Blog

True to their name, North Carolina’s Southern Culture on the Skids offers an affectionate parody of local white-trash trailer-park culture, matching their skewed outlook with a wild, careening brand of rock & roll. SCOTS’ music is a quintessentially Southern-fried amalgam of rockabilly, boogie, country, blues, swamp pop, and chitlin circuit R&B, plus a liberal dose […]

After disbanding the Police at the peak of their popularity in 1984, Sting quickly established himself as a viable solo artist, one obsessed with expanding the boundaries of pop music. Sting incorporated heavy elements of jazz, classical, and worldbeat into his music, writing lyrics that were literate and self-consciously meaningful, and he was never afraid […]

Singer/songwriter Todd Snider first garnered attention for his timely alt-rock satire “Talkin’ Seattle Grunge Rock Blues,” a folk-rock song that struck a chord with younger people fed up with angry alternative rock bands, and at the same time, appealed to aging rockers who grew up with the folk revival of the 1960s. Snider was born […]

After touring in support of their 1993 masterpiece, Anodyne, the seminal alternative country band Uncle Tupelo split up over long-simmering creative differences between co-leaders Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy. Tweedy recruited much of the band to form Wilco, while Farrar teamed up with original Tupelo drummer Mike Heidorn to form Son Volt, the more tradition-minded […]

Songwriter and guitarist, Britt Daniel and drummer, Jim Eno lead another little ol’ (four-piece) band from Texas by the name of Spoon. Austin, the birthplace of awesome, is their hometown. In 1993 the two decided to take the name of the hit song “Spoon” by the German art band Can. You remember that, don’t you? […]

Guitarist and southern California native, Chris Shiflett has established himself as a prominent sideman in the alt/punk world. When Shiflett was 11, he started learning how to play the guitar. He joined his first band by the time he reached the age of 14. Shiflett began his career as a member of the Santa Barbara glam […]

Kenny Wayne Shepherd (born Kenny Wayne Brobst, 1977) and his group exploded on the scene in the mid-’90s and garnered huge amounts of radio airplay on commercial radio, which historically has not been a solid home for blues and blues-rock music, with the exception of Stevie Ray Vaughan in the mid-’80s. Shepherd is a Louisiana-born guitarist, […]

Hard rock bands can come from any city. Stone Sour is one American heavy metal band formed in Des Moines, Iowa in 1992, performing for five years, before disbanding in 1997. They reunited in 2000 and since 2006, the group has consisted of Corey Taylor (lead vocals, guitar), Josh Rand (guitar) and Roy Mayorga (drums). […]

San Diego, California contributed its rock and roll best, Stone Temple Pilots, or as fans sometimes say, “STP.” The band’s original lineup consisted of Scott Weiland (lead vocals), brothers Dean (guitar) and Robert DeLeo (bass, backing vocals), and Eric Kretz (drums). Since the band’s formation in 1986, its line-up remained unchanged until the firing of […]

A certain New Jersey fan of the Beatles received his first guitar from his mother and had a feeling his bus driver dad worked really hard to provide for him and his two sisters as well. Welcome to the Springsteen family. Bruce Springsteen is probably best known for his album Born in the U.S.A. (1984), […]