Bios and stories about the artists we feature
One of my favorite pastimes is reading books and articles about drummers. Of particular interest to me are three basics bits of information: 1) How old were they when they became obsessed with drumming, 2) When and how did they acquire their first proper drum kit, and 3) What path did they follow before […]
The band that could be the next Beatles. This was never a good way for the press to introduce a band to the world. It has happened many times over, but it has never quite worked out that way. The pop band The Cyrcle were introduced on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand as “the band that […]
Near the end of my time with the band Knockdown, Lee the bass player loaned me a copy of an album called Medusa by an English band called Trapeze. He mentioned something about wanting to learn some of their songs, but a few months later, we played our last gigs before Ray the guitar […]
Okay, not so much funny, but maybe ‘funny’ as in ‘annoying’ – sometime last broadcast year, our UStream video disappeared. It took a lot of time (and some help from our helpful techie friends at the ISD in Hancock) to find out that the free service had been dropped (would it have hurt to actually […]
We last visited Joe Bonamassa-land after the release of his 2016 album Blues of Desperation (FTV: Joe’s Blues 5-4-2016). At that time, we found Bonamassa riding the crest of a wave of creativity that saw him releasing multiple live CD/DVD packages of his own work (Live at Royale Albert Hall and Live at Radio City […]
Bruce Iglauer isn’t exactly a household name. If one isn’t a blues music fan, Alligator Records probably won’t ring many bells either. During the past couple of years, there has been a profound transition in the music business and Alligator Records is, by Iglauer’s estimation, lucky to still be hanging around at all, let […]
One does not find themselves in a traffic jam in Ontonagon County very often, but there were two that occured on Day 2 of the 14th Annual Porcupine Mountain Music Festival. I got caught up in the first one trying to cross the Ontonagon River bridge on the way to the festival. The line up […]
The 14th Annual Porcupine Mountain Music Festival took place in late August of 2018, making this the 13th year that I have volunteered at the festival. In the early days, a typical four hour shift involved a little emcee work and manning the sound board at a couple of workshops. By the fourth year, emceeing […]
Here are three things I would not have normally associated with drummer Kenney Jones: the banjo, polo, or his donning an apron as a greengrocer. The trick here is knowing exactly how these things fit into what would become a far reaching career playing the drums for some iconic bands stretching from the 1960s to […]
My poor mother must have had worried what exactly we were up to. The Twig decided to learn Hoyt Axton’s song The Pusher off the eponymous first album by Steppenwolf. With us practicing in the basement at our normal volume (loud), there is no possible way she could have missed Mike singing the chorus. […]