There have been moments when Frightened Rabbit drummer Grant Hutchinson was scared for his brother. The words that vocalist and guitarist Scott Hutchinson wrote for the band’s second album, The Midnight Organ Fight, shocked him. “It was terrifying to listen to some of those lyrics,” Grant Hutchinson recalls in his…

When Jack Tatum bought a car after relocating to Los Angeles, he needed some music to accompany his drives through the smoggy metropolis’ traffic. Without an AUX outlet in his older car, he discovered an old CD booklet filled with unmarked CD-Rs at his parents’ house and started to listen…

Just as the phone conversation between myself and Stephen McBean, leader of the Vancouver, British Columbia band Black Mountain, is warming up, it gets cut short. The quintet’s van is being pulled over by California Highway Patrol. He calls me back 20 minutes later and assures me everything is okay…

Thao Nguyen, the singer-songwriter behind the group Thao & The Get Down Stay Down, tells me that I need to give the hit Comedy Central show Broad City another chance. I admit to her I haven’t picked up on the vibe of the show yet. “You got to dig in…

Calling Holy Holy merely a David Bowie cover band would be an insult. The project had Bowie’s seal of approval. The group — dare we call it a supergroup, as it includes bassist longtime Bowie producer Tony Visconti and and Spiders From Mars drummer Woody Woodmansey — sold out venues…

Darrin Robertson and Jim Saccoman are looking at me suspiciously. The two local musicians thought a mutual acquaintance of ours had put me up to this interview, and asked me how I encountered their self-described “recording project” Sha-Pink, which has been creating music locally for more than 30 years. “We’re…

Dan Boeckner, currently touring with his New Wave synth-pop trio Operators, is a member of three indie  bands. Does he ever worry that he’s not dedicating enough time to each project? “I do constantly worry that I should be writing something,” he says. “That worry is like gas in the…

You may not know this, but Elvis Costello has a wicked sense of humor. While the prolific musician may be better known for his rancorous songs like the contentious “Tramp The Dirt Down,” which famously stated he would dance on the grave of then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he’s long…

Viva PHX’s third edition once again ignited downtown Phoenix last weekend, proving for just one night that under the right circumstances Phoenicians will brave the great outdoors on their quest for excellent music. The festival operates by setting out a beacon for bands touring on their way to South By…

Why would Bruce Springsteen want to revisit the over 35-year-old album The River? I asked myself the above question as the New Jersey-based singer-songwriter, accompanied by his incomparable E Street Band, played the 20 songs on the breakthrough double album in chronological order to a sold-out crowd at Talking Stick…

Paul Meany, the lead singer of MUTEMATH, seemed almost over-prepared to talk about the video for the band’s latest single “Monument.” The emotional, short documentary-style film, which has gone viral with the help of Ellen DeGeneres, features Charles “LaLa” Evans. He built a shrine to his widow, to whom he…

The Waste Management Phoenix Open is billed as the “People’s Open,” but how do you get the Old Town crowd to the green? You book the w hat many consider the “world’s greatest DJ” to spin on a Saturday night: the Dutch record producer Tiësto. As someone who enjoys and…

Jane Lynch should have a show on NPR. After seeing her performance “See Jane Sing!” at the Virginia G. Piper Theatre at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, I felt like I saw the jazz equivalent of A Prairie Home Companion with one gay joke and some cussing thrown…

Judith Hill sure knows how to turn a phrase. Her debut album, Back in Time, begins with a track that harks back to the ’70s-era soul albums of Stevie Wonder. With the line “Might as well be famous/Since I ain’t gonna be white,” “As Trains Go  By” recalls a time…

Chris Wolstenholme, the bassist of Muse, has stated on the record that contributing to three of the soundtracks for the Twilight film series was like “selling your soul.” For the modern progressive rock trio, the devil comes in the form of sparkly teenage vampires with good hair. Yet the band…

Troy Andrews, better known as Trombone Shorty, wa on a mission to give rock fans a taste of his eclectic mix of jazz, funk, and hip-hop. But his European tour opening for the Foo Fighters was sadly cut short due to the recent attacks in Paris. He met Dave Grohl…