Upcoming Shows

Mary Fahl, former lead singer of October Project

TomorrowApril 26, 20198:00pm $25.00

"Sounding like no other singer of her generation" (Allmusic.com), Mary Fahl is an expressive, emotional singer/songwriter who first achieved fame as lead singer and co-founder of the mid-1990s chamber-pop group OCTOBER PROJECT, a band with a sound that was a perfect mixture of Fleetwood Mac, Jefferson Airplane and Adele.....

Tallan Noble Latz

SaturdayApril 27, 20198:00pm $12 advance / $15 door

This will be a one-time event. Tallan Noble Latz will be performing with 3 different bands, 2 of which are BRAND NEW. Tallan will take the stage at 8pm and not leave for the next 3 hours. Kicking off the night will be the band, which is the new face on the Milwaukee country scene called Throwdown. Throwdown is a....

Nekromantix, Rhetoric Vendetta

TuesdayApril 30, 20198:00pm $20.00

Recently Added Shows

Lost Stars, The Keystones, Beach Static

FridayMay 24, 20198:00pm $8.00

With influences from bands like The 1975 and Imagine Dragons, Lost Stars is a dynamic group known for their lyrically driven songs that crossover pop, rock, dance and indie styles creating a truly unique sound. Since their latest single "Once In A Lifetime" that came out in April, the band has been non stop touring. With....

Thank You Scientist, Bent Knee

FridayJune 14, 20198:00pm $20.00

Dead Poet Society

FridayJune 21, 20198:00pm $8.00

Dead Poet Society is a four piece rock out of Boston, Massachusetts playing fretless instruments that create an uncanny wobble effect, and atypical distortion that sounds more like a vintage synth on steroids than an actual guitar. Their sound is both genre defying and defining. The band features singer Jack Underkofler,....

Popa Chubby

SundayJuly 21, 20198:00pm $20.00

Popa Chubby, born Ted Horowitz, has been hard rocking the blues in his fierce and soulful way for more than 25 years. Over the course of a career that dates back to 1994, he has been a force of to be reckoned with on the guitar, and his tempestuous, soulful playing has never been more powerful. An imposing figure with a....

Mighty Mystic And The Hard Roots Movement

FridayJuly 26, 20198:00pm $12 advance / $15 door

Hellzapoppin Circus Sideshow

SaturdayJuly 27, 20198:00pm $17.00

Named after the most successful Broadway musical and movie from the late 30s and 40s, Hellzapoppin Circus SideShow Revue is a world renown theatrical Rock-N-Roll circus thrill-show where some of the deadliest stunts in live entertainment are performed to loud crowd-pleasing musical tracks. Spectators will experience one of....

Lazer Lloyd

WednesdayJuly 31, 20198:00pm $15 advance / $20 door

Milwaukee Comedy Festival - Todd Barry

ThursdayAugust 1, 20197:30pm $20.00

Milwaukee Comedy Festival is proud to present comedy legend Todd Barry (Netflix, Bob's Burgers, The Late Show, Conan). Tickets available at https://mkecomedyfest.com/todd-barry/. Todd Barry has been performing stand up for over 30 years, has three hour-long sta....

Milwaukee Comedy Festival - Beth Stelling

SaturdayAugust 3, 20198:00pm $20.00

Milwaukee Comedy Festival is proud to present the hilarious Beth Stelling (Comedy Central, Netflix The Stand Ups, Conan, @Midnight). Tickets available at https://mkecomedyfest.com/event/beth-stelling/. Beth Stelling is a stand-up comedian, writer & actre....

Lindsay Beaver

SundayAugust 18, 20198:00pm $20.00

Singer, Drummer, Songwriter, and Bandleader Lindsay Beaver is much more than a young woman with musical talent, she is a force that knows no bounds. Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada - Lindsay has been leading her band across North America and Europe for the past several years playing her own blend of Rock n'....

Stray Cats' Slim Jim Phantom

TuesdayAugust 20, 20198:00pm $20.00

Slim Jim Phantom has secured his place as a true rock-n-roll icon. As the legendary drummer for the Stray Cats, Phantom, alongside band mates Brian Setzer and Lee Rocker, spearheaded the neo-rockabilly movement of the early 80s. With a love for 50s rock-n-roll the Stray Cats took inspiration from that bygone era and mixed....

Billy Cobham Crosswinds Project feat. Randy Brecker 75th Birthday Celebration Tour

MondaySeptember 30, 20198:00pm

Billy Cobham came to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s with trumpeter Miles Davis and then with the Mahavishnu orchestra. According to Allmusic's reviewer, Cobham is "generally acclaimed as fusion's greatest....

Gear Daddies

FridayNovember 8, 20198:00pm $30.00

Gear Daddies is an Americana/Rock band originally from Austin, Minnesota. Members Martin Zellar (electric and acoustic guitar, harmonica and vocals), Nick Ciola (bass), Randy Broughten (electric and pedal steel guitar) and James "Billy" Dankert (drums and vocals), played their first shows together in 1984. Between 1986....

Alternative Concert Group Presents

Buckethead

SundayMay 5, 20197:30pm

At The Rave, Milwaukee, WI.

Tickets on sale at therave.com or at The Rave box office.

John Prine, Todd Snider SOLD OUT

FridayMay 24, 20198:00pm

At the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center, Appleton, WI.

Tickets on sale at TicketMaster, the Fox Cities PAC box offices, or by phone 920-730-3760.

John Prine, Todd Snider

SaturdayMay 25, 20198:00pm $73.50 - $103.50

At the Overture Center for the Arts, Madison, WI.

Tickets on sale at Overture.org, the Overture box offices, or by phone 608-258-4141.

Quick Calendar

Never self-serious while far from a joke at the same time, Nekromantix is a musical unearthing of the biggest themes from the greatest works of monster, zombie, vampire, werewolf and b-horror fiction; ripped from literature, comic book pages or classic celluloid. Nekromantix chases a darkly romantic muse with an even darker humor.

The Nekromantix catalog boasts enduring genre classics like the unapologetically hooky yet undeniably fierce "Who Killed the Cheerleader?" and "Gargoyles Over Copenhagen" alongside subversively sentimental cuts like "Haunted Cathouse" and "Subcultural Girl." There are echoes of rock n' roll's greats and punk rock icons alike, all with modern flair.

A Symphony of Wolf Tones & Ghost Notes broadens the Nekromantix legacy with expansive ambition that never sacrifices the trio's inherent grittiness, furiously stoking and reshaping the flames of the creative vision begun in Denmark with legendary labels like Nervous Records, through the band's master classes in punk n' roll albums stateside with Hellcat Records, the label cofounded by Tim Armstrong and Brett Gurewitz.

Armed with his signature coffin bass, chilling baritone, monstrous expressions and ten-stories-tall haircut, Kim Nekroman has earned tremendous respect, admiration and goodwill from a fiercely dedicated legion of hard-partiers, rabble-rousers, well-meaning degenerates, grease monkeys, outlaw bikers, nostalgic tastemakers and forward-thinking punks. It's a crew of supporters as diverse as the otherwise classic and timeless music the Danish-born California transplant has unleashed as leader of Nekromantix.

Nekroman's notorious quiff is as instantly recognizable as the coffin bass he's slapped into submission on nine studio albums, countless worldwide tours and festivals. The quiff, of course, combines the midcentury rebel style of the pompadour and flattop with the punk attitude of New York and Europe from the late 70s. It's a fitting symbol for the style of music Nekromantix has perfected into an art form, a rollicking psychobilly sound with reverence for the genre's origins and predecessors, infused with an iconoclastic boundlessness that refuses to abandon the electric catharsis of unadulterated fun.

Return of the Loving Dead (2002) marked a career resurgence and subcultural breakthrough for what was previously a feverishly cherished underground band best known outside of North America, via now legendary records like Curse of the Coffin (1991), Brought Back to Life (1994), Demons Are a Girl's Best Friend (1996) and their unstoppable debut, Hellbound (1989). The new millennium brought the band to America (at first to tour and eventually, to stay), conjuring into the world new Nekro landmarks in the forms of Dead Girls Don't Cry (2004), Life is a Grave & I Dig It! (2007) and What Happens in Hell, Stays in Hell (2011), as Nekroman steered the band through shifting lineups and energized shows with bands like Rancid and Reverend Horton Heat.

Nekroman has been joined by skilled guitarist Francisco Mesa for nearly a decade now, with drummer Adam Guerrero bringing a fresh injection of passionate enthusiasm to the band in 2014. A Symphony of Wolf Tones & Ghost Notes is a fertile proving ground for a reenergized lineup that fans of the band have already loved for two years. New songs like "Glow in the Dark," "War Bats" and "Resting Witch Face" are instant classics, standing mightily alongside the greatest Nekromantix songs enduring in their set list.

There are some bands whose sound, image and front person became synonymous with an entire subculture, whether as originators of a particular style, a crucial innovator among a handful of likeminded artists, or simply as the best embodiment of everything a specific style has to offer. Rock historians may debate who reigns supreme among Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, but there's no denying they are all heavy metal titans. When someone says "Lemmy" or "Strummer" or "Blondie," certain feelings are immediately invoked. There's a palpable energy in the air among hardcore acolytes and culture mavens. It's a kind of iconic resonance that transcends boundaries.

To their dedicated army of supporters around the world and across every dimension, Nekromantix stands tall among the ghosts in rock n' roll's undead cemetery.

VIP ticket (limited to 30 people) includes early entry into venue (please arrive at 6:15pm), two song “sound check party”, meet and greet, photo op and one VIP merch item.

"I am a songwriter. I am a poet. I am a lyricist. I am a singer. I am an American Idol Winner," confesses the handsome, charismatic and introspective Lee DeWyze. "Some people have a hard time understanding how those things can go hand in hand." Collectively all of these gifts have coalesced to garner DeWyze a place as one of the most exciting singer/songwriter' s to emerge in the past decade. A Millennial troubadour, DeWyze' s depth as a songwriter along with his earnest ability to drive home a song with a delicate balance of deep emotion and subtlety, call to mind some of his earliest influences like Simon and Garfunkel, Yusef Islam (Cat Stevens) and Johnny Cash. DeWyze' s songs have spent several consecutive weeks in the top forty on the Billboard Hot AC Chart, been featured on the insanely popular gritty drama The Walking Dead, NBC' s musical drama Nashville, showcased in commercials and topped charts abroad in Ireland and Italy. In the six years since DeWyze has evolved from being crowned an American Idol winner, he has continued to refine his artistry. In numerology six is regarded as one of the most harmonious and stable single digits, representing balance, sincerity, love, and truth. Whether you believe or not, one thing for sure is that DeWyze seems to have arrived at such a place in his journey thus far. "I think for once I am making music that is just me. All the way through,"smiles Lee. February 12, 2016, Shanachie Entertainment will release Oil & Water, Lee DeWyze' s fifth solo effort and highly anticipated label debut. His resonant, soulful and at times raspy tenor combined with his prodigious guitar playing serve to underscore themes of the heart as ten songs unravel into compelling poetic prose and striking arrangements.

