Founded in 1971 as the California High School Jazz Competition and re-named the Next Generation Jazz Festival in 2004, this event has become o…

Béla Fleck has toured just about every corner of the world for 35 years or so. On top of his solo records, an eclectic mix of various side pro…

Lyle Lovett was still in college when he first heard John Hiatt perform. Hiatt’s band backed guitar guru Ry Cooder during a show in 1981 at th…

From the Flaming Lips to Bruce Springsteen.

The sex, drugs, booze and other currencies of the rock and roll trade, often defined by excess and inhibition, were a little much for 15-year-…

Ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro’s YouTube channel can keep you engaged for hours, easy. Whether it’s the Hawaiian native’s spot-on uke inter…

Thanks to performances that included a giddyup gypsy jazz take on western swing from Hot Club of Cowtown, True West’s “Best Living Western Sol…

Ever since Boz Scaggs first emerged riding shotgun as Steve Miller’s lead singer for two albums in the late ’60s, it seemed only a matter of t…

The other day, singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter had a conversation with early rock and roll/R&B pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Only…

Iris DeMent’s biographical gem, “If That Ain’t Love,” is a blue-collar, dreary-sky piano ballad: “My dad worked at the Movieland Wax Museum,” …