“I felt like a rock star,” bluesman Robin Henkel says about his recent ten-day stint in the United Kingdom. Henkel and his travel companion, Bayou Brothers drummer Ric Lee, played a week of club dates …

From a Facebook entry dated June 24: “Chickenbone has to say he is both sad and happy today. Sad, because an ASCAP representative is putting the hammer down on Smitty’s Service by threatening to charge …

Alone in the mix: that’s the first thought that came to mind when I listened to Okapi Sun’s dance/electro-pop combo platter of tribal drums, keys, synths, and the bane of all good music — vocals …

Most will remember Peter Murphy as being the Godfather of Goth and the face of Bauhaus. Not that he’s done much to broaden that observation. Last year (minus any of the original members), he toured …

Go back and listen to 1964. King Khan and the Shrines is what the British Invasion would have sounded like if only they knew more back then and had deeper influences other than American blues, …

“When you have members of Get Back Loretta, Silent Comedy, Okapi Sun, Transfer, and the Styletones playing and singing together, it becomes pure magic.” Lauren Scheff phones the Reader from his North County home to …

“I’m not the only drummer on the album. There’s four drummers total,” Jake Najor says, one of whom was Max Weinberg of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. “I do kind of the heavy rock stuff.” …

“I haven’t picked up my guitar since November of 2012.” Chad Cavanaugh, at least for a while, was a steady presence in the local singer/songwriter circuit. He wrote some songs, he cut a CD, and …

Can we agree to like Southern Culture on the Skids for different reasons? I think we’ll have to. There’s an overriding country white-trashy rock appeal, the B52s-on-speed angle, and the rockabilly-surf attitude. Still others of …

Back from a lengthy hiatus from the local music scene is Grant Reinero with a new band, a goth-pop trio he calls Stewardess. Reinero seems intent on making up for lost time: “Stewardess has played …

“I’m tired, man,” Bobby Bare Jr. says by phone from his home in Nashville. “I just finished a great rehearsal.” Bare was born there; a slight twang sculpts his speech by shortening certain words and …

“Our best gig,” writes Drew Gino Zollo, “was opening up for a sold-out David Allen Coe show right here in Ramona.” The Sickstring Outlaws are a rugged country band based in the North County. “We …

“The shot of me that’s on the front of the new GoPro box?” says Tyler Jordan. “It’s on all their billboards, too.” That’s him, for example, on the side of the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. …

“Today, we’re going to talk to Ronny Jones.” Jones, of Rancho Bernardo, was recently interviewed by a Canadian rock journalist named Brian Sword for the Double Stop podcast. “You may not have heard of him, …

The Donkeys started in 2004 with Timothy DeNardo, Jessie Gulati, Anthony Lukens, and Sam Sprague. DeNardo explains that the band shared a small Mission Gorge rehearsal space with three other bands that eventually went away. …

Imagine Mike Ness fronting ’80s-era Metallica. That describes the most recent turn in the progression of Thousand Watt Stare from punk roots to something approaching metal-ish hard rock. They look like punks on metal, for …

“People think finding an Anthony Kiedis impersonator is easy.” It’s harder than it seems, says Red Not Chili Peppers founder/bassist Jonathan Savage. “Over-doing the impersonation is common among fake Kiedeses. The real Anthony Kiedis has …

Not a bad way to begin a career in the music business: three years ago, the debut album Cerulean earned Album of the Year Honorable Mention recognition from Pitchfork. The A.V. Club liked the CD, …

"After 11 years and almost 550 concerts, AMSD Concerts will be coming to an end soon," was posted this morning in an email blast from producer Carey Driscoll. "The July 12 Led Kaapana concert will …

I’d only seen Marc Aliana playing guitar in a couple of local bands, both loud. There was a stint with Jon Goodhue, and a tribute band called the Red Not Chili Peppers, in which Aliana …

“In March I released a new series that I’ve been working on for the last year,” Bill Pierce tells the Reader. “It’s pretty focused on musicians right now. I started with the most iconic images: …

After seven years in business, it’s hard to think of Portland’s Black Prairie as just being a Decemberist’s side project, but that’s why they started, and technically speaking, that is what they remain. It all …

Meet Padre Joe and the Foul Balls. That’s the name of the band that played outside Petco Park on opening day disguised as friars. “We’ve been hired by the Padres to play before the games …

William Collins, the bassist, once told an interviewer about the time he arrived at George Clinton’s house to audition for Parliament Funkadelic. He described a situation more suited to the Addams Family. The front room …

