My end of the year extravaganza is called Favorites of 2015 because I just don’t listen to enough new music through the year to warrant calling it a Best Of ...

When last we saw the boys of Barnstar!, they were dressed as a band of pirates riding the high seas of Boston Harbor and performing to a rowdy crowd aboard a...

I won’t listen to Spotify. In fact, I am personally boycotting it. I’m sure the music streaming executives are quaking in their collective boots over my deci...

Here in the New England, we have no Bonnaroo, no Coachella, no Lollapalooza, no New Orleans Jazz Festival: summer music extravaganzas with lineups filled wit...

Hopefully, people will read this and won’t think, “wow, this guy is old and cranky.” That is not true – at least the second part. It just happens that in a f...

In praise of the underappreciated Joan Osborne I recently went to see a band called Trigger Hippy at a concert hall in Boston. As a band, they are not well k...

Returning to the scene of the Dead 30 years later I went back with some misgivings – no Jerry Garcia will do that to even the most ardent of Deadheads. I’d s...

“At the request of Matt and Zooey, we ask that people not use their cell phones to take pictures and video, but instead enjoy the show they have put together...

Not long ago I wrote of my quest to find a new sound, to get outside the now-overcrowded genre of “Americana” – acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle. Whi...

Michelle Shocked changed my musical life forever – and for that I’ll be forever grateful. But I believe that the joy she gave me will also never return. When...

A recent story in the Washington Post brought to light that Bruce Springsteen was using a teleprompter on stage during his recent tour as well as his last on...

I recently came across a new posting on Wolfgang’s Vault of an old recording of a Miles Davis concert from 1970 at Fillmore West in San Francisco. The concer...

In our youth we spent some time doing the Grateful Dead thing. Not the full-on, traveling show to show across the country, but we did strike out from time to...

You knew this was coming. Paste magazine, which had struggled for some time from lack of advertising revenue, is dead… or at least the print edition is. Earl...

I’m not a big TV watcher. Luckily, “Mad Men” is on a station I get and I can’t wait for it to resume this summer. I enjoy a couple cop shows network TV, but ...

Wow! I just learned that I won the contest to name Josh Ritter’s band! From now on, they will be known as Josh Ritter and the Royal City Band. That’s totally...

There are a zillion posts and articles out there expounding on the best this and that of the decade, and personally I don’t give two wits about most of them....

Hanukkah has come and gone. There are so many great thing about this family celebration — the food, the songs (including the not-quite traditional “Mule Trai...

My search for great music goes far and wide, and recently we found our way to a website out of Oregon called opb.org. I’m not sure what it stands for but it’...

Some day soon I have to visit Nashville and Memphis… but until then Sun Studios in Memphis — the home of Elvis and Stax and a boatload of music history — has...