The annual winter time dance music event known as Candyland may officially be the South Florida rave that wouldn’t die. This year’s edition marks its stunning 16th, with the party surviving some very lean years in the underground electronic dance music scene. As it’s traveled to different locations across Miami-Dade,…
Palm Beach County is of late awash in acts that marry roots music styles with contemporary ones, usually punk. But if you listen closely to the Killbillies, from West Palm Beach, you’ll notice a different kind of twang — a British one! The duo is a marriage of sensibilities from…
Four-piece Highlonesome originally formed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but an obsession with vintage Americana drove the band to real mountain territory: Tennessee. Now based in Murfreesboro, the group, led by frontman and songwriter Noah T., specializes in pure crying-into-beer fare. Think lots of mournful crooning paired with banjo and the occasional…
The annual wintertime dance music event known as Candyland may officially be the South Florida rave that wouldn’t die. This year’s edition marks its stunning 16th, with the party surviving some very lean years in the underground electronic dance music scene. As it has traveled to different locations across Miami-Dade,…
West Palm Beach foursome Paleo Eskimo looks barely old enough to get into the venues the band has played, and recorded material is thin on the ground. Still, on the strength of just a handful of shows and tracks floating around the internet, the group has already scored fans in…
The name of the Nashville duo the LoCash Cowboys is not some clever combination or the members’ names. Rather, it’s a shortened manifesto of everything the band stands for. The group’s straight-ahead country party anthems celebrate what they’ve dubbed the “LoCash lifestyle” — in other words, joy from the free…
Is the Midwest the new locus of underground hip-hop? Minnesota’s Twin Cities have boasted a long tradition of a scene focused on wordplay-heavy lyricism absent of rap’s usual macho swagger. These days, though, the area seems to be sprouting even more artists and labels pushing the genre edges of what…
Brian PosehnWith Matt Z., Daniel Reskin, and MasticatorThursday, December 8, 2011Culture Room, Fort LauderdaleBetter Than: A night at your local open mic.If toiling away as an independent band on the mid-size club circuit seems thankless, just think — there are other forms of entertainment that are even more so. Independent…
Proving that the jam scene continues to be impossible to pigeonhole musically, Jacksonville seven-piece Saltwater Grass skips across nearly a dozen genres just from song to song. While some tracks like “Build It Up” are straightforward, almost blues-rock ditties, others wander into unpredictable territory. Fan favorite “We Use the Water”…
In the mid-’90s, when Kentucky hip-hop group Nappy Roots first emerged, its unabashed, Southern-fried sound seemed downright weird in comparison to the East Coast boom-bap that ruled rap circles. And if anyone missed the fact that this group was proud of its country roots, there was the fact that its…
With a last name like Allman, this son of the famous Gregg had almost impossible musical shoes to fill. What’s more, Devon chose to ply his guitar trade in more or less the same genre — blues rock — as his dad. Luckily, Devon possesses pretty good chops as both…
As one of America’s great troubadours, Paul Simon has hardly slowed down through his 60s and now 70s. This past April, he released So Beautiful or So What, the 11th entry in his solo discography. (That doesn’t count, of course, his work with Simon & Garfunkel or any number of…
Some 33 years after the group formed, L.A.-based hard rock act Dokken is still rockin’. In the heady peak days of the Sunset Strip scene, the group stood out thanks to frontman Don Dokken’s inimitable vibrating wail. It soared best over the kinds of songs the group did best: fist-pumping…
Over the past six years, the Devil Wears Prada has risen above one of the more unfortunate (and possibly copyright-infringing) names in heavy music to become one of the most popular and even respected acts on the metalcore scene. Despite early Christian leanings, the Dayton, Ohio, sextet has levitated out…
Is there a Southern-rock revival afoot in the mainstream? The success of acts like the Zac Brown Band points to yes. That group’s bridging of the market gaps between the rock and country crowds has paved the way for similarly swampy acts, among them close pals Blackberry Smoke. The Atlanta-based…
Confusing as it may be to those who would write the band off as a late ’90s punch line, 311 has survived — even thrived — in the years since breakthrough singles “Down” and company. Sure, there have been moments when the Omaha group enjoyed the kind of Billboard-counted success…
Despite the teenage/very early 20s circles in which they are most popular, the San Diego foursome Pierce the Veil actually boasts a history dating back to the late ’90s. It was then that the brothers Fuentes — lead vocalist/guitarist Vic and drummer Mike — began the first iteration of the…
Skip the misleading name: This group is neither from any Manchester (England, New Hampshire, or elsewhere) nor particularly large or orchestral. However, this Atlanta-based five-piece does manage to write songs that sound intimate and wide-sweeping. Led by 20-something Andy Hall, the group specializes in the kind of almost painfully earnest…
Though he’s now 63 years old and an established legend in the jazz world, for much of his career, Paquito d’Rivera was known as a wünkerkind. As a child in Cuba, he picked up a love of wind instruments from his father, saxophonist and conductor Tito Rivera, and by 5…
Before pop-punk entered its current incarnation, usually a radio-ready, overly compressed form of fast songs written by barely legals nostalgic for lives they never lived, there were the Queers. The Queers, of course, were often reminiscent for lives they never lived. During the band’s real peak in the early to…
There are about a million current underground rock microscenes that, at one point, shared an evolutionary branch way back in punk rock. Trends in them are born, copied, and then summarily killed seemingly before anyone can even blog on Tumblr about them. Yet somehow, the national glossy Alternative Press remains…
While many heavy bands dubbed “progressive metal” have been forced to toil on the fringes of the rock world at large, Queensrÿche is one of the few acts to come out of that scene and into mainstream success. That’s because, despite any early noodly leanings during its beginning in the…
