 20 years since Nada Surf first came together and infused indie rock with a sensitivity that would evolve into something like what we currently consider “emo.” Not that the band was really “emo,” but its vocal h...
Q&A
Polemical though it may be, the title track to Which Side Are You On?, Ani DiFranco’s new studio release that arrives in January, finds the singer-songwriter engaging in a passionate discussion about ideology and politics as sh...
Q&A
Perhaps the only woman to ever play lead guitar in an instrumental surf rock outfit, Susan SurfTone started playing guitar nearly 40 years ago. She gravitated toward surf music in the early ’90s, capitalizing on the renewed int...
Album
Indie pop duo Tegan and Sara isn’t exactly the kind of act that you’d expect would sound much different live. So it’s a bit odd that the band opted to put out a live album. And yet, Get Along, which was recorded before a small ...
Concert Recaps
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s American Music Masters Series is an annual event for which the museum assembles a cast of performers to pay tribute to one of its inductees. Past honorees have included Woody Guthrie, Hank Willi...
Q&A
You probably wouldn’t know it from the moody material she now plays, but singer-songwriter Rachael Yamagata got her start playing in a funk band called Bumpus. She left that band to go solo in 2001 and eventually released her f...
Q&A
Some 30 years ago, saxophonist Ralph Carney joined offbeat Akron, Ohio punk rockers Tin Huey who played the same underground clubs as Northeast Ohio acts such as Rocket from the Tombs and the Numbers Band before garnering natio...