Music

“It’s a great day,” said B.J. Pearce, studio manger of Southtown Sound. “We really have a lot going on for us right now.” The newly renovated recording studio located in the building directly behind Dumb Records near the corner of 11th Street and South Grand Avenue had its grand opening on Sunday, March 26, concurrent […]

With Saturday’s concert, “American Voices,” the Illinois Symphony Orchestra will complete phase one of this season’s vetting of candidates for the position of new music director for the ISO, with the fourth and final candidate, Boston native Aram Demirjian, taking his place in the conductor’s position. The search process began in July of 2015, when […]

For ZZ Top, Oct. 23, 2013, was, in part, the measuring stick for last Sunday’s grandstand show to close the state fair. It was barely three years ago that the three-same-guys-three-same-chords (just two beards) played at University of Illinois Springfield in the fall of 2013. Would they bring the same show? And how would they […]

Gene Simmons, bassist and founding member of Kiss, acts scary during Wednesday’s show. Photos by Bruce Rushton. Springfield Mayor Jim Langfelder hoisted the two-fingered rock-and-roll salute, the crowd booed at the mention of Gov. Bruce Rauner. And there were also plenty of pyrotechnics and never-gets-old theatrical tricks as Kiss paid a visit to the Illinois […]

Dumb Fest organizer Brian Galecki. PHOTO BY PATRICK YEAGLE Kicking off this Friday, June 10, at 5 p.m., Dumb Fest is one of two annual music festivals hosted every summer by the scrappy, consistently ambitious, all-ages punk venue Black Sheep Café, located at the corner of 11th St. and South Grand (Black Sheep Fest celebrated […]

Charmaine Neville, New Orleans musician Charmaine Neville, a domestic abuse survivor, believes that women who experience domestic abuse do not feel that other people truly understand their situation. “People don’t understand that you can’t always get away,” she said. “Sometimes, no matter how far away you get, you always are found.” Neville is a well-known […]

Matt Hill, the clerk minding the store recently at Dumb Records on South Grand Avenue, seems a nice enough guy. On a recent afternoon, Hill was playing selections by Scarves, a Seattle band whose interpretation of punk is described by The Stranger, the Emerald City’s leading alt-weekly, as “interestingly constructed, clean and sparkly guitars and […]

John Mellencamp played a dynamic set at Sangamon Auditorium on April 10. Patrick Yeagle John Mellencamp has come a long way since writing his most famous ditty, “Jack and Diane,” at the age of 22.  “Who wants to go back to doing what they were doing when they were 22 years old?” Mellencamp, now 64, […]

[click artist’s name for video] 1.Algiers by Algiers  2.Beat the Champ by The Mountain Goats  3.Diet by heCTA  4.Divers by Joanna Newsom  5.Eat Pray Thug by Heems  6.Edge of the Sun by Calexico  7.Euphoria by Chris Stamey  8.Faith in the Future by Craig Finn  9.Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance by Belle and Sebastian   […]

Alexander Toradze PHOTO COURTESY ILLINOIS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Maestro Alastair Willis will conclude his tenure as musical director of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra at the end of the 2015-2016 season. The infectiously energetic conductor has asked to be released from his five-year contract early to accommodate an increasingly demanding international performance schedule. But that doesn’t mean […]

Before this past weekend, my last Grateful Dead show was at Portland Meadows in Oregon, about six weeks before Jerry Garcia played his final show at Soldier Field. It was the latest in a string of when-will-this-end concerts bordering on tragedies as Garcia, once a brilliant musician, deteriorated both physically and sonically, missing notes as […]