Last year, Akron/Family went from a quartet to a three piece when former cohort Ryan Vanderhoof decided to move on — and according to singer-songwriter/drummer Dana Janssen, the departure shook he and his remaining partners, Seth Olinsky and Miles Seaton. However, they’ve not only survived the ordeal, but they’re moving…
In Rolling Stone’s list of the greatest guitarists of all-time, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry placed 48th — a ranking capable of slackening the jaw of any true rock-and-roll fan. This former Toxic Twin has penned one indelible riff after another over nearly four decades, as anyone who’s tried to play along…
Elizabeth & the Catapult is a Brooklyn-based trio playing the kind of jazz-inflected pop music that is simultaneously soothing and thought provoking. The act’s debut album, Tall Children, bears favorable comparison to the more adventurous pop songwriters of recent years like Suzanne Vega and Tori Amos. As a live band,…
In this week’s paper, we featured a short Q&A with Derek Vincent Smith of Pretty Lights, an act whose last two albums have surpassed 110,000 digital downloads. As with most of our Rough Mixes interviews, the piece only told half of the story. The Pretty Lights mastermind sat down recently…
Rodney Atkins may be a man of few words, but this quiet country singer is quickly amassing a body of hits that speaks loudly to his place as one of Nashville’s emerging power players. Since his platinum 2006 album If You’re Going Through Hell, Atkins has spun together a string…
All right, how many times have you been bopping along, minding your own business, listening to some tunes, when all of the sudden, you’ll hear a line in a song that instantly makes you do a double-take? You know, the ones where you keep rewinding the sucker, marveling aloud to…
Jet is eager to get back onto the road. More than two years after the release of the Aussie rock outfit’s last album, Shine On, the band will be stopping for a slot at the Mile High Music Festival before continuing on a world tour to promote the August release…
Averaging 200 shows every year for the past eight years, the members of Pepper have earned a reputation for being as dedicated as they are hedonistic. With five full-length albums under their belt and the development of their own record label, the Hawaiian-bred members have demonstrated an intense love for…
Forming in London in 2003, the Duke Spirit has evolved a sound that brings together elements of garage rock, soul, the blues and swirly, noisy atmospheric rock. Rather than sounding like’s trying to do too many things at once, act’s music sounds rich with textures and emotional landscapes. A perfect…
Incubus was three-fifths of the way formed back in high school in California twenty years ago. Safe to say the band had no idea how popular its music would be – the group has three platinum albums in the US, and two of those went platinum twice. Born in the…
In an industry littered with tween pop stars and Disney Channel minions, it’s refreshing to come across an artist whose work isn’t a medley of foot-tapping drivel swathed with AutoTune. Equipped with awe-inducing guitar skills and a hauntingly intense wail, 22-year-old Davy Knowles is quickly making a name for himself…
Although acts such as Tool, Widespread Panic and the Fray are clearly the main draw at this weekend’s Mile High Music Festival, it’s support bands like Band of Heathens, slated to perform on Saturday, that demonstrate the prodigious depth of the fest’s lineup. Boiling down Band of Heathens sound to…
Asher Roth, hip-hop’s new golden boy, is a whirlwind of an artist. This past 4/20 marked his first proper release, Asleep In The Bread Aisle, which includes his red-eyed, booze fueled school anthem, “I Love College,” that has been nothing short of a download phenomenon. With artists like Jazzy Phe,…
It only took about six weeks to get Snoop Dogg to answer a batch of e-mail questions for a profile advancing the July 15 Blazed and Confused Tour stop at Red Rocks co-starring Slightly Stoopid, Stephen Marley and Mickey Avalon — but it was worth it. The former Calvin Broadus…
All right, how many times have you been bopping along, minding your own business, listening to some tunes, when all of the sudden, you’ll hear a line in a song that instantly makes you do a double-take? You know, the ones where you keep rewinding the sucker, marveling aloud to…
Because of his outsized persona, Yonnas Abraham is the face that most people generally associate with the Pirate Signal. If you look over dude’s shoulder, though, there’s another cat that cuts an equally impressive figure in his own right on the ones and twos. That distinguished chap’s name? Alejandro Martinez,…
Adam Franklin is well known for his role as the singer and guitarist in Swervedriver. His work in post-Swervedriver projects such as Toshack Highway, Magnetic Morning and his solo work, however, shows a remarkable breadth of musical imagination and a wealth of sonic ideas that reveal dimensions of talent outside…
Twenty-nine years into its career, the Church recently released Untitled #23, one of its most accomplished works in an already remarkable string of albums over the last decade. We had a chance to have a candid conversation about the band’s music, the true meaning of artistic significance and its dazzling…
The Suffocation piece running in this week’s paper was culled from Phil Freeman’s recent conversation with Terrance Hobbs of Suffocation. As with many of our other Rough Mixes features, there’s far more to the story of this stalwart New York-based death metal band than there was space. As such, after…
Doug Martsch, whose band, Built to Spill, headlines this year’s Westword Music Showcase on June 12 (click here for more details), is a rarity — a indie-rock musician who signed to a major label in the mid-’90s who’s still inked to the same imprint today. He’s also a rare, if…
Early on in its career, Camera Obscura endured endless comparisons to revered fellow Glaswegians Belle & Sebastian. At this point, however, any comparison threatens to make the latter look bad: Among scholars of the heartache and growing pains of bookish, precocious youth, Stuart Murdoch’s got nothing on Camera Obscura vocalist/guitarist…
In this week’s issue, we’re running a short profile on Tim Pourbaix in Rough Mixes, based on a lengthy interview Eryc Eyl conducted with Pourbaix. The singer-songwriter had much more to say than could fit into that smaller piece. Subsequently, we’ve opted to allow Pourbaix to tell his story –…
