Without one "big" show dominating Halloween in Chicago this year, there's a lot of talent playing in a lot of places. As usual, this city can't seem to keep its Halloween celebration to just one day (even when it falls on a Friday!) -- so we're listing shows in this preview from Wednesday through Saturday....

This weekend, we come as close as can be to a pair of "must see" shows on The Barn's calendar:Top notch musicians, who we love as solo acts, as well as supporting players in other bands, coming together as a supergroupThis band's first shows out of the NortheastAll Grateful Dead material (yes, please and...

Fasten your seatbelts, NCM Fathom and Rhino Entertainment are back for another round of Grateful Dead at the movies, and this time it's another doozy.Rewinding the clock a few months prior to last year's high quality Sunshine Daydream (8/27/72) premiere, this year's offering is a complete in-studio performance from one of the most storied tours...

Jackie Greene and his band of stormed Chicago's Lincoln Hall on Saturday night (but not before celebrating their drummer's birthday at nearby Fiesta Americana).Highlights included Greene's originals "So Hard To Find My Way" and "Prayer For Spanish Harlem". But the true show stopper was the set closing sequence of covers, segueing from the Beatles ("...

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...

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...

Photos: Mike Kaiz PhotojournalismAs both Bob and Phil have conspired to avoid Chicago for nearly two years, it was great to see Grateful Dead family rally around Bobby at Friday night's sold out Ratdog gig.But Steve Kimock was the pope of this gig -- stealing the spotlight again and again, a considerable task, as...

There's some pretty interesting math that went into creating this map, so definitely check it out in its original context at musicmachinery.com. Using days analysis, the author is trying to identify an artist that is popular in one state, that doesn't get as much love elsewhere.  A few states that I had...

Dark Star Orchestra set the flux capacitor back to 1983 for the sold out crowd at Chicago's Vic Theater on Friday, but then used the time travel juice from a pair of special guests to reach back ten more years during an extended encore.The Grateful Dead's May 15th performance at Greek Theater in Berkeley served...

Guest Post by Paul Abella.  Paul is a musician, radio host, pundit and early supporter of The Barn Presents.  As a jazz guy who actively embraces and celebrates jambands like Grateful Dead and Phish, and even champions jammers on our local scene, his sensibilities are a natural fit for the site.  We...