Music

How do you know you’ve “made it” in the music business? “When you’ve had a good show, you feel good, and everyone has had a good time,” says Rob Bell, lead vocalist for area band Roxschool. Using that as its measure, the group “made it” years ago and continues to do so two or three […]

So you want to be in a rock & roll band? Plan on spending lots of time in a van traversing the continent. Park, Springfield’s up-and-coming modern rock group, has logged about 60,000 miles in the last year, playing some 100-plus shows in 34 states, in an attempt to spark interest in their music. The […]

Quick! What do you get when you unite a college professor, a record label owner, a molecular geneticist, and a veteran punk rock record producer? You get pop punk legends Squirtgun! For the last decade, this Lafayette, Ind.-based outfit has been setting the standard for composing songs laden with infectious guitar riffs, sweet harmonies, and […]

In 1998, Champaign-based Amasong, a chorus consisting of only lesbians and feminists, won a Gay and Lesbian Music Association award — a GLAMMY — for its song, “The Water is Sweet Over Here.” For the gay and lesbian community, GLAMMYs are nearly as good as GRAMMYs. Listening to Amasong sing, a GRAMMY isn’t out of […]

Broken Grass and Tony Furtado and the American Gypsies will hoot and holler their way into the Capital City this Saturday, with a “Harvest Hoedown” that promises a roaring night of real music for anyone who loves live picking. Broken Grass came together in Carbondale, Ill., as a bluegrass band with a heavily subversive musical […]

The Springfield Classical Guitar Society launches its 2003-2004 season on Saturday with a performance by Petar Kodzas, a native of Yugoslavia. Kodzas’s appearance offers a unique opportunity to see a guitar virtuoso whose training derives from a distinctly Eastern European tradition, says Russel Brazzel, society president. “He is a mature player with a friendly, younger […]

Huelyn Duvall is not a household name, but almost everyone has probably heard him shout “Tequila” at the end of the famed instrumental song by the Champs. At the time of the seemingly inconsequential holler, Duvall was signed, recorded, and poised to be a rockabilly star on his own. As chance would have it, “Tequila” […]

“She is almost too good to be true,” says The Washington Post of mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves. “A vital artist, a beautiful woman, a regal presence,” the newspaper gushed. There are opera singers and opera stars. Then there’s Graves. How many opera figures have their own perfume and jewelry lines? Graves is performing at the University […]

John Sluzalis loves swing music. The drummer still listens to recordings by Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie, and over the years he’s even organized his own big bands. But Sluzalis was forced to abandon his last group when Club on Broadway closed in 2002. Then this summer Sluzalis called up trumpter Dick Garretson. […]

Hark, is that the sound of the evening’s wind blowing across the prairie, or perhaps it’s the cacophony of a summer pond? Nay, my friend, it is but the music of the capital city pouring forth in all its beauty and resonance. In other words, here’s what’s going on this week with all the stars […]

For Big Al Downing, it all started with an upright piano salvaged from the trash heap. The piano had been carted home for firewood, but once his family discovered the instrument still worked they moved it indoors. At first the piano served only as a stand for their most prized possession: the radio. But eventually […]