Portugal. The Man finds inspiration in the past

The old adage “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” rings particularly true in 2017. You don’t have to search hard to find parallels between the current sociopolitical landscape and the one that served as a catalyst for the counterculture movement of the 1960s. This observation wasn’t lost on the members of Portugal. The […]

ARTS Pick: Lyle Lovett

Lyle Lovett and His Large Band is no small venture—the 13-piece group backs Lovett on everything from violin to guitar to trombone, swinging through jazz and pickin’ out country with a variety of crowd-pleasers. With 14 records and almost four decades of touring, the four-time Grammy winner continues to define his own musical niche. Wednesday, […]

ARTS Pick: Gillian Welch

It took Gillian Welch eight years to release The Harrow & The Harvest. That wasn’t for lack of inspiration, but a stubborn streak of perfectionism that caused Welch to spend the better part of a decade honing down the album to the sparse, dark folk at its core. Hear the resulting classic Americana for yourself […]

ARTS Pick: Nora Jane Struthers

There’s a valuable lesson to learn from the music of Nora Jane Struthers—and it’s that showing vulnerability takes a gritty kind of personal strength. Struthers wears her heart on her sleeve on her most recent album, Wake, which is powered by her signature bluegrass-tinged rock, and tells a powerful story of falling in love. Backed […]

ARTS Pick: Sheryl Crow

You already know that Sheryl Crow is the voice behind a long list of top-40 songs, from “Soak Up the Sun” to “Everyday is a Winding Road.” But did you know she is also an outspoken supporter of a number of charities, from the Children’s Defense Fund and AIDS research to the Special Olympics and […]

ARTS Picks: Four Voices

Any one of the legends on the Four Voices tour would be reason enough to lay out your picnic blanket on the Pavilion lawn. But packaged together, Joan Baez, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Indigo Girls’ Amy Ray and Emily Saliers form a folk supergroup made to crush your feminist mother’s bucket list. Although it’s their […]

Takin’ care of backstage business at area music venues

If Gary Green does his job well at the Paramount Theater, nobody will know. As the theater’s audio production manager, he analyzes how sound waves produced by artists will be affected by rising temperature and humidity as audience members fill the space. He knows how voices sound in each microphone, and where the Paramount’s resonance […]

ARTS Pick: Ween

Sometime in either 1984 or 1985 two junior high school kids with no interest in friendship were seated next to each other in typing class. It turns out they had even less interest in typing, and through a bit of distracted goofiness, including fusing the words wuss and penis, Ween was formed, and history was […]

Peter Bjorn and John play to the beat of pop history

Haunted by spirits of recordings past, music studios are just as legendary as the work they’ve cultivated, and they often come equipped with their own folklore. Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” echoes throughout RCA’s Studio B in Nashville. Memphis’ Sun Studio gave us the first recordings of both Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. Muscle Shoals Sound Studio […]

ARTS Pick: Chamomile and Whiskey

Charlottesville’s Chamomile and Whiskey mixes an intoxicating blend of Irish, old-time and gypsy music into its own brand of Americana. Since releasing its debut album, Wandering Boots, in 2013, the band, revered for its live performances, has played venues and festivals all over the U.S. The highly anticipated hometown show is bound to be a […]