Category Archives: Music

Mixed amid the sheer exhilaration of an Ex Hex gig at the 930 Club is the added pride of a hometown date. The D.C. rockers led by Mary Timony, once of Helium, Wild Flag and Autoclave, quite rightfully nearly sold out the place, but I’m wondering why the trio isn’t selling out everywhere they go. [...]

Maren Morris paused a couple times in her splashy headlining show at The Anthem in D.C. to take it all in. It was her largest sellout to date, with 6,000 people, and just about everybody in the young, largely female crowd knew every lyric of her new album, which she only released a couple months [...]

Jakob Dylan grew up amid his own small-town musical crossroads — Woodstock — but the subject of his new documentary is the one that flourished on the other side of the country in Los Angeles’ bohemian Laurel Canyon in the late 1960s. An added treat to his bringing the film to festivals ahead of its [...]

Age is only helping Robyn Hitchcock settle into his role as wizened surrealist singer and mystic storyteller. More than 45 years after starting his first band, the founder of the Soft Boys who went on to fronting the Egyptians and a long, accomplished solo career is a unique troubadour — a singer who can create [...]

Mott the Hoople always seemed the kind of band that would implode at any moment, and such was the case when they pulled into New York in the middle of their 1974 U.S. tour, becoming the first rock band to play a week on Broadway. That achievement didn’t pay off for the band (any more [...]

Nick Lowe is calling his tour with Los Straightjackets the Quality Rock & Roll Revue and it’s no idle boast. The cool, memorable songs of Lowe with his smooth, elder statesman air, combined with the funhouse snarl of the twangin’ Straightjackets, in their Mexican wrestling masks and goofy stage presence, makes for pretty well-balanced entertainment. [...]

It was billed as a living room concert, and the entire Mark Eitzel tour dubbed “Living room Tsunami” so it was a little bit surprising when the secret D.C. area location, once payment was made, turned out to be an Irish bar in Wheaton, Md. It could have been another barroom show except that the [...]

Todd Snider walks on stage in goofy hat, trusty guitar, barefoot but also with his equally raggedy dog, Cowboy Jim, who promptly lies down and listens to these songs and stories one more time. “It don’t get folkier than bringing your @#%ing  dog!” Snider declares to the appreciative audience at the Birchmere Music Hall and [...]

The poet and writer Chris Desjardins created the Flesh Eaters in the heyday of L.A. punk scene of the late 1970s, enlisting many of his friends to be among the revolving roster in the band over a handful of albums. The most potent lineup was the one in 1981 that produced the band’s strongest album [...]