Randall Grass, Shanachie Entertainment General Manager states, "Lee DeWyze is a classic singer-songwriter with intensely personal lyrics that he delivers with a resonant, viscerally appealing voice. He communicates in a very direct, earthy way that is all too rare these days."

Oil & Water is an alluring evocative mix of songs that reflect the ease and comfort of where DeWyze is in his music and life. Each song is a revealing glimpse into Lee' s world and quest for truth and meaning. He is a powerful storyteller. "I didn't ' know' I could write music exactly but I knew at a young age I appreciated it. I read my first lyrics on the back of a Cat Stevens record and I recall thinking ' wow, he's telling a story. I want to do that' and I picked up a guitar when I was about 13." The songs on Oil & Water at times are deceptively simple and they possess a sincerity and authenticity that you cannot manufacture. All of the albums tracks are written, produced and recorded by Lee along with his friend and engineer Nico Grossfeld. "These songs really sum up a very particular part of my life over the past year or so." Describing his compositional process as 'somewhat chaotic,' DeWyze recorded the songs in his own Los Angeles based studio writing playing and recording the music on his terms. "I am grateful for the process which is this record," declares the young musician. Oil & Water is not a reinvention of Lee DeWyze but rather further discovery. "I think whether you have heard my music or not, people will find common ground on this record. Lyrically these songs speak to a wider audience and I am really excited for people to hear it."

"My goal was to simply make an album that speaks to who I am. About a year ago, which would have been six months into the making of this album, my vision kind of started to fall into place," explains Lee. "I have found my process to be one of writing, recording, sitting on it, then re-recording. Much of that comes from playing the songs live on the road and really letting the songs take on a life of their own."

"Sometimes I want the listener to say, ' I wonder what he means?" confides Lee. "That's the one thing that I think that really makes music powerful. It does not matter what you believe or what your religion or politics are. Everyone can sit and enjoy and be moved by a song. As a songwriter, I view it as a responsibility to move my listener."

Born in Mount Prospect, IL, one of four children, Lee DeWyze discovered music and quickly developed a passion at a young age. He cites Cat Stevens' Tea For The Tillerman and Paul Simons' Graceland as two of the albums that changed his life. As a teen Lee played guitar, piano and the drums and it was not long before he started to write his own songs. "I discovered that I could turn my thoughts and ideas into a clever song or line. I fell in love," recalls Lee. "I would sit around and write funny or witty songs to make my friends or family laugh." DeWyze was crowned the winner of American Idol's Season 9 in 2010, DeWyze had a stint working as both a paint salesman and trading floor clerk at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Before he was 20, he recorded two albums for an independent label in Chicago: So I'm Told and Slumberland. He made his major label debut in 2010 with Live It Up. His critically lauded Frames followed in 2013 and his song "Fight"reached the top 40 on the Billboard Hot AC charts for 10 weeks straight. The video, which Lee produced and created, won first place at the Los Angeles Indie Film Festival. 2014 was a banner year for Lee as he made major headway as a songwriter. His song "Blackbird Song" was placed in the show The Walking Dead. The song racked up more then 3 million YouTube views, 2 million Spotify streams and was selected as one of the Top 10 most influential placements in 2014 by the Music Writers Guild of America. The same year Lee landed a #1 song in Ireland with his song "Lullaby" which was covered by Ronan Keating. He also scored a #3 hit in Italy when his "Magnetic Heart" was recorded by Marco Mengioni.

Lee DeWyze will embark on an ambitious national tour in 2016 in support Oil & Water. "I love my fans. I truly do. They are the fuel to my engine. I want the audience to feel what I'm saying. To know it' s real and honest." With the release of Oil & Water Lee DeWyze takes a no holds barred approach and bares it all and the results are well worth the journey. "I write what I like to hear and how I feel. I am not defining what kind ofcomposer or artist I am. My audience can do that. Because the minute you start to concern yourself with what you're ' supposed' to be doing, you start to second-guess who you are. And that is one thing I am very sure of."

During the Seventies when disco and punk were the rage, only a handful of bands were daring enough to play hard rock and heavy metal music. "You could almost count those bands on one hand," said Starz lead guitarist Richie Ranno. "They were Aerosmith, KISS, Queen, Ted Nugent, Starz and Angel. We kept the flame alive between the original hard rock groups and heavy metal today."

All together Starz recorded four studio albums, Starz, Violation, Attention Shoppers, and Colesium Rock and gathered critical acclaim with their ability to mesh the smooth with the hard. "We loved pop melodies," admitted Ranno in retrospect, "and we also loved heavy guitars. We liked to combine hooks with a harder edge. Our singer Michael Lee Smith had a great sense of melody. In the course of four albums, we only used orchestrations or keyboards once, preferring to mix heavy rock productions with melodic overtones."

Their success has been documented in the historical chapters of hard rock and heavy metal. In Kerrang's critical listing of the 100 greatest heavy metal albums of all time, Starz was listed at #94, with Violation at #84. In a similar poll in Hit Parader magazine, Violation was listed at #82. Starz's greatest asset was their live performance and until a chance meeting between Metal Blade's founder and Starz guitarist Richie Ranno, one of rock's greatest secrets was buried in the archives. At the height of their career, Starz released a special "radio only" live record intended for broadcast, bot not liscenced for sale. It was called Live In Louisville and only a scant 2,000 copies were pressed. It was heralded by Kerrang as the greatest live record never released!

"One day" Richie said, "out of the blue, I got a letter from Brian Slagel, who wrote that he was a big Starz fan and was interested in re-releasing the Starz albums for the first time on CD. He asked if I owned the liscenses to any of the records, and I told him I had the rights to the live record." Starz Live In Action is a combination of the famous Live In Louisville performance recorded in 1978 with another concert taped in Cleveland in 1977. Together it is over sixty-five minutes of classic Starz music, covering songs from all four studio albums and the famous "Waitin On You/Colesium Rock" medley which includes a clever collection of the greatest rock guitar riffs of all time.

"We always considered ourselves a live band," Richie confessed. "In fact, we toured with Peter Frampton in major halls before we even had any product to sell! We felt confident that we could get any audience up on their feet and got encores wherever we played." This same spirit is captured on Starz Live In Action. If you are a Starz fan, this special recording is a must for your collection. If you are unaware of this great band, consider these thoughts. Many of the Eighties most successful bands were influenced by Starz, from Cinderella and Poison to Bon Jovi and Mötley Crüe. Tom Keifer said the first concert he ever went to was a Starz show... "They really kicked ass," he remembered. Jon Bon Jovi met guitarist Richie Ranno backstage at a Bon Jovi concert in New Jersey and took the time to tell 30,000 screaming fans that when he was young, he looked up to Starz. They were the band he imitated when practicing in the garage. In Jon's words, "What ever your dreams may be, always shoot for the Starz!"

Tickets available at http://stevehofstetter.com/tickets.cfm?CalendarID=12252

Author, columnist, and comedian Steve Hofstetter is often called the hardest working man in show-business. With all due respect to the late James Brown.

Hofstetter's national TV debut came on ESPN's Quite Frankly, where Stephen A. Smith yelled at him for three minutes. Hofstetter has also appeared on CBS' "Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson", Showtime's "White Boyz in the Hood", VH1's "Countdown", Sundance's "On the Road in America", and ABC's "Barbara Walter's Special", where he thankfully did not cry. He is the host and executive producer of "Laughs" on Fox networks, where he only cries occasionally.

One of the top booked acts on the college circuit, the original writer for collegehumor.com has also released six albums. Hofstetter has written humor columns for the New York Times, SportsIllustrated.com, and NHL.com, where he publicly admitted to being a Ranger fan.

After hosting Four Quotas on Sirius Satellite Radio for two seasons, Hofstetter moved to broadcast radio, and his Sports Minute (Or So) was syndicated on over 170 stations and in over 30 newspapers. Hofstetter's second live comedy album ("Cure For the Cable Guy") reached #20 on Billboard's comedy charts. His third album ("Dark Side of the Room") was the first ever pay-what-you-want" comedy album, since people were going to steal it anyway. His fourth album consisted of an hour of 100% ad-libbed material, which is, frankly, nuts. And his fifth album hit #1 on iTunes' comedy charts, which is also a bit nuts.

Hofstetter's brutal tour schedule consists of over 100 colleges and dozens of clubs every year, and is fueled by an immense online popularity, tons of press, and a Prius with great gas mileage. He reached 200,000 friends on Facebook and 400,000 more on MySpace, and high shelves in grocery stores.

While Hofstetter's live shows are routinely sold out, he is best known for his writing, first published at age 15, mainly to impress girls. At 18, he co-founded "Sports Jerk of the Week", an irreverent website featured by press like USA Today's Baseball Weekly, Sports Illustrated and CNN. And at 20, Hofstetter took a year off of school to head up web content for the New York Yankees. The Yankees won the World Series that year, which would have been wonderful if they hadn't beaten Hofstetter's Mets. Yes, he's also a Mets fan. Poor kid.

While an undergraduate at Columbia University, Hofstetter was a well-read columnist for the Columbia Daily Spectator and a voice of the Lions. After a summer writing for Maxim, ESPN, and Sports Illustrated for Kids, Hofstetter syndicated his column in several newspapers.

Without his glasses, Hofstetter also looks a great deal like Michael Rappaport.

