Words / Photos: Alex WoodWith the excellent 2013 release White Lighter, Typhoon perfected their indie sound with well-written tracks and clean production. However, listeners of the studio album wouldnt guess it was an eleven-piece band making the music.For their performance at The Metro, there was no doubt.Two drummers and a percussionist played atop one another...

With David Letterman's retirement announcement yesterday, I thought it'd be nice to check in with some of the inspired lunacy created during the Late Night years with our musical heroes.Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir made three notable appearances on the show dating back to 1982, where they played acoustic on an off night between Nassau...

Read closely for a chance to win tickets!Karl Denson's Tiny Universe hits Park West this Saturday (4/5), touring in Chicago for the second time behind his latest release New Ammo. The album features some hot new Denson compositions, but also finds a lot of it's life in a handful of covers, both obscure and beloved....

Though Anderson turned 42 last week, Lies & Wishes comes off as a record of maturation, the artists writing process essentially providing therapy toward recent events.Album opener Lies & Wishes illustrates this emotional intensity best.I think about the title track. I remember writing it and the first time I wrote that melodic finger picking...

JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound may be the most versatile band on the Chicago scene. Judging from list of stages they've graced over the last few months -- from Montrose Room to the Metro and from North Coast to Taste Of Randolph -- their appeal extends far and wide, and they are leaving a...

Rock coupled with the symphony has always made for a curious marriage. This is particularly true for improvisational music, which doesn't lend itself to arrangements for dozens of musicians.For jam fans in Chicago (and really most of the Midwest) we haven't had too much evidence to sway us either way. We've had to sit...

Based on activity in the jamband blogosphere, I'm guessing we may have crossed threshold of peak jam bracketology. In 2013, bloggers (and official band sites) flooded the Internets with their own fields of 64 to prove what the best show, song, jam or run from the band of their choice would be, but this year things seem...

Photos: Rickie KostinerEast met West, when two rising progressive bluegrass stars brought their tour through Chicago on Wednesday night. The Infamous Stringdusters hail from Charlottesville, Virginia and Fruition has been tearing up the West Coast from their Oregon home base. But there's nothing middle-of-the-road about their music, which features fierce picking, smooth vocals and a...

Twitter turns 8 today and introduced a new feature which allows you to view the very first tweet from any account without all sorts of onerous scrolling. I thought I'd pick a couple of significant tweeters in the music world out of the 590 accounts that I follow and see how it all began for them. I...

The Experience Hendrix Tour is an annual package that brings the music of Jimi Hendrix to some of the nation's best theaters starring an A-List cast of guitarists and other musicians.The 2014 edition featured such Barn favorites as Eric Johnson, Cesar and David from Los Lobos, Dweezil Zappa, and an a appearance by Chicago Blues...