Howler is a good-time rock-and-roll quartet from Minneapolis, nothing more, nothing less. Just good ol’ garage-rock cast in the mold of Social D, only nicer, but not as nice as, say, Maroon 5. Not so …

“Jorge, it’s Rick. Do you want to play with us?? Let me know ASAP. Maybe we can do a rehearsal.” When drummer Jorge Palacios saw that message from Rick Springfield in his email inbox, the …

The Men is a five-piece Brooklyn guitar-rock band, somewhat new, and in touch with their inner Huey Lewis. Not the same band as the Men, a ’90s era Santa Monica group with two women as …

Hard rock and heavy metal are not the same. They are often joined at the hip by outsiders, but to the true fan they are as different as Pantera and Britney Spears. Not to mention …

Something you don’t see every day: seagulls standing on the ocean. A 20-year-old surfer named David Corriea would tell this to investigators and reporters later. It was a couple hours ahead of sunset and there …

Simon Green, 38, is a British DJ/musician. He lives in New York now, but he was born in Hampshire and moved to Brighton. That’s where he began deejaying in clubs in the late ’90s. Whatever …

Oceanside Sound System: not a stereo repair shop. The North County band started in 2009 as a four-piece with guitarist Ben Blessing and drummer Sid Sloth from Irieside, a jam-rock-reggae-hip-hop band, and a singer named …

Jimmy Ruelas, from Linda Vista, plays a resonator guitar made by National Steel. Those kinds of guitars always sound vaguely out of tune to me, but then, it is old technology that dates back to …

It’s an addiction — no, more like a hobby.

Fanfarlo is coming back to the States, and I think for this tour they’ve shape-shifted away from their past as a feel-good dance band with synths. The last CD sounded like it desperately wanted to …

“We have a diverse audience.” Mark DeBoskey is the general manager of KSDS Jazz 88.3 FM at City College. “We have the traditional jazz listeners who are 55-plus and remember the golden age of jazz.” …

When is fronting a band cheaper than hiring a therapist? Lost in the Trees invented their American-orchestral folk-pop music in North Carolina. Not to diminish Ari Picker in any way (he is the band’s primary …

If things go the way Lou Curtiss hopes, by the end of summer, he will have handed the keys to his Folk Arts Rare Records shop over to its new owner, whoever that may be. …

“I got a call from the band’s manager,” guitarist John Collura tells the Reader. “I’d been out of the band for, what, six years? He said, ‘What do you think about getting the band back …

The Quakes, a power trio started in the late ’80s in Buffalo, NY, by guitarist Paul Roman, bassist Rob Peltier, and a 15-year-old drummer named Dave Hoy, floundered for lack of a hometown audience. That’s …

“The live show? It’s pretty simple,” Mike Illvester says when asked about the mechanics of how his duo, Fly Moon Royalty, manages to sound so large. “I sing and play keys, and Adra sings. I …

“Imagine rehearsing your song and seeing Paul McCartney dancing to it.” Nathan East, who scored Grammy Record of the Year gold for his work on Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky,” calls the Reader from “somewhere on …

Butterfinger. With that one word, Rafter Roberts has answered the Reader’s question: Which Super Bowl XLVIII television commercial did he write and produce the soundtrack for? The vaguely naughty Butterfinger ad (it winks at the …

A good 20 years late to the dance, My Goodness is a Seattle-based blues-rock power duo that seems bent on re-inhabiting grunge. No complaints from me. Among my all-time favorites include Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, …

Something you don’t hear every day: musical saw. And a virtuoso musical saw at that, which is hard to define since there are so few people practicing that antediluvian backwoods art. Opera singer Ursula Knudsen …

Got on the train a meat-eater; got off the train a vegan.

Nice Legs is the title of a collection of short stories published by guitarist Jack Beddows and a songwriter-producer named Larry Zeiger. Each of the stories, they tell the Reader, was inspired by the drinking …

Instead of trying to box the Wood Brothers into a style corner by examining the trace elements of jazz, blues, and rock in their music, can we just agree to call them clever? Good. But …

After listening to a Skinny Puppy record, one feels as if having been yelled at by an angry parent. Dark moods, riddled with an irritation that either leaves you speechless or that you can completely …

Joseph Waters' “Raccoons in the Pool,” performed and recorded entirely underwater, is a fanciful piece that shapeshifts, builds on maddening waves of tension, then resolves in a crest of sonic textures.

Brick by Brick’s liquor license is suspended for a year…and though management seems confident they’ll get it back, they’re cautious about talking about it.