You can't teach the blues. It's not something that can be codified in music books or learned on YouTube. It goes much deeper than that and it comes from the inside. It's about the way the guitar strings are bent and the sound gets transmuted directly from a player's soul. It's simple at the end of the day. Either you've got it, or you don't. JARED JAMES NICHOLS has definitely got it. The Wisconsin-born, Los Angeles-based singer, writer and guitarist's new EP Old Glory & The Wild Revival channels blues grit and gusto through bombastic arena-size rock 'n' roll. It's raw, raucous and righteously real. As soon as he got his first guitar at 14-years-old, the stage immediately called to Jared. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he grew up minutes away from The Alpine Valley Resort--where Stevie Ray Vaughan performed his last show. However, no divine coincidence could truly foreshadow just how adept at the six-string he would eventually become. He personally traces the beginning of his story back to a blues jam that his mother brought him to. "Two weeks after I got an electric guitar, I was on stage with all of these old cats from Chicago playing the blues," he recalls with a smile. "The music immediately resonated with me. It was all about the feeling and the soul behind it. None of these guys were music nerds. They were true blues guys playing what they felt. That power and reality struck a chord in me." Soon, he found himself practicing for twelve hours every day. Hitting up the local jams, he ended up sharing the stage with legends including Buddy Guy, "Honeyboy" Edwards, and "Big Jim" Johnson as well as opening for Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Derek Trucks. By his 21st birthday, he had logged over 500 gigs. After a short stint at Berklee School of Music in Boston, he headed out to Los Angeles where he garnered numerous accolades at the world-renowned Musicians Institute, winning the 2010 Jerry Horton guitar contest, the 2011 Les Paul tribute contest, and the 2011 "Outstanding Guitarist" award. 2012 saw him release his debut EP, Live at the Viper Room, gaining the notice of both Guitar World and Guitar Player and inking a deal with Sony/MTV's Hype Music Publishing. However, everything simply laid the groundwork for Old Glory & The Wild Revival. Teaming up with Aerosmith engineer Warren Huart, Jared began working on the five-song set in early 2013. Honing his voice as a guitarist, songs like the first single "Let It Go" speak through a delta-style soul with the right amount of rock bravado. "That one is a blues rock song about love and give and take," he reveals. "It's got its own style and it opens the door to what I'm doing". Elsewhere on the EP, "Blackfoot" charges forward with a riff as sharp as a tomahawk and a whole lot of spirit punctuated by Jessica Childress of The Voice's backing harmonies. "In Wisconsin, I was surrounded by Indian reservations and culture," he continues. "I'd do casino and reservation tours as a kid. When I wrote the song, I was reading about all of these badass tribes. I love that spirit and vibe inherent in Native American culture. The Blackfoot were truly bad motherfuckers. That lick is what I feel their culture represented." On stage, it truly comes to life. Jared's presence becomes amplified with guitar in hand. Audiences have experienced that everywhere from his performances at NAMM and SXSW to the iconic Sturgis Buffalo Chip Festival where he will play alongside ZZ Top and Kid Rock and the Harley-Davidson 110th Anniversary in Milwaukee this summer. Ultimately, he lives up to that idea of Revival in the EPs title. "I want people to get excited," he concludes. "I want them to feel like anything is possible in this music. I want them to know great blues rock exists. If I can give someone the same inspiration I was blessed with, I've done something right."

Est. 2011 in Milwaukee, The Fainting Room's sound is acoustic singer-songwriter meets Americana twang and harmonies meets screaming rock guitar solos. It's a potent and dynamic mashup of the genres that influence the band as individuals and as a group.

Frontwoman Lisa Ridgely's singer-songwriter heroes include the brave, the sassy and the honest -- particularly Kristin Hersh, Kathleen Edwards, Neko Case, Sharon Van Etten, Nathaniel Rateliff and Mason Jennings. The band's influences are wide ranging, from Loretta Lynn and Nirvana to Metallica and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

A full-length album, Dusk, was released in May 2018. The group released its second EP, Heart Hot, in May 2014. Their debut EP, Wine in Bed, was released in 2012.

The Fainting Room enjoyed nods from WAMI (Best New Artist, 2012) and Radio Milwaukee, with five nominations for the 2012 Radio Milwaukee Music Awards (Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Solo Artist of the Year, Catchiest Song of the Year, Best Live Show).

Performance highlights have included playing at Milwaukee's Chill on the Hill and Summer Soulstice; opening for Katrina of Katrina and The Waves at Shank Hall, Madison's Count This Penny at Club Garibaldi, Kristin Hersh at Shank Hall, and Caroline Smith at the Riverwest Public House; and playing at the Porcupine Mountains Music Festival in Michigan's upper peninsula. The band has split bills with some of their favorite local groups, including Testa Rosa, Field Report, the Crooked Keys, Hello Death, Caley Conway, Derek Pritzl and the Lyric Advisory Board.

Lisa Ridgely started performing as a singer-songwriter in 2009, and had collaborated with local musicians including Sigmund Snopek and Chris DeMay before starting The Fainting Room.

Ryan Elliott, 2012 WAMI Award-winning Guitarist of the Year, has played with local bands for more than two decades, including The Form and Great Lake Drifters.

Sara Moilanen, 2011 WAMI Female Vocalist of the Year, plays bass and does heavy lifting on vocal harmonies. She is also a member of the vintage Americana trio The WhiskeyBelles.

After a nearly decade-long hiatus from music, Dan (guitar) returned to songwriting as a creative outlet and therapeutic exercise. He revisited the folk music of his childhood; moved by the deep simplicity of the genre. Taking cues from Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens, and Leonard Cohen, the lyrics are grounded in the harsh but ineffable realm of reality. The music, however, blurs the lines of folk, country, and rock from the 60's, 70's, and 90's. By exclusively playing acoustic guitar, Dan explores the boundaries of "acoustic rock", while giving the band its signature twang.

Emma (piano) began playing piano at age six and continued studying classical piano through college. After moving to the Waukesha area for work, she began looking for new opportunities to be involved in music and build community. The Watchbirds were the perfect fit! Since she studied mainly classical piano for most of her life, jumping into the band provided exciting new challenges and possibilities like improvising and song-writing. She is having fun adding layers and depth to the group and exercising her creativity.

Influenced early on by Led Zeppelin and sampled drumbeats of 1980's hip-hop, Josh (drums) played in various blues and reggae groups which helped him develop a loose, groovy style akin to The Band's Levon Helm. Josh has always been drawn to playing music with more focus on lyrics and storytelling. He joined The Watchbirds after hearing a sampling of early practice recordings; he knew he would fit in perfectly as a member of a collaborative group, and his crafting/art skills add a personal and unique aesthetic.

Tom (bass) began playing drums at 15 and acquired his first bass guitar shortly thereafter. He soon found that progressing with one instrument informed his understanding of the other. Acting solely as a drummer whenever he joined a band, Tom continued to teach himself bass at home by studying virtuosos such as Les Claypool and Brian Ritchie. The basslines in The Watchbirds are a collaborative effort between Dan and Tom. Using a bouncy bass guitar to drive the rhythm as well as help carry the melody eliminates the need for a second guitar and creates a solid link between all the instruments.

After discussing it with her very surprised yet supportive husband, Jenny (vox) auditioned and immediately helped shape The Watchbird's sound and demeanor. As a marathon runner, Jenny is used to pushing herself when training. Yet she considers singing the most challenging endeavor she's ever undertaken. Being in a band is a new experience for her, but Jenny's incredible work ethic continues to drive the band forward as well as grow her skills as a singer.

Is it country blues, folk rock, or neo-traditional acoustic Americana? It's hard to say -- and anyway it wouldn't be true. Certainly you will hear echoes of everything from blues to country, both traditional and homemade, but do we really have to put a label on it? Let's just say it's good honest American music played by good honest American men -- and you just might just like it.

Devil in the Outhouse is composed of the surviving members of the largely overlooked and mostly mythical band "Syd Hartha & the Monkeyminds" that swept through Fort Atkinson beginning in the winter of 2010. After Syd decamped to India to seek enlightenment, Scott bolted to Colorado to find Nature, and Brian fled from Elkhorn to escape responsibility, it seemed like nirvana was pretty much out of the question. The image of Martin Luther grappling with Satan while in his own port-a-potty (look it up) seemed like suitable inspiration for the name of a band of lost and tortured souls -- creating music from the space between the yearning to be good and the hankering for a good time.

The Surviving Members of the Band:
Greg - guitar, vocals
Looper - harmonica, guitar, vocals
Blaine - fiddle, vocals
Dave - bass
Dan - washboard, suitcase, & kitchen utensils

Not successful enough to play music full time, all slog through menial day jobs specializing in mental fabrication -- i.e., making up stories about themselves to justify and romanticize their otherwise empty existences. Don't ask...

It you are still reading this far down the page we have to wonder about your reading priorities...and suggest you pick up a good book -- and maybe explore how to best use your rapidly dwindling days. Or perhaps seek counseling.

Terry Reid, 'Superlungs' as he's affectionately known, is without doubt one of the greatest rock/soul voices this country has ever produced or is indeed likely to. A Terry Reid concert should be a cherished memory for any self-respecting fan of the greats of British music.

Terry turned down the front man's job with Led Zeppelin, recommending his mate Robert Plant instead, a similar offer and rebuff to Deep Purple. Aretha Franklin's stated that The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Terry Reid were the best England had to offer in 1968. He underwent two World Tours with The Rolling Stones, US tours with Cream, UK tours with Jethro Tull and Fleetwood Mac, The Isle of White Festival in 1969 and Glastonbury in 1970, played at Mick Jagger's wedding, before soured record deals resulted in Terry leaving Britain for America nearly 40 years ago.

All true, but the full story includes numerous collaborations with Graham Nash, covers of Reid songs by Marianne Faithfull, The Hollies, The Raconteurs (the hugely popular 'Rich Kid Blues'), film soundtracks, including a song in George Clooney's recent film 'Up In The Air', and a catalogue of 6 studio albums, including the seminal album 'The River', re-released to critical acclaim in 2002 and the 1976 Nash produced 'Seed of Memory'. A Reid song 'Horses Through a Rainstorm' also features on CSN's box set.

More recently, Terry's been working with up and coming French band Shine and The Alabama 3. Following a Glastonbury return in 2009, he played a three night residency at Ronnie Scott's in London, one of only a handful of non-Jazz artists invited to help mark the legendary venue's 50th Anniversary. He played to packed houses, critical acclaim, and returned in 2010 and 2011 to sell out 3 consecutive nights.

In May 2011, he toured Ireland for the first time in 30 years and released a new live album 'Live In London' which included several previously unreleased tracks. Uncut Magazine presented a show featuring Terry at The Jazz Café and he toured England, including several sell-out shows. A return to Glastonbury, headlining the Spirit of 71 stage followed.

2012 turned out to be an important year for Terry Reid. In May 2012, Rumer featured Terry's song 'Brave Awakening' on her new album Boys Don't Cry, (which entered the UK Album Chart at No3). Terry returned to the Isle of Wight Festival for the first time since 1971 in June. In August 'America's Got Talent' Winner in 2010, Michael Grimm, included Terry's song 'Without Expression' on his latest album, Gumbo. In the spring, DJ Shadow had invited Terry to write the lyrics to a new track for his forthcoming 'Reconstructed' album -- This became the song 'Listen' and the official video got 400,000 plays on Youtube in late 2012.

Los Angeles born guitarist Nita Strauss has become a force to be reckoned with in the music world, dazzling audiences across the US, UK, Europe, South America, Asia, Australia and Africa. Most fans will recognize Nita as Alice Cooper's touring guitarist of the past 4 years, but she has also played with R&B star Jermaine Jackson, early MTV darlings Femme Fatale, video game supergroup Critical Hit and popular tribute band The Iron Maidens. Her skill, exuberant stage presence and love for all things about her instrument have earned her a stellar reputation in the music industry and endorsements including Ibanez Guitars, Marshall Amplification, DiMarzio pickups, Monster Energy and more.

