As Taylor Swift’s tourmates, finding Billboard success and as the winners of multiple Gospel Music Association Dove Awards, NEEDTOBREATHE make for quite the musical intersection. With a driving blend of faith-infused rock, the South Carolinian trio of bassist Seth Bolt, vocalist Bear Rinehart and guitarist Bo Rinehart have garnered fans…
Founded 17 years ago in Morris Fields, New Jersey, genre-twisting metal act The Dillinger Escape Plan was simply made to disrupt. Unimpressed with a bland metal scene and without a vehicle to exercise his intentionally dissonant and defiant songwriting style, guitarist Ben Weinman formed the band that would go on…
It’s a beautiful thing when the pieces fall into place. For Lizzy Plapinger and Max Hershenow, the creative forces behind MS MR, the New York-based synth-pop duo currently supporting Grouplove on a nationwide tour, serendipity was strong at work during the band’s inception. While studying at Vassar College, Plapinger having…
Foster the People Marquee Theatre 4/15/14 It’s official: Foster the People is now, well, for the people. Gone are the days of the band’s crowds being elitist and hip, and now we enter the age when 40-somethings know more words to Foster the People songs than you do. This is…
It is every artist’s goal to be the next new thing — clichéd as it is, any creative will eventually admit this desire. Few can make one radical thing while even fewer continue to deliver intriguing material. Phantogram, the electronic psych-pop duo from upstate New York, fall into the latter…
Joe Diffie, Tyler Farr, Colt Ford, Jason Aldean Country Thunder 2014 4/13/14 As Country Thunder closes out, the tried and true aficionados remain: They’re the groups who’ve done this before, who have more alcoholic stamina than all your friends combined, who will wake up at 5 a.m. on Monday morning…
Mark Chesnutt, Craig Morgan, Miranda Lambert Country Thunder 2014 4/12/14 By day three of Country Thunder, most attendees are in one of two states: You’re either cripplingly hungover and sunburnt, acting as brothers in spirit with those souls at Coachella, or you’ve been saving yourself for the biggest two days…
Will Wiesenfeld, if nothing else, is a musician who is acutely aware of many things. Specifically, Wiesenfeld knows who he is: Focused on the concept ahead of him, he’s unyielding to anyone’s artistic input but a select few individuals, he has produced some of the most buzzed-about electronic pop records…
Country music is all about the storyline, and the path of least resistance, lyrically speaking, often makes for the best tales-turned-songs. Easton Corbin, the Floridian behind hits like “All Over The Road” and “A Little More Country Than That,” is a man familiar with this model, using it to his…
Craig Morgan, apart from stopping every other minute to either express gratitude or share a laugh, can call to mind the archetype of the male country star — years in the game, a rack of number one hits, a massive song in current rotation. Morgan doesn’t run by standards, though:…
Fresh country acts are typically more concerned with gaining staying power, Twitter followers or radio spins above all else. For Thompson Square, the Nashville-based husband and wife duo composed of Shawna and Keifer Thompson, their first intention was something a hell of a lot more admirable: They immediately set out…
Summers in Northern Arizona are some kind of magical. I spent my childhood helping my dad load our battered red farm truck up with alfalfa bails, unloading them under building monsoon clouds, racing from the barn to the house as the rain fell, hay hooks in hand. As idyllic a…
In an era of canned, saccharine pop country that’s characterized by love songs and songs of love lost, there are few musicians that can make a statement quite as well as Miranda Lambert does. The Texas native has morphed from reality show contestant into superstar over the last decade, releasing…
You may know Cassadee Pope in one of three incarnations: There’s the former frontwoman of Warped Tour pop-punk outfit Hey Monday, the winner of NBC sing-off show “The Voice,” or the country act with a gigantic range and a penchant for breaking records only previously set by one Ms. Taylor…
A ghost from my high school years visited me this week. It spoke to me over the radio on a sudden trip home, blasting from tinny speakers in a random storefront. Staying purposefully out of touch with Top 20 radio, especially the songs that get spun in my hometown, I…
Disco Biscuits, Slightly Stoopid, Allen Stone, Dispatch, Black Bottom Lighters, and More McDowell Mountain Music Festival 2014 3/29/14 Saturday proved to be the day for jam bands galore at McDowell Mountain Music Festival, offering up what was arguably the most cohesive and sensible lineup of any of its three-day run…
Atypicality goes one of the two ways in the music industry: Either you’re left of center enough to fail or left of center enough to resonate with listeners. In the case of Allen Stone, the latter rang true. For the 26-year-old Northwest soul-leaning sensation, picking an alternative path was the…
Few bands remain as succinctly Californian and categorically challenging as San Diego’s Slightly Stoopid. Signed to the late Bradley Nowell’s Skunk Records in 1995, they’re an act that’s been a signed Golden State institution for almost 20 years, carving out their niche by pulling together a variety of genres into…
There are few acts like G. Love & Special Sauce, the genre-bridging Philadelphia alt-hip-hop trio that’s been at it for two decades now, and there are even fewer frontmen quite like Garrett Dutton. Best known for his rapping approach within G. Love & Special Sauce, Dutson isn’t afraid to display…
Without reinvention, there would be nothing new worth being inspired by. For Snake! Snake! Snakes!, an alteration came with the coming and going of band members and a new option to simplify the band’s entire approach. At its writing core is bassist Chris Sanchez, drummer David Cooper, and guitarist/vocalist Jon…
American dance music, folk act, jam band — however you label them, Donna the Buffalo have been defying traditional classification while coming from a traditional background. Formed by vocalists/multi-instrumentalists Tara Nevins and Jeb Puryear in 1989, the New York-based band has amassed a cult following, culled from their rigorous touring…
Justin Moody, Corey R-J, A Cloud For Climbing, & Old Hours Axiom 3/22/14 Peoria is not the first suburb that comes to mind when Phoenicians think live music — hell, it’s not even likely to be the fourth or fifth suburb for that matter. However, nestled behind a string of…
