Hot Club of Cowtown performs for the Bedrock 66 Live! concert series on Sat., Feb. 13 at Casey’s Pub with Burr Oak String Band opening at 8 p.m. As we thaw through a snowy and cold week of February, live music keeps coming on hot and heavy to warm your bones and melt your mind. […]
Willie Nelson
Posted inMusic
Fair time
Looming hosts their album release party for Nailbiter at the Black Sheep Cafe with guests Park, Choir Vandals and Hidden Hospital on Friday, Aug. 14. It’s back. The Illinois State Fair comes to town for ten days of entertainment, excitement, exasperation, excrement (sorry, but the livestock, you know) and all around endeavors of intrepid Illinoisans […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Where there’s a will there’s a way
Tickets are still available for the rescheduled Willie Nelson concert taking place on Tuesday night, Aug. 12, at Sangamon Auditorium, UIS. We’re ecstatic Willie’s back in town. The incomparable Nelson continues to create as if there’s a fountain of youth inside his soul. Who else can boast a successful 60-year career with almost 300 albums, […]
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Billy Don Burns
Every review about the music of Billy Don Burns compares him with the greats of country music such as Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. Indeed, Burns has rubbed shoulders with them all, producing records for Haggard, getting songs cut by Nelson, keeping good company with Jennings and bumping Cash out of […]
Posted inMusic
Hodgepodge of happenings
With a whirlwind of wonderful whatevers available to while away the hours this week in the entertainment section of our lives, here are a few tidbits and takes on the goings-on. In the “unbelievable events” category, how is it that two of my favorites in the music business are playing in Springfield on the same […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Country titan
Willie Nelson performs for central Illinois fans as his Country Throwdown tour moves through Springfield stopping at the Prairie Capital Convention Center. If Nelson could be called the anything of country music – the most appropriate might be – the titan of country music. This singer/songwriter is legendary; his fame is so widespread and fine-aged, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A grand tradition at the Grandstand
It wasn’t too long ago that the popular rock band Hootie and the Blowfish sold out the Grandstand at the Illinois State Fair. In 1995, the year after late author David Foster Wallace wrote about the fair in Harper’s Magazine, more than 13,350 people from around the state packed the venue to see the band […]