2018 has been a banner year for Nita. In January she was officially announced as the first ever female Ibanez signature artist with her own model, the Ibanez JIVA. She also released her signature pickups, the DiMarzio Pandemonium. April saw Nita playing WWE Superstar Shinsuke Nakamura's entrance music at Wrestlemania in New Orleans in front of an audience of 78,000 fans and millions streaming worldwide, and in the same month she launched a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign for her debut solo record Controlled Chaos. The campaign reached its goal in two hours, doubled it by the end of the day, tripled the following day and ended up over 800% funded. Nita produced the record herself and did the majority of the engineering, as well as playing all the guitars and bass on the record. After the record was competed, Nita signed with Sumerian Records to release and distribute the album worldwide. After finishing out the Alice Cooper tour cycle, Nita will immediately hit the road supporting Controlled Chaos alongside modern guitar virtuoso Angel Vivaldi.

Nita has been featured on the covers of many worldwide print magazines and on dozens of albums, trailers, and soundtracks, including Heroes Of The Storm (Blizzard) and Grammy-nominated Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Konami/ Platinum Games); and is the author of the Guitar World column "Like A Hurricane". Nita was also the official in-house guitarist for the LA KISS, the arena football team owned by Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons of KISS. She is one of the most sought after clinicians in the industry and has done extensive clinic tours across multiple continents. Her consistent touring schedule has shown her to play in front of over a million audience members per year consistently for the past several years. Nita is also extremely passionate about health and fitness, and uses her wide social media reach to inspire and educate people about maintaining a healthy lifestyle while traveling on tour.

Joe Richter sings from the heart, emotes his truth with sweet melodies and telegraphs no pretensions in his approach to the microphone. He loves the songcraft of his musical idol Billy Joel as well as Ryan Adams. Richter's early inspirations included Dave Matthews, John Mayer, Jack Johnson and, well, Elvis.

Richter's songs are personal yet hold broader meaning. A song to his wife, Emily, also rings true to a world wracked with violent events.

"We look around and we hear the sound of a world so down, the pain the hurt and the fear, our love drowns it out, I love the love that I feel for you, I love the way you love me too, I can't get over you."

Richter's first-ever full-band recording "Revival" showcases the sound he envisioned when entering the studio in 2017 with some of Milwaukee's finest session players. Joe's Milwaukee music pal Willy Porter lends solo guitar support on the lead single "Happy Tears" that dropped February 26th.

"I wanted to put a full band behind the music," says Richter.

Richter released a solo acoustic album in 2012 entitled "Grace." The title track of that EP was taken from a recording session in Nashville, TN at Castle Recording Studios in 2008. He also formed a band called Joe Richter and Those Fabulous Tremtones to play Milwaukee night club gigs.

Since then, the former factory assembly worker has applied himself tirelessly to gigs around southeast Wisconsin performing his own material as well as in-demand covers. He's willing to play "Piano Man" but he'd rather go deeper into the Joel library.

The new album's title connotes gospel, and Richter is fine with that, but says it's more about his musical transformation, improvement and growth. His day job changed as well when he returned to school to learn respiratory therapy, a skill he employs at a hospital in Milwaukee's central city.

In 2017, Richter debuted as lead vocalist in the Daryl Stuermer Band performing the songs of Genesis and Phil Collins. Stuermer has been a member of the Genesis and Collins touring bands for decades.

Not bad company for singer-songwriter Richter, who one Milwaukee radio disc jockey described as delivering songs "full of pure wonder, delivered with exquisite pop sensibility and lyrical phrasing like a heart-warming conversation."

Richter's "Revival" received several nominations in 2018 at the Radio Milwaukee Music Awards which included album of the year, artist of the year, and song of the year for "Wisconsin Fall", which finished as a finalist in the top 5.

He is poised to share his musical talents and heartfelt songs through a wider audience that gets just how much he wants to reach them with his songs.

Described by the magazine Rootstime in Belgium as 'One of the greatest talents of our era", and listed as the "2nd best gig" by the major UK newspaper The Independent, becoming the #1 most played artist on Canadian Galaxie Folk/Roots radio, Western Canadian Music Award winning artist Sarah MacDougall is getting known for her honest and poetic songs, passionate performances, and unique voice. Born in Sweden, Swedish magazine Nöjesguiden declared her "One of Sweden's best singer/songwriters".

Since the release of award-winning The Greatest Ones Alive in 2011, Sarah has been touring Canada and Europe endlessly, taking time to work on songs and record between tours. Last winter, she hunkered down under the Northern Lights in Whitehorse and put the final touches on the sonically rich album which was to become Grand Canyon. The album, co-produced by Sarah and Caleb Stull (Field Study, Dominique Fricot, Language Arts), which was recorded in Toronto and Vancouver, features 8 songs and guest appearances from Erika Angell (Thus:Owls), Rose Cousins, Jesse Zubot (Tanya Tagaq, Dan Mangan), Peggy Lee, and Leah Abramson (Abramson Singers). Stepping outside of traditional folk and flirting with sounds that could have come from The Postal Service or Kate Bush, Grand Canyon keeps the acoustic guitar but infuses the sound with heavier drums and richly textured strings and synths.

The songs are about identity, love, fear, hope, growing up, rootlessness, forgiveness. They are written from the point of view of the hopeful outsider, trying to figure out their place and make sense of the world. Grand Canyon sees Sarah challenging herself and pushing new boundaries musically and sonically, and it is an album that will surely see Sarah reach new levels in her career.

Expertly navigating that rarefied space between elegiac folk and accessible pop, Toronto-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ben Kunder has emerged as one of the most electrifying musicians on the indie scene and a sought-after live performer. Kunder's dazzling sophomore album "Better Human" is poised to dominate 2018/19.

Real life anchors most of "Better Human", the record exploring compelling themes like the birth of a child, the struggle for life balance, the workday reality propping up our outward façade, largely illuminating the human struggle to navigate through the world while sharing darkness in order to see the light.

Produced alongside Aaron Goldstein at Baldwin Street Sound, guests include Oh Susanna, Jim Guthrie, Paper Bird/Bahamas singer Carleigh Aikins, Sarah MacDougall, Maia Davies, bassist Anna Ruddick, Arkells drummer Tim Oxford and keyboardist Anthony Carone, violinist Drew Jurecka, and Wintersleep drummer Loel Campbell, among others. Propelled variously by strings, pedal steel, keyboards, percussion, guitar, bass, and those spectacular before-mentioned voices; renders small moments in precise detail, making his songs both accessible and, occasionally, downright palpable.

The zeitgeist is a moving target, and Chris Barron has always been a crack shot. The New York songwriter is no longer the debutant who set out on the circuit's sharp end in 1988 with $100, a battered acoustic and a headful of the alt-rock anthems that would elevate Spin Doctors to global stardom. He's a veteran approaching 50, living in a world changed beyond recognition, compelled to write the music that chronicles the here-and-now. As far back as he can remember, he's had a hunger driving him onward, towards something just out of reach. In 2017, it propels him to Angels and One-Armed Jugglers (due out October 20 on Chrysanthemum Records), the culmination of a lifetime's craft and a record both contemporary and classic.

Ask Barron for a pivotal moment from his journey and he'll rewind the reels to a high-school music theory class, where a cherished teacher advised him to "learn the rules so that you can break them." Almost four decades later, that same irreverent wisdom hangs over Angels and One-Armed Jugglers. In a cynical era of songwriting by committee, these eleven songs rip up the verse/chorus template, eschew the stock lyrical themes and crash thrillingly among genres, as this fascinating songwriter acts entirely on instinct. "I've taken stock of everything I've learned about music," says Barron, "and I've got to a point now where I'm just following my nose. These songs range from old jazz standards to funky beer-hall folk tunes. But I've never really been that interested in genres. I'm just interested in songs. I think the reason it's so eclectic is because the songs were chosen more thematically than based on genre."

If the concept of Angels and One-Armed Jugglers began anywhere, it was born on the 59th Street Bridge, as Barron drove home from Queens. "I wrote that title track on the steering wheel," he reflects. "With that first line -- 'Angels and one-armed jugglers, sword-swallowers and smugglers' -- I was thinking about this woman who once lived next door to me, this old chorus girl. She was in her 80s at the time, always plying me with limoncello, telling me great stories about Broadway in the '40s. And I always find, if you fall in with the title early on, you start to make a record that's very thematic. But then, weirdly enough, I had a paralyzed vocal cord and I lost my voice. So I'm the one-armed juggler. Art imitates life.

"I guess this record is like the tray of oysters on a side table of the soirée they throw the evening before the comet hits the earth," Barron considers. "Y'know, thematically, it's about the cocktail party at the apocalypse, the decline of the American empire and just a bunch of lemmings in neck-ties going over the edge. But it's very personal, too, and there's a lot of my own sadness in there. Anybody can see the world is a deeply unfair place. It's the responsibility of the artist to give some kind of consolation. Yes, the world is fucked up. But there is still wonder. And there's still a twist of comedy."

When Barron returned from medical treatment to resume the project, he moved with all the urgency of a man sharply aware that life was short and health fragile. As it gathered pace, the album shifted shape and slipped categorization, evolving from the stripped-down solo acoustic approach that Barron had originally envisaged to the more ambitious production conceived by co-producer Roman Klun. All they needed now was the greatest studio band on earth. "So it was like, let's get Shawn Pelton," recalls Barron. "He's iconic in the United States as the drummer for Saturday Night Live and a renowned studio drummer as well. Then I went to see Jesse Murphy play bass with a friend. You play music for 40 years, you only need one look to know: this motherfucker can play. I played all the songs into my iPhone and sent those guys the files. The two of them show up with these charts they'd drawn up, with all nuances of my playing, all the funky little fills. It was such a musical compliment. I can't give enough credit to the players on this record."

Bolstered by a crack squad of first-call New York musicians, Angels and One-Armed Jugglers paints its immersive soundscapes in full Technicolor. And yet, Barron reminds us, beneath the multi-instrumental dazzle lie the kernel of songs that can be served raw with an acoustic guitar and voice alone. "They were written just me and a guitar, so they lend themselves to being interpreted just by a singer and guitarist. This record is really a return to what I started out doing. Y'know, I set out as a kooky, gawky kid with a guitar, and I'd like to go out and tour this record, just me and a guitar. It's come full circle."

Barron remembers those hardscrabble early days well, and he wouldn't change a moment of them. Rewind to the late-'80s, and having left a music and ceramics course at Bennington College, the fledgling songwriter was living above a New Jersey music store, toiling at a restaurant by day, before working all night on the songs that would shortly become alt-rock standards. "I wrote 'Two Princes' when I was 19," Barron says of the hits that powered the Spin Doctors' ascent, "and 'Little Miss Can't Be Wrong' when I was 21."

