Outside Rupp Arena, scalpers were asking as much as $125 a ticket for the sold-out opening date of the Down From The Mountain tour. A few years back, the only Rupp event that could have commanded such a price was a University of Kentucky basketball game. Lately, though, even the basketball team has had trouble [...]

The show began not with a moment of silence but with a single loud thrashing guitar chord, followed by a blast of Dan Baird’s vocals (“I got a hankerin’”) and a wild rush of pure rock ‘n’ roll music that continued for nearly two hot and sweaty hours. It may not have been an officially [...]

Dale Watson is as close as there is these days to a pure, old-fashioned country performer. He looks, dresses, sings and writes the part. Hell, he even acts the part, most recently in a new video for Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison”. (“They shot it in Dallas,” Watson announced from the stage. “They had me in [...]

“We’re in D, Buddy — we’re playing in D,” Peter Case hollered between songs from the sidestage where he was playing over to the mainstage, where Buddy & Julie Miller were performing at the same time. “We send this song out to Peter Case,” came the playing-along response from Julie Miller. It was a surreal [...]

Ironically, the local paper billed the concert as an opportunity for Kelly Willis “to shine in an evening all her own.” Shine, she did — beaming a contagious smile between songs and filling the night with the warmth and sweetness of her country-tinged vocals. However, it was far from “an evening all her own.” Willis [...]