They’d been there for years, those gaudy silver spray-paint stars splashed across the northern and western walls of First Avenue/7th Street Entry, the legendary double-venue situated in the center of Minneapolis and at the heart of the Twin Cities music scene. It was a vintage Minneapolitan touch, a graffiti-style punk-rock takeoff on the bronze-and-concrete [...]

The six musicians in the Continental Drifters all have impressive credentials, yet it is former dBs member Peter Holsapple who really shines, as he drives the band through a combination of solid originals such as “Darling” and well chosen covers including Gram Parsons’ “A Song For You”.
Susan Cowsill, Holsapple’s wife and a former member of [...]

About 50 folks (including The Blazers, who played the next night) made it out as the Dead Reckoning collective of Kevin Welch, Kieran Kane, Tammy Rogers, Mike Henderson and Harry Stinson hit the stage for an updated version of the old-fashioned hoedown. By the end of the two-hour set, about half of those 50 were [...]

It was Friday the 13th — what better time to hear Tom Russell’s tales of hard-luck drifters, hard-bitten souls and hard-drinking romantics?
Russell and guitar-whiz accompanist Andrew Hardin performed two acoustic sets at Kansas City roots-rock haven The Grand Emporium in what was billed as a record-release party for Russell’s The [...]

Neil Young’s annual acoustic Bridge School Benefit is always a wonderful array of Young’s musical friends and colleagues. This year’s concert, the ninth, boasted a lineup as impressive as any previous year, with Bruce Springsteen, The Pretenders, Emmylou Harris with Daniel Lanois, Beck, and Hootie and the Blowfish getting together to help out the Bridge [...]

Halfway through their spirited performance in Cicero’s intimate lower quarters, The Schramms’ chief scribe/singer/guitarist and namesake, Dave Schramm, asked if he was mumbling too much. Before anyone in the small but enthusiastic crowd could reply, Schramm followed with a smirky, “Well, I ain’t got nothin’ to say anyway.”
Schramm could be excused for being cranky. [...]

Ten years ago, Lone Justice anticipated the current twangcore movement with an audacious sound that drew in equal measure from trad country and the visceral rock ‘n’ roll of Tom Petty, whose “Ways to Be Wicked” provided Lone Justice with its only hit. Maria McKee and Marvin Etzioni went on to solo careers, and Don [...]