At the encouragement of local heroes, close friends and sometime flatmates Blues Traveler, Barron moved to New York and took on the bear-pit live circuit. No gig was too grisly, no hole-in-the-wall too humble. Life and limb were risked playing everywhere from the city's subway to its most bristling biker bars. Then came a happy twist of fate, as Barron fell in with guitarist Eric Schenkman, assembling the classic Spin Doctors line-up with Aaron Comess (drums) and Mark White (bass) and infiltrating the airwaves. With 1991's five-times-platinum Pocket Full of Kryptonite album, the band duly exploded, and while millions screamed those solid-gold choruses, there was more going on beneath the surface. "I'm so proud of Pocket Full of Kryptonite," says Barron. "We really captured the times we were living in. Historically, I think the Spin Doctors were perceived in the landscape of grunge and alternative music as this happy-go-lucky band, but in my mind, all of our songs are sad lyrics with happy music. If you delve into the lyrics, there's a lot of pain and longing in there."

With the ever-questing Barron at the bow, the Spin Doctors were bound to have a fascinating evolution. A four-album hot streak in the '90s established them as a heavyweight of the era, and since the line-up reconvened in 2001 (a reunion sparked by the imminent closure of the iconic Wetlands club, where they cut their teeth), there's been acclaim for 2005's Nice Talking to Me, before 2013's If the River Was Whiskey reconnected them with the Delta-inspired tunes from early days in New York's blues clubs. "I love being in the Spin Doctors," says Barron. "We've been playing together a very long time -- thousands of stage hours, time in the studio, time in vans -- and I feel like we're now in this really cool phase of our career. I have no intention of leaving the group. This solo project is really about learning and just expressing the broadness of my musicality. Because as a composer and a lyricist, I can't fit everything I do into the Spin Doctors."

You suspect there's no canvas large enough to capture the endless light bulbs pinging above the head of Chris Barron -- but the thrilling Angels and One-Armed Jugglers is the closest we'll get to a portrait of this visionary songwriter as a mature artist. "I'd be lying if I said that the response to this album doesn't matter to me," he considers. "I would like a lot of people to enjoy this record. It would mean a lot to me for it to be well received. Because in my heart of hearts, I really believe it's a beautiful record. I got lucky with this one. It's better than I could have imagined or hoped for. But whatever happens, I have the satisfaction of knowing I've made the best record that I'm capable of ..."

Michael McDermott burst onto the scene in his early 20s with his exceptional debut, 620 W. Surf and subsequently found himself touted as Rock's 'Next Big Thing'. MTV, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and even author, Stephen King added their appreciative nods and having the backing of Giant Records and prestigious producers like, Brian Koppelman and Don Gehman, seemed to go a long way towards assuring his success - overnight success.

The missteps and failures that followed, the collapse of an industry that once embraced him as its next sensation, are troubles and travails that either ruin a person completely, or they force a change of attitude and staunch determination to gather one's resolve to not only survive, but overcome. McDermott vowed to do both. Ten albums in, it's resulted in Willow Springs (Pauper Sky, June 17, 2016), one of the most honest, daring and defiant recordings of McDermott's career. Named for the small town where he now resides with his wife and young daughter, it reflects a certain circumspect about his life, the situations he's encountered, while realizing that ultimately, his fate resided in his own hands.

"This is an album of reckoning I suppose," McDermott reflects. "There was a real cacophony of change going on in my life at the time... being a new father, losing my own father, leaving the city for the country, dealing with sobriety, grief, death, mortality, shame and forgiveness. It was a veritable emotional tsunami and yet somehow I had to navigate through it all. That journey is reflected in these songs. Willow Springs is the name of the place where I took refuge and had to confront a lot of things".

Recorded at his home in the country and fan-funded, Willow Springs finds McDermott behind the boards as producer for the first time with longtime producer and collaborator, Lex Price doing the mix. Having enlisted a stellar support group of musicians -- including multi-instrumentalist, Price; guitarist, Will Kimbrough; keyboard player, John Deaderick ; sax player Rich Parenteau; and McDermott's wife, Heather Horton on backing vocals - McDermott found himself able to craft the unassuming yet cutting sound he envisioned.

Indeed, the results bear out the fact that Willow Springs is the most honest and expressive album of McDermott's extraordinary 25 year career. Songs such as, 'These Last Few Days', 'Getaway Car', 'Half Empty Kinda Guy', 'One Minus One' and the title track, convey all at once, a sound that's both reflective and confessional - borne by stark emotion and a tattered, battered delivery that's both sobering and sublime. McDermott remains more determined than ever, and Willow Springs is the result. "My enthusiasm is only matched by my desire to continue to evolve as an artist" he insists.

Accolades and kudos can be accumulated one minute and quickly dissipate the next. After all, the music biz is a fickle beast and it doesn't matter how much you pleased the masses last year, last month or even last week, but rather, about what you offer today.

Today, McDermott has offered his best.

Kudos to Michael McDermott - overnight success.

Thank You Scientist was forged from the music program at Montclair State University in New Jersey when guitarist Tom Monda met saxophonist Ellis Jasenovic and trumpeter Andrew Digrius. The three bonded over their love for Frank Zappa, Mahavishnu Orchestra, The Beatles and Harry Nilsson. Those influences would become the seeds for what Thank You Scientist would evolve into today.

With the addition of vocalist Salvatore Marrano, bassist Greg Colacino, drummer Odin Alvarez and violinist Ben Karas, Thank You Scientist's lineup of virtuoso musicians was complete. The band would go on to self-release an EP, The Perils of Time Travel, in 2011 followed by their debut full-length, Maps of Non-Existent Places, in 2012, which caught the ear of Sanchez, a fellow purveyor of progressive stylings, and led to his signing of the band.

Bent Knee is a band without frontiers. Its borderless sound combines myriad influences from across the rock, pop, minimalist, and avant-garde spectrums into a seamless, thrilling whole. Its new album Land Animal--Bent Knee's first for InsideOutMusic/Sony--takes its sound to a new level. It offers a suite of songs full of addictive hooks, lush melodies and enthralling twists and turns that capture the reality of life in the 21st Century--a reality of people and nations in the midst of tumultuous change. It also communicates a ray of hope and desire for listeners to embrace the fact that they're not alone in their struggles.

"The silo-smashing Bent Knee's unique mix is equal parts ingenuity and deliciousness," said Jim Fusilli of the Wall Street Journal in 2016 when he first heard the group. "Bent Knee breaks new stylistic and temperamental ground," declared Steve Smith of The Boston Globe. Other media outlets worldwide have reacted with similar enthusiasm, including NPR and the BBC, which have playlisted the band.

Bent Knee formed in 2009 as a democratic collective determined to push the boundaries of pop and rock. Lead singer and keyboardist Courtney Swain's soaring vocals are instantly arresting. Guitarist Ben Levin is one of the most dynamic and versatile guitarists around, shifting between the raging and raucous to the sublime and meditative. Bassist Jessica Kion and drummer Gavin Wallace-Ailsworth combine into an enthralling rhythm section that's equal parts powerhouse and nuance. Violinist Chris Baum's kinetic violin work provides drama, grace and intrigue. World-class producer and live sound designer Vince Welch weaves it all together with a captivating, expert touch.

The band has gone from strength to strength in recent years. Its last two albums, 2016's Say So and 2014's Shiny Eyed Babies, were hailed as significant art-rock achievements. The group has performed hundreds of shows across the world to date. During the fall of 2016, the band played for ecstatic audiences as an opener for the U.S. leg of The Dillinger Escape Plan's farewell tour.

With Land Animal, Bent Knee has elevated its storytelling ambitions to create narratives that reflect and refract the currents we're exposed to in the news every day.

"We're at this bizarre point in history when our species can almost actively play God," explained Baum, when discussing the themes running through the album. "We're getting closer and closer through communication and technology. On the flip side, we still have many primal urges that have yet to evolve. There's a strange balance between our technology and our biology that's tremendously difficult to find. Land Animal explores where those animalistic urges come from and how we can harness and transform them to create a better reality."

"The album has all kinds of songs about struggle," added Levin. "We look at global warming, family strife, technology-mediated relationships, racism, and societal polarization. Each song is imbued with a dichotomy between who we are now as a species and where we're going."

As the band hits the road in support of the album, it intends to explore the diversity of thought amongst its ever-growing audience in a world where it's increasingly easy to live inside one's echo chamber of ideologies.

"I think our music is powerful and capable of uniting people with different perspectives," said Kion. "They may think about things differently, but they're there together, part of the concert. The fact that music and art can bring people together in that way is a really significant force that's needed right now."

"We haven't made a political album with Land Animal," said Wallace-Ailsworth. "However, it's definitely motivated by the difficult state of the world at the moment. If people are able to take some comfort in our music or create dialog through it, those are great things for us."

Like the band's previous work, Land Animal is full of fresh, sophisticated arrangements and beautiful vocal harmonies, but it's also its most direct statement to date.

"It's a really juicy and immediate album," said Swain. "With our previous album Say So, I think it took people a few listens to absorb its themes. That's not the case with Land Animal, which delivers more instant gratification."

"We tried to balance that with an appealing narrative arc," said Welch. "The album starts with 'Terror Bird,' a song about individuals and communication issues and ends with 'Boxes,' a song that explores the fact that we're all marching towards our own demise, so we better make the most of the time we have. Land Animal is an epic journey."

At the end of the day, the band believes strongly in music as a force for positive change and delivering ideas no other medium is capable of.

"We believe music is the most efficient way to get a point across," said Baum. "The only way to cut through the noise of a confused, globalized world is to create something that speaks directly to the soul, and that's what we hope we've done with Land Animal."

"It's nice to be alive," Bob Schneider sings on Katie, the second song off of his new record "Blood and Bones", his 6th since his 2001 solo debut Lonelyland. While this might sound like naivety or blind optimism, for Schneider, one of Austin's most celebrated musicians, this observation was earned through experience. "Most of the songs are about this phase of my life," he admits. "I'm re-married, I have a 2-year-old baby daughter who was born over two months premature because my wife had life threatening preeclampsia. So dealing with that traumatic event while getting older and looking at death in a realistic, matter of fact way, experiencing the most joy I've ever experienced along with feelings of utter despondency in a way that would have been impossible to experience earlier in my life all comes out in the songs. My relationship with my wife is the longest committed relationship I've ever been in, so there was a lot of unchartered territory there to write about."

The songs on Blood and Bones reflect this. Recorded quickly with producer Dwight Baker, who has worked on Schneider's last 6 releases, the album highlights the chemistry that Schneider and his backing band of Austin's very best musicians have developed while relentlessly playing live, most notably at the monthly residency Schneider has held at Austin's Saxon Pub for the last 17 years. "I didn't want to overthink the songs," Schneider says. "I really respect Dwight's ability to make great calls when it comes to what works and isn't working when we are recording the songs. I felt pretty good about the quality of the songwriting, so I figured that would come through in the end if we just went in and played them the way I do live."

