BY MIKE METTLER — AUGUST 26, 2015
It’s hard to believe, but the eternally youthful blues maestro Robert Cray is celebrating five decades of plying his craft with the imminent release of 4 Nights of 40 Years Live (Provogue) in various formats, including Blu-ray + 2 CDs, DVD + 2 CDs, and LP + digital […]
BY MIKE METTLER — AUGUST 13, 2015
In a band of equals, some can appear to be more equal than others. “I always like to have the first word and the last word on albums,” laughs keyboardist Tony Banks, one of the main songwriters in Genesis. Banks has always felt making an impression right as […]
BY MIKE METTLER — AUGUST 2, 2015
When the Irish band U2 began work on their fifth album in 1986, they had one destination in mind to capture the accompanying visual: the American West as personified by the Coachella Valley in Southern California. “We wanted to find places where nature and civilization met. The whole […]
BY MIKE METTLER — JULY 29, 2015
Dave Grohl is often acknowledged as being the nicest, coolest/cheeriest guy in rock & roll, and while I can indeed confirm Messr. Grohl is (to use a technical term) an absolute mensch amongst mensches, I also happen to think Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen could give Dave a run for […]
BY MIKE METTLER — JULY 15, 2015
Leave it to Dave Edmunds to always want to take things a little bit left of center. “I’ve never liked listening to albums, and I’ve never liked making them,” admits the Welsh-born guitarist and producer known for his modern rockabilly sensibilities (see Rockpile’s Seconds of Pleasure and solo hits like […]
BY MIKE METTLER — JUNE 25, 2015
Jac Holzman, the founder of Elektra Records, signed The Doors after seeing them play four consecutive nights as the Whisky a Go Go house band in Los Angeles in 1966. He went back on the second night out of deference to Arthur Lee of Love, a band that was already […]
BY MIKE METTLER — JUNE 12, 2015
Graham Parker has a surefire way of ensuring his longtime backing band The Rumour understands exactly how to execute the arrangements of his new songs: “You have to kick them a lot, very hard!” he says with a devilish laugh. He is, of course, joking (I think). Parker and […]
BY MIKE METTLER — MAY 28, 2015
For musicians of a certain era, it was either The Beatles, Elvis, or the blues that inspired them to start making their own music. For singer/songwriter Joan Armatrading, all it took was the furniture in her house. “This is what I was born to do,” says Armatrading, who’s […]
BY MIKE METTLER — MAY 13, 2015
How does he do it? How does the eternal Beach Boy Brian Wilson keep composing all-new harmonically gorgeous and sonically seductive pocket symphonies (as he likes to call them), 50-plus years into his career? The answer, he says, is quite simple: “I know in my head — in […]
BY MIKE METTLER — APRIL 29, 2015
Tori Amos has always been an artist who knows what she wants, and knows how to get it. “Music was always first,” she says. “The records you hear, whether you like them or not, you can blame me for, because I was fighting all the time that the […]
