Barrel of Fun

Given summer’s burning heat, there’s always room for another event based on beer consumption. The latest addition to the brew circuit is the Real, Wild, and Woody Beer Festival. Presented by the Arizona Craft Brewers Guild as a “more intimate” offshoot of the annual Strong Beer Festival, the focus here…

Blowin’ in the Wind

There’s a reason the Weather Channel is the most watched channel (true!): People are fascinated by weather. There’s no denying the scary, heart-racing thrill of watching tornadoes or hurricanes along their destructive paths. Of course, that’s on TV. Closer to home come storms of a different nature, which is the…

The Darkness and Light in Thus Owls

Thus Owls’ is the result of the marriage of two people, but also the two countries they hail from. Husband and wife team of Simon and Erika Angell, from Canada and Sweden, respectively, each forged careers — he on guitar, she as a vocalist — that would one day intersect…

Music Feature: Ice-T and Body Count

Ice-T admitted to “mailing it in” for his band Body Count’s 2006 album Murder 4 Hire. The rapper was knee-deep in being a full-time actor at the time and didn’t have the time or energy to give it his all, especially in the wake of the death of founding member…

Body Count Rising for Ice-T

It’s been slightly more than eight years since Body Count’s last speed/thrash metal assault on the world’s eardrums. The lengthy delay doesn’t come from a lack of desire, but rather the day job that keeps founder and frontman Ice-T out of the recording studio and on the production set. “I’ve…

Top of the Lake

Some events get better with age, including the Tempe Town Lake Festival featuring Tempe’s 63rd annual fireworks display over Tempe Town Lake on July 4. Tempe’s fireworks, shot from the Mill Street Bridge, may not be the prettiest or biggest in the valley on this evening, but it is hard…

The World Meets the Midwest in PHOX’s Music

When reached by phone, Matt Holmen immediately tells Up on the Sun that he’s super busy. “I’m here for 36 hours. I’m trying to put my life in a box,” he says. The PHOX guitarist is in his adopted hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, gearing up for the band’s biggest tour…

Brick By Brick

Thanks to a cutesy movie currently in favor with most young kids—Legos are again all the rage among the pre-teen set. However, as “Build! Toy Brick Art” an ongoing exhibit (through September 28) at the Heard Museum reveals, Legos are hardly child’s play anymore. The display includes dozens of works…

What Is Life?

They say life is a cabaret, my friend, but in this modern time, is that really the case? Really, life is a rave, my tripping buddy; or a death metal concert, my headbanger; or wasted hours on Facebook, my followers. Yet, for some, it seems the idea of a cabaret…

Veteran Songwriter Bruce Cockburn Fires Vocal Rockets

Bruce Cockburn has to be the most hot-cold songwriter operating today. On one hand, there are songs about sunrises, horses running across golden plains, the mysteries of life, and spiritual awakening. And on the other, Cockburn fires off songs about narco-politics, human rights, religious flaws, and environmental degradation, offering such…

Pinterest

An ability to play an instrument doesn’t mean you can bowl. Still, a bevy of local musicians will be doing just that at the fourth “somewhat annual” Phoenix Independents Bowl bowling tournament hosted by Psyko Steve Presents’ Steve Chilton, who created the event upon discovering how few local artists actually…

Jessica Lea Mayfield Is All-In With Music

Don’t let the name fool you. Or the bluegrass pedigree developed playing in the traveling band that was her family. No, Jessica Lea Mayfield is an out and out rocker, owing as much to the Foo Fighters and Stone Temple Pilots as she does Bill Monroe. While her first two…

Cover the Crescent @ Crescent Ballroom

You can blame Phish, but covering another band’s album in its entirety has become a cool and popular thing to do. Three Phoenix acts break from their normal routines in a benefit concert for the Lupus Foundation of Southern Arizona. Phoenix Afrobeat Orchestra will perform Portishead’s Dummy, There Is Danger…

Tim Time

Looking at Tim Allen is enough to make one laugh. It’s easy to see why he was picked to portray a dog in The Shaggy Dog and Santa in The Santa Clause film series. Though also the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story series, Home Improvement’s main man,…

Q&A: Stoner Rock Overlords Fu Manchu

“Stoner rock” has yet to gain entry in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, but few bands define the genre better than Fu Manchu. Yet, like so many genres, the name hardly fits the sound. Pink Floyd is stoner rock, while Fu Manchu storms in all heavy, sludgy, psychedelic and fuzzy with plenty…

Inside Brit Floyd, The Ambitious Pink Floyd Cover Band

Will the real Pink Floyd please stand up? Actually, the real one has decided to sit it out for the foreseeable future, but in its place stands the live spectacle known as Brit Floyd, perhaps the closest thing to the real McCoy. With a syncopated psychedelic light show complete with…

Maceo Parker @ Musical Instrument Museum

Saxophonist Maceo Parker calls his band “the tightest little funk orchestra on Earth.” It should be. Parker was schooled in tightness as the bandleader for James Brown in the 1960s. Brown was notorious for his demanding ways, but Parker, despite not being a hard-ass, still knows exactly how to keep…

Buffalo Killers Channel the Greats for Heavy Reverie

Buffalo Killers, at the very least, seem to hail from another time, which makes them perfect for right now. This four piece Ohio-based band adheres to that old balls-to-the-wall rock and roll credo when music was all about style and substance as well as simply piling on the heavy…

Prickly Pair

Every year someone hugs a cactus for all the wrong reasons. A Tucson man last year was “hugged” to death by a falling saguaro, and a cyclist was observed dutifully removing spines from his rear after a missed corner landed him in prickly hell. But there’s another kind of “Cactus…