While the performance and production are stellar, the songwriting finds Schneider in a particularly reflective mode. Sure, there are live favorites like "Make Drugs Get Money" and "Texaco" that will get even the most reserved crowds dancing. But more often the album finds Schneider reflecting on marriage, parenthood and mortality. "I wish I could make you see how wonderful everything is most of the time, but I'm only blood and bones," he sings on the title track, a meditation on the beauty and the limits of marriage. Later, on "Easy" he tells his daughter "it's always been a scary thing to do, to let my heart fall down into the endless blue, but it's easy with you." Through it all, there is a clear sense of mortality, of just how fleeting all of this is. "The hours and days stack up in the mirror," he sings on "Hours and Days". "We're just snowmen waiting for the summer" he signs on "Snowmen", before adding "we can't bring them back, can't bring nothing back."

One thing Schneider has excelled at in his career is bringing audiences back. Though he has received little national press or major label support, he has managed to become one of the biggest acts in Austin, if not Texas. His fans, who often discovered him after being brought to his shows by their friends, are fiercely loyal. Many have attended dozens or even hundreds of shows. Thanks to these fans, Schneider has won more Austin Music Awards than any other musician, including Best Songwriter, Best Musician, and Best Male Vocals.

In retrospect, it appears inevitable that Bob Schneider would become an artist. He was born in Michigan and raised in Germany, where his father pursued a career as a professional opera singer. As a boy, Schneider studied piano and guitar, often performing at family parties and backing his father on drums at nightclubs throughout his youth in Germany and Texas. He went on to study art- his other primary passion and avocation- at the University of Texas El Paso, before moving to Austin and establishing himself as a musician. He performs relentlessly, writes songs compulsively, writes poetry and regularly shows his visual art in galleries around Austin. With Blood and Bones, Schneider further cements his reputation as one of the most versatile, inventive and engaging songwriters working today.

From early days growing up in the southeast Los Angeles suburb of Downey, California under the tutelage of T-Bone Walker and Big Joe Turner to their emergence as central figures in the eclectic LA punk/rock scene of the early '80s to their current status as internationally-renowned influences in their own right, the Blasters have spent their lives exploring and expressing the deep and diverse musical legacy that is best described by the title of their first album: American Music.

A performance by today's Blasters--vocalist-guitarist Phil Alvin, drummer Bill Bateman, bassist John Bazz, and guitarist Keith Wyatt--reflects influences that range from George Jones and Carl Perkins to Howlin' Wolf, James Brown and Bo Diddley. The band's 1980 debut album American Music (Rollin' Rock) was a powerful collection of fresh, distinctive performances that shattered the artificial boundaries between blues, rockabilly, country, R&B and rock & roll. The next three albums for Slash/Warner Bros. (The Blasters, Non-Fiction, and Hard Line) increasingly featured the unique songwriting voice of original guitarist Dave Alvin as the band's lineup expanded to include pianist Gene Taylor plus saxophonists Steve Berlin and New Orleans legend Lee Allen ("the man who put a saxophone in rock & roll"). As the Blasters' fame grew, they began to draw accolades from artists as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton and Queen, and in turn the band encouraged and supported still up-and-coming LA musical peers such as Dwight Yoakum and Los Lobos

In 1986, Dave Alvin left the band to pursue a solo career, and over the next decade a series of renowned guitarists including Billy Zoom, Michael "Hollywood Fats" Mann, Greg "Smokey" Hormel, and James Intveld filled the position. Phil Alvin simultaneously expanded his own musical efforts with the release of two acclaimed solo albums, Unsung Stories (Slash/Warner) in 1986 and County Fair 2000 (Hightone) in 1994.

In 1996, current guitarist Keith Wyatt joined the lineup and the Blasters continued touring steadily in the US and Europe before returning to the studio in 2004 to record 4-11-44 (Rainman). After the departure of drummer Jerry Angel, the band reunited with original member Bill Bateman and subsequently released their 2012 CD Fun on Saturday Night (Rip Cat). Meanwhile, the Blasters' catalog was renewed with reissues of American Music along with two Slash/Warner compilations (Testament and The Blasters Collection) and the live recordings Trouble Bound and Going Home Live (Shout Factory).

Blasters shows have been described as "a cross between Creedence and the Clash," with a display of passion and energy only deepened by decades of experience. For all of the ways in which the world has changed in the past few decades, one thing is still guaranteed: the Blasters play American Music.

You've heard our name, you've seen our records, our t-shirts and our stickers. We're probably the favorite band of someone you know and yet maybe we're still a mystery to you. Well my friend, that's okay, you're at the right place to get to know the greatest rock-n-roll band in the world, The Supersuckers.

And the next time you see the 'Supersuckers' name, whether it's in the record store, online somewhere, or on the marquee at your local rock club, know that there's some quality, honest, ass-kicking, hard working individuals behind it all trying to make your life a little better through the "Evil Powers Of Rock-n-Roll" (and the occasional detour into the country music, of course) and we'd love nothing better than to have you there with us as! Just remember to wear clean underwear, because we're gonna rock your pants right off of you.

Since his stunning debut, Thunderstorms and Neon Signs in 1995, Wayne "The Train" Hancock has been the undisputed king of Juke Joint Swing - that alchemist's dream of honky-tonk, western swing, blues, Texas rockabilly and big band. Always an anomaly among his country music peers, Wayne's uncompromising interpretation of the music he loves is in fact what defines him: steeped in traditional but never "retro;" bare bones but bone shaking; hardcore but with a swing. Like the comfortable crackle of a Wurlitzer 45 jukebox, Wayne is the embodiment of genuine, house rocking, hillbilly boogie. Wayne makes music fit for any road house anywhere. With his unmistakable voice, The Train's reckless honky-tonk can move the dead. If you see him live (and he is ALWAYS touring), you'll surely work up some sweat stains on that snazzy Rayon shirt you're wearing. If you buy his records, you'll be rolling up your carpets, spreading sawdust on the hardwood floor, and dancing until the downstairs neighbors are banging their brooms on the ceiling. Call him a throwback if you want, but all Wayne Hancock wants to do, is simply ENTERTAIN you, and what's wrong with that?

The LA Weekly calls Clownvis Presley "Better than the real Elvis". A bold statement indeed, but when it comes to quick wit, incredibly catchy songs, and genuine showmanship, its safe to say Clownvis has earned the title "The King of Clowns". From the sideshow at Coney Island to the hottest comedy events in Los Angeles and everything in between, Clownvis is consistently brining his unique blend of comedy, song, and magic to stages across America.

Thanks to a controversial appearance on NBC's America's Got Talent, Clownvis is now familiar to millions of people around the planet. His phenomenally outrageous audition is a must see (check Youtube). Following this sensational break through, Clownvis has appeared on Comedy Central, The Tom Green Show, Sirius XM, and top FM stations across the country. He tours and performers regularly with such high profile acts as Mac Sabbath, Unknown Hinson, Insane Clown Posse, Neil Hamburger, Tim Heidecker and more.

Mighty Mystic is considered as one of the leaders in the U.S. Reggae scene and labeled by many as one of the more prolific artists to develop outside of Jamaica. He has gripped the scene with ferocious conviction and an uncanny ambition worthy to be mentioned among the greats. He has gone from being a fan of reggae music to being a contributor to the art. Mighty Mystic came on the scene in 2006 after scoring his first international hit with the song "Riding on the Clouds." However, it wasn't until the release of his first album "Wake up the World" (2010) that he became a household name. "Wake up the World" boasted several standouts, such as "Revolution," "Riding on the Clouds," "Original Love," and "Slipped Away" with appearances from reggae icon Shaggy and roots rocker Lutan Fyah. Mystic continues to wake up the world with his high energy, message driven brand of reggae music which he emphatically calls "HARD ROOTS." It is this unique spin on classic reggae blended with Hip Hop & Rock that has catapulted him to the forefront of today's Reggae Revival. Mighty Mystic is also the younger brother of current Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness. When asked, does being the brother of Prime Minister Holness have any impact on your music? Mystic simply says "Andrew has a job to do and so do I, impact or not we both have our own mission to complete".

Mighty Mystic was born Kevin Mark Holness in the farming community of Goshen, St. Elizabeth, Jamaica to parents Morris & Sonia Holness. As a child, Kevin showed early interest in his native island's music. It was common to hear him singing the latest tunes while imitating the actions of popular reggae artists. When Kevin was 10, the family relocated to Boston, MA in search of a new life. Though oceans apart Kevin never lost the passion for his beloved reggae music. Kevin's brother Stephen was already making a name for himself in the local Hip Hop scene as an up and coming rapper. This intrigued young Kevin and it wouldn't be long till he was bitten by the music bug. Soon he would be at every school talent show, every house party, every park showcase, every rap battle, every studio doing features, on every show as the opening act and before you knew it young Kevin had the ears of his City. It was becoming clear that this early buzz might be a real thing so he decided it was time for a musical name. He chose Mystic as it was his father's nick name as a kid and also the area Kevin was living in at the time, but moreover it was a reflection of the type of music he was into and doing. As Mystic arrived so would a new level of determination and passion. By the time he was 19, he had several songs as well as remixes produced by DJ Roy Barboza being played on Boston's #1 commercial radio station JAMN 94.5. The buzz would ignite like a wildfire and spread nationally. Soon the big boys like Funk Master Flex in NY was rocking MM, DJ Khaled in Miami and the Baka Boys in LA to name a few. And in a blink of an eye the foundation for a "Mighty" future was set.

Mighty Mystic has turned himself into one of the more sought after U.S. based Reggae artists on today's scene. His brand of "HARD ROOTS" with his high energy stage performance has been a magnet for the young enthusiastic reggae fan base. He has managed to hold firm to his Jamaican roots while adding elements of Hip Hop & Rock giving Mystic a more unique sound. Mystic has released 3 albums which all debuted in the top 10 on iTunes and Billboard reggae charts (Wake up the World 2010, Concrete World 2014, and The Art of Balance 2016). As well as a dozen bona fide single hits such Riding on the Clouds, Revolution, Concrete World, Something Bout Mary, Happy and Cali Green which was featured on VP Records "Hi Grade Ganja Anthems 4" compilation (2016). He has done over 20 national tours and several international tours. Mystic has toured and/or shared the stage with Ziggy Marley, Steel Pulse, Damian Marley, Buju Banton, Stephen Marley, Shaggy, SOJA, Toots and the Maytals, Collie Buddz, Sean Paul, Lee Scratch Perry, Barrington Levy, The Wailers, John Brownʼs Body, Luciano, Third World, Freddie McGregor, Capleton, Badfish, the Dirty Heads and the list goes on and on and on... Mystic's high energy stage performance is a sight to see as was evident at Jamaica's premiere reggae festival Rebel Salute 2018 and America's longest running festival Reggae on the River 2017. He has guest appeared on massive TV networks such as NBC TV, FOX TV, ABC TV and CBS TV. For many, this would be a summary of a long career, but for Mighty Mystic this is still just the beginning. Look out for a February 1st 2019 release of his 4th studio album titled "Enter the Mystic" and a 20+ city tour to support this venture via VP Records/VPAL.

For over 50 years, John Mayall has served as a pioneer of blues music, rightly earning him the title, "The Godfather of British Blues".
In 2013, John signed with producer Eric Corne's label, Forty Below Records, and has since been experiencing a true artistic and career renaissance.

The revival continues with the release of a brilliant new studio album Talk About That, produced by John and Eric at the famed House of Blues Studios in Encino, California. Joining Mayall (vocals, keyboards, harmonica and guitar), Greg Rzab (bass), Jay Davenport (drums) and Rocky Athas (guitar) as special guest is legendary guitarist Joe Walsh, who plays on two tracks, "The Devil Must Be Laughing" and "Cards on the Table," both John Mayall compositions. "We got a message through the studio owner that Joe wanted to come by and possibly play on a track or two as a guest," recalls Mayall. "Who was I to say no to that idea! So, he turned up at noon on the second day and with only a quick listen, plugged in and we did the song in one take. The second song closely followed, and with a smile and a quick photo, he was done and on his way. What a kick for all of us that day!"

For Joe Walsh, playing on a session with one of his musical heroes also held a special place. "It has been a bucket-list item since 1970 to play with John Mayall," he states. "John had a run of GREAT British guitarists (one after another) with his 'Bluesbreakers' albums, and that's how many of us in the States became aware of them. Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor - I studied them all for hours and became a much better guitarist as a result. The albums were legendary stuff and I have wanted to work with John for years and years, wondering what it would be like."

"Finally got the chance - and he was the complete gentleman and fine, fine musician I had always hoped he would be. When you meet a hero who helped shape your career - it's a wonderful feeling to find they're even cooler than you always thought they were." The album contains eleven tracks: eight originals, plus covers from Memphis soul music songwriter Bettye Crutcher ("It's Hard Going Up"), blues great Jimmy Rogers ("Goin' Away Baby") and rock singer/songwriter Jerry Lynn Williams ("Don't Deny Me"). It also showcases a three-piece horn section that adds extra punch on several tracks, including the infectious New Orleans-flavored "Gimme Some of that Gumbo."

The release of Talk About That comes on the heels of Mayall's internationally-acclaimed, Find A Way To Care in 2015. "Listeners who value a diverse, lyrical taste and a heavy dollop of classic blues music enjoyed Find a Way to Care, an album that fulfilled on every level." (Blues Rock Review), and A Special Life released in 2014. "I'd easily put this one among Mayall's best efforts - and that includes 'Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton,' 'A Hard Road' and 'Blues from Laurel Canyon!'" (about.com)

In April 2015, John and Forty Below thrilled the blues world with the release of the historical Bluesbreakers album, Live In 1967, featuring the three original members of Fleetwood Mac: Peter Green, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood. "Sunken treasure doesn't get much better" (Classic Rock Magazine). Live in 1967 - Volume Two followed in 2016 and was hailed as a "welcome second helping" by Rolling Stone, and "essential listening" by Blues Music Magazine.

John Mayall was born on the 29th of November 1933 and grew up in a village not too far from Manchester, England. It was here as a teenager that he first became attracted to the jazz and blues 78s in his father's record collection. Initially it was all about guitarists such as Big Bill Broonzy, Brownie McGhee, Josh White and Leadbelly. However once he heard the sounds of boogie woogie piano giants Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis, his desire to play in that style was all he could think of. At the age of 14, when he went to Manchester's Junior School of Art, he had access to a piano for the first time and he began to learn the basics of this exciting music. He also found time to continue learning the guitar and, a couple of years later, the harmonica, inspired by Sonny Terry, Sonny Boy Williamson and Little Walter.

After his two years at art school, he joined the art department of a major department store while starting to build up his own record collection that was to be his source of inspiration. At age eighteen, when he was due for National Service, he spent three years in the Royal Engineers as an office clerk in the south of England and in Korea all the time playing whenever he got a chance. As no one seemed to be interested in this type of music, John felt pretty much of an outsider throughout his twenties up until 1962 when the news broke in the British music magazine Melody Maker that Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies had opened a club in Ealing devoted to blues music. After Britain's ten year traditional jazz boom had about run its course, a new generation was ready for something new. Out came the amplifiers, guitars and harmonicas and out came young enthusiasts from all over the country eager to form their own groups.

This was all the encouragement thirty-year old John needed and, giving up his graphic design job, he moved from Manchester to London and began putting musicians together under the banner of the Bluesbreakers. Although things were rough at first, the music quickly took off thanks to the popularity of the Rolling Stones, Georgie Fame, Manfred Mann, The Animals and Spencer Davis with a young Steve Winwood. John also backed blues greats, John Lee Hooker, T-Bone Walker, Eddie Boyd and Sonny Boy Williamson on their first English club tours.

After a couple of years and many personnel changes, Eric Clapton quit the Yardbirds and John quickly offered him the job as his new guitarist. Although John had previously released a couple of singles and a live LP for Decca, the now classic collaboration between Eric and John resulted in the all-time best-selling classic album, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers featuring Eric Clapton. However, by the time it was entering the charts, Clapton and bassist Jack Bruce had left to form Cream. So began a succession of future stars who would define their roots under John's leadership before leaving to form their own groups. Peter Green, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood became Fleetwood Mac. Andy Fraser formed Free, and Mick Taylor joined the Rolling Stones.

In 1969, with his popularity blossoming in the USA, John caused somewhat of a stir with the release of a drummer-less acoustic live album entitled The Turning Point, from which his song, "Room To Move" was destined to become a rock classic. Attracted by the West Coast climate and culture, John then made his permanent move from England to Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles and began forming bands with American musicians. Throughout the '70s, John became further revered for his many jazz/rock/blues innovations featuring such notable performers as Blue Mitchell, Red Holloway, Larry Taylor, and Harvey Mandel.

In 1982, motivated by nostalgia and fond memories, John decided to re-form the original Bluesbreakers. Mick Fleetwood was unavailable at the time so John hired drummer Colin Allen to join with John McVie and Mick Taylor for a couple of tours and a video concert film entitled Blues Alive. Featured greats were Albert King, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells and Etta James. By the time Mick and John had returned to their respective careers, public reaction had convinced Mayall that he should honor his driving blues roots. In Los Angeles, he selected his choices for a new incarnation of the Bluesbreakers. Officially launched in 1984, it included future stars in their own right, guitarists Coco Montoya and Walter Trout.

Throughout the '80s and '90s, John's popularity went from strength to strength with a succession of dynamic albums such as Behind The Iron Curtain, Chicago Line, A Sense of Place, and the Grammy-nominated Wake Up Call that featured guest artists Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Albert Collins and Mick Taylor.

In 1993, Texas guitarist Buddy Whittington joined the Bluesbreakers and, for the next ten years, energized the band with his unique and fiery ideas. Making his recording debut on Mayall's Spinning Coin album, he proved to be more than equal to following in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessors. Other modern classics followed; Blues For the Lost Days and Padlock On The Blues, the latter featuring a rare collaboration with his close friend, John Lee Hooker. On Along For The Ride, Mayall re-teamed with a number of his former mates, including Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, as well as ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, Steve Miller, Billy Preston, Steve Cropper, Otis Rush, Gary Moore and Jeff Healey. The younger generation was well represented by teenage guitar sensations Shannon Curfman and Jonny Lang. In 2002, Stories debuted the Billboard blues charts at #1.

At a 70th Birthday celebration in aid of UNICEF in Liverpool a concert was filmed, recorded and released as a DVD and double CD in December 2003. Along with the Bluesbreakers, it featured old friends Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor and Chris Barber. The BBC also aired an hour-long documentary on John's life and career entitled The Godfather of British Blues to coincide with the release of Road Dogs. In 2005, John was awarded an OBE on The Queen's Honours list. In the Spring of 2007, John Mayall's 56th album release, In The Palace Of The King, was an entire studio album that honored and paid tribute to the music of Mayall's long-time hero of the blues, Freddie King. All garnered great reviews, critical and popular acclaim and represented Mayall's ongoing mastery of the Blues and his continuing importance in contemporary music.

In addition, over the last ten years, Mayall released live recordings on his own online label, Private Stash Records. (Some still available from his website johnmayall.com.) They included Time Capsule (containing historic 1957-62 live tapes), UK Tour 2K, (from a 2000 British tour), Boogie Woogie Man, (a selection of solo performances), Cookin' Down Under, (a live DVD from Australia) and No Days Off, (another British live show) and a 3 volume CD set of live performances covering the years 1970 to 1998 entitled Historic Live Shows.

In October 2008, John made the decision to permanently retire the name "Bluesbreakers" and move on to make a brand new start. It was a sad occasion to say farewell to Buddy and the guys after twenty years of great music and camaraderie but things had reached another turning point. This caused quite a stir in blues circles and led to rumors about total retirement. Happily for the fans, early in 2009 Eagle Records called upon John to come up with a new album. Feeling much revived after a couple of months off the road, he put together a new band for the project.

A few years ago, Buddy Whittington had introduced John to a fellow Texas guitarist, Rocky Athas and he recalled how impressed he'd been at the time. Luckily he answered John's call and was eager to come on board for the proposed album. With the need for a rhythm section of dynamic strength, John turned to bassist Greg Rzab who recommended his fellow Chicagoan Jay Davenport on drums. Finally, the three guys were put together with keyboardist Tom Canning and within two days of meeting up in Los Angeles, the album Tough was in the can. It had taken all of three days in the studio and ever since its release, and a growing schedule of world tours, a new era was born. Soon after its release Tom left to pursue other projects.

A leaner four piece line-up gave John more room to stretch out as an instrumentalist and the band's chemistry hit new heights. For the next seven years, John and the band continued to tour extensively throughout the world, and racked up their usual target of over a hundred shows per year. In 2010 a concert in London was filmed, and Live in London was released as a double CD and DVD through Private Stash.

After being invited to do a guest spot on Walter Trout's latest album, John met engineer/producer Eric Corne. John was so impressed that he asked Eric to record his new album A Special Life. Greg, Jay and Rocky flew in for the sessions which took less than a week to record and the end result was one of John's best albums ever, with it's deep devotion to blues and roots music. The album was released in 2014 to rave reviews, followed by an extensive tour of North America, Europe, and The UK to celebrate John's 80th birthday Find A Way To Care followed in 2015 and was equally well received.

Early in 2016 the co-producing team of John Mayall and Eric Corne assembled at the House of Blues studio in Los Angeles to record the new album Talk About That. This time around John wrote most of the songs that cover a wide range of exciting new material and are enhanced by some rock solid horn arrangements. The album with special guest Joe Walsh was released in January 2017.

2016 brought yet another change in the evolving Mayall history when serious Texas thunderstorms prevented Rocky Athas from making a festival date and John, Greg and Jay were compelled to perform as a trio. As fate would have it, the sound they came up with lent an amazing new slant to John's music and subsequently led him to explore the possibilities of making music as a trio. Unfortunately, this would mean a guitarist would now not be required as John was heading in a new direction. A sad parting of the ways, but Rocky has been supportive of John's decision. For information on what's happening next for him please check his website at: www.rockyathas.com.

So with a very full calendar of touring booked from coast to coast and all over the world, the John Mayall saga continues with his music as vital as it has ever been.

"Thousands of people have sent me their personal messages sharing their journeys, struggles, pains, joys, challenges and inspirations. I'm very humbled that the songs have touched people, each in their own way. All of you have become my teachers and inspiration."

"My great love is sharing with an audience my own folk songs and ballads mixed with raw rock, stripped down country and blues -- you can call it Americana but it is just continuing on the road started by the Allman Brothers..."

"Growing up our house was full of music. Bob Dylan, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Kris Kristofferson were big early influences on me as songwriters. I started to write songs in college and it has become an essential part of who I am. My earliest interaction with the music industry was an Atlantic Records A&R exec taking an interest in a song I had written called "Bye Bye Baby" about a young model who went out to LA and ended up dead. They wanted to send me to Nashville to record with producer Garry Tallent (E-Street Band) and I started the process of showcasing for Atlantic in New York City where I lived at the time.

My path changed after I met a mystic in Central Park and I started a journey that led me to meet my wife and start a family. Along the way always performing and the songs have continued to come down to me - starting with a lyric and sometimes as a melody. Every morning I carve out time to sit alone with the guitar and get into the flow - it keeps me going and makes it possible to cope with the painful struggle of this world and to be able to spread joy."

"As a young songwriter and guitar player, I loved Neil Young with his super sensitive acoustic and singing just suddenly firing it up with searing guitar. I first heard Stevie Ray Vaughn live at 14 and my father also took me to hear Santana live - those were life-changing experiences - seeing masters who performed on a level of prayer through music on stage. That set my mind and heart on playing music for life."

In 2015, Lots of Love Records put out Lazer Lloyd's first major international release of new material, a self-titled album that introduced Lloyd's songwriting and unique sound became one of the top blues rock records that year getting widespread critical acclaim with "Burning Thunder" reaching number one on the blues rock chart.

Lazer's second major international release "Freedom's Child" was dropped in September 2017 including 12 new tracks: 11 originals plus Lazer's take on Dylan and Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower" recorded with Grammy nominated producer & engineer David Ivory at his studio near Philadelphia. The album shot up the Americana charts as awareness of Lloyd's music grew into an expanded fan base of roots music lovers.

Canadian music sage John Kereiff wrote, "Critics have noted Lloyd's skill as a lyricist, saying he is 'able to elevate life's joys and struggles into inspirational material'. Couple that with supple musicianship, and that makes "Freedom's Child" one of the most compelling discs of 2017. Watch out, though - this one's gonna hit you right in the feels. Five Stars" John Kereiff (Gonzo Okanagan).

On tour in Connecticut in October of 2017, Lazer stopped off at Horizon Studios to record a few of his new songs with wizard of sound, Vic Steffens in West Haven. The result was several tracks including the Americana anthem "Backstreets" which was released as a single on Thanksgiving Day and went on to pass a million streams on Spotify, going viral on Facebook and Youtube as well.

As "Freedom's Child" was shooting up the Americana chart and "Backstreets" was going viral, Lazer was already on to the next project - recording an album with Eric Paul (Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt, Emmylou Harris, Kris Kristofferson etc) at Ricky Skaggs Studio in Nashville featuring (Michael Rojas on keyboards, Michael Spriggs on rhythm guitar, Eddie Bayers on drums, and bass players Mark Fain and Eli Beaird). The brilliant band created by Eric and led by Lazer Lloyd produced music that is sheer heaven. To complete the album, Lazer found inspiration in the red dirt of Oklahoma and Texas working with many times Grammy nominated Chris Bell (Don Henley, Eagles, Erykah Badu, Luther Dickinson, Eric Johnson etc) at Billy Crockett's Blue Rock Studios in Wimberley with a group of young Tulsa musicians. The sound achieved by Chris is warm and real and soul transforming. Music from both the Nashville and Blue Rock Red Dirt sessions will be presented on two albums in 2019 on Lots of Love Records.

Stephane Wrembel is quite simply one of the finest guitar players in the world. The breadth and range of his playing and compositions are unmatched. To say that Wrembel-- who learned his craft among the Gypsies at campsites in the French countryside-- has already had a remarkable career would be an under-statement. This prolific, virtuoso guitarist from France has been releasing a steady stream of music since 2006 and has truly made his mark as one of the most original guitar voices in contemporary music.

The New York Observer said, "Stephane Wrembel represents the living face of Gypsy jazz." Rolling Stone Magazine has called him "a revelation".

Since last January, The Stephane Wrembel Band has been promoting two new recordings on Water Is Life Records, The Django Experiment I and II. Both albums primarily feature The Stephane Wrembel Band's own interpretation of the songs of legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, as well as Wrembel's original compositions, and those of other writers of the same vein of music. The Django Experiment I and II were released in conjunction with the Wrembel-produced Django A Gogo concert held at Carnegie Hall on March 3, 2017. The event received rave reviews and included guitar masters Al Di Meola, Larry Keel, Stochelo Rosenberg and other gifted musicians all celebrating the music of Django Reinhardt. The Stephane Wrembel Band will release The Django Experiment III on January 23, 2018.

Stephane Wrembel is widely known for "Bistro Fada", the theme song from the 2011 Woody Allen Oscar winning film, Midnight In Paris. Subsequently, Wrembel was hand-selected by award winning composer/producer Hans Zimmer to perform at the 2012 Academy Awards® as part of his "All Star Band." Then, Midnight in Paris won a Grammy Award for "Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media".

He has toured around the world, and is very active on the musical scene in many countries including USA, Canada, France, Israel and India. Recently, Stephane has performed as a headliner at the legendary Carnegie Hall in New York and at the Festival Django Reinhardt in France. Wrembel has also headlined at Lincoln Center, played major festivals, recorded with mandolin legend David Grisman, toured with master violinist Mark O'Connor and shared stages with everyone from Elvis Costello to Patti Smith to The Roots. The Gitane guitar company has even named a model after him. To say that Stephane Wrembel-- who learned his craft among the Gypsies at campsites in the French countryside-- has already had a remarkable career would be an under-statement. This virtuoso guitarist from France has truly just begun to make his mark as one of the most original guitar voices in contemporary music.

The Stephane Wrembel Band includes long-time collaborators Thor Jensen (guitar), Ari Folman Cohen (bass), and Nick Anderson (drums).

Doug Stone, a contemporary country star, found his mark in music as a lonesome baritone balladeer, although he was very adept at hard-up-tempo country. Doug began at age five learning guitar from his mother an avid singer and guitarist. At age seven he was given the opportunity, by his mother, to open for Loretta Lynn. Life presented Doug a drastic change with the divorce of his mother and father. Doug, as result, moved in with his dad. As his youthful years past, Doug played at skating rinks, local bars or any money making project to help his father make ends meet. In the daytime Doug worked as a mechanic, something else that came to him naturally.

Doug had already past the age of 30 when a Nashville manager paired him up with Epic, his first record label. He debuted in 1990 with the single, "I'd Be Better Off (In a Pine Box)," the first release from his 1990 self-titled debuted album "Doug Stone" for Epic records. This album produced a handful of chart-topping singles. Following these songs was his first number one, "In a Different Light". In addition, the single was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Country Song. Both this album and its successor, 1991's I Thought It Was You, earned a platinum certification from The Recording Industry Association of America for U.S. shipments of one million copies. Two more albums for Epic, 1992's From The Heart and 1994's More Love, were each certified gold. Stone has charted --twenty-two singles on Hot Country Songs, with his greatest chart success coming between 1990 and 1995. In this time span, he charted eight Number Ones including: "In a Different Light", "A Jukebox and a Country Song", "Too Busy Being in Love", "Addicted to a Dollar, and "Why Didn't I think of That" to name a few, plus fifteen more Top Five singles.

In early 1992, Stone found that one of the arteries in his heart was almost entirely blocked. He underwent quadruple bypass surgery and took time off to recover, just as his third album, "From the Heart," was released. With a gold certification for shipments of 500,000 copies, "From the Heart" included two Number Ones among its four singles: "Too Busy Being in Love" and "Why Didn't I Think of That." The other two singles were "Warning Labels" and "Made for Lovin' You," at No. 4 and No.6 respectively. One month later Stone released an album titled "The First Christmas."

In June 1994 Stone discovered that he was having breathing problems, which were affecting his singing. Doctors at Vanderbilt University's medical center failed to find any problems in his throat. A second consultation revealed a lump in his nostril but amazingly it was not cancerous. While Stone was undergoing treatment, his Greatest Hits, Vol.1 compilation was released in late 1994.This album included the new song "Little Houses, "which debuted on the charts in October 1994 and peaked at No. 7 in early 1995.

Stone made his acting debut in the 1995 film "Gordy." "Gordy," a heartwarming story featured Doug as Luke McAllister, a struggling musician. Gordy paved the way for stone's acting career and as well featured several of his songs. In 2011 Doug moved on to another movie role, "When the Storm God Rides," a Thomas E. Kelly film.

Always the adventurer, in 2000 Doug suffered a broken ankle and a cracked rib after crashing his ultra light plane in Robertson County, TN. An experience that would put him back in the studio recording the self-inspired single "Caught Dead Living", based off of Doug's "larger than life personality", and love for living life to it's fullest.

In April 2012 Doug Stone and Dr. Gerald Murray of Muscle Shoals, Alabama signed a management contract. Murray is the former manager of George Jones and the late Vern Gosdin. In 2014 Doug released the album "Doug Stone 'The Demo's': 20 Years of Life".

Now- 28 years, 8 #1 singles, 15 Top 5 singles, and millions and millions of album sales later- the singer of timeless country hits like "A Jukebox with a Country Song" and "In a different Light" is still running the roads hard performing to dedicated fans all across the nation. With a new record slated for release in the Fall of 2018, Doug Stone continues to produce pure country gold.

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