:: The Flaming Lips with Ween :: Red Rocks Amphitheatre :: July 29 :: 

By Timothy Dwenger 

“If you could blow up the world with the flick of a switch, would you do it?” The question comes from one of the oddest and most interesting characters in rock and roll today: Wayne Coyne.  Coyne is the primary songwriter and front-man for The Flaming Lips and his existential leanings have taken a decidedly political turn on their new album At War With The Mystics. “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” eventually culminates with Coyne morally espousing, “It’s a very dangerous thing to do exactly what you want. Because you cannot know yourself or what you’d really do with all your power.” 

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:: Marquee Magazine presents :: Will Hoge ::

:: The Walnut Room :: July 26 ::

:: Trilogy :: July 27 :: 

By Emily H. Lanigan

 As authentic as BBQ, Will Hoge grew up basted and slow roasted in the rock and roll of the American South. “Asking me why I play the music I play is like asking me why I talk the way I do,” said the Nashville, Tenn.-based Hoge, from the road, in a recent interview with The Marquee. “I’m a product of my environment.” Along with the regular fired-up performances of his relentless tour schedule, his latest charcoal-fueled album, The Man Who Killed Love, independently released earlier this year, proves that being a product of his environment may be the magic in the formula that is Will Hoge.

“When you’re raised in the American South, you’re just sort of inundated with a certain kind of music. I grew up listening to music that I inherited from my father, like The Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Otis Redding and James Brown. “That’s just life in the American South,” explained Hoge. “It’s not like I had to look very far for musical influences. It’s where I’m from.”

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:: Pete Yorn ::

:: Walnut Room :: July 24 ::

:: Fox Theatre :: July 25 :: 

By Marisa Beahm 

With the final album of his Day trilogy completed, Pete Yorn’s music provides a song to match any mercurial mood. Beginning with his sensitive and introspective debut album, musicforthemorningafter, Yorn fashioned the perfect record for a mellow morning, followed by Day I Forgot, a melodic album which revisited his childhood and paid tribute to his influences. Yorn recently finished the final album, Nightcrawler, a more lively and percussion-driven album to finish off the trilogy. Nightcrawler provides the energetic element to his music that hadn’t yet been featured.

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:: Supersuckers ::

:: Supporting Social Distortion ::

:: Red Rocks Amphitheatre :: July 15 :: 

By Brian F. Johnson

Three years ago when Eddie Spaghetti belted out “Rock and Roll Records Ain’t Selling This Year,” the biggest hit of the Supersucker’s career, he was dead-on right. Ironically, the song, off the band’s Motherfuckers Be Trippin’, went to number one on the RnR specialty charts for four weeks in a row, but the gist of the song was still correct: rock and roll was in a slump. Now, however, three full calendars later, rock and roll records are selling and the band, which recently grew to a four-piece, is soaking up the rock wave and riding it high with a new take on an old idea.

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:: Steely Dan :: with Michael McDonald ::

:: Red Rocks Amphitheatre ::

:: July 31 :: 

By Timothy Dwenger 

“This summer we’re going to try and condense the Steely Dan set down into a high-impact slamming type of set that will completely banish any talk of nostalgia or traipsing down memory lane,” said Walter Becker, one half of Steely Dan, in a recent interview with The Marquee.

Speaking about a tour with this much enthusiasm might come as a surprise to some older Steely Dan fans. While they have toured several times in recent years, back in 1974 Becker and his musical partner Donald Fagen bucked the trend of the music industry and retired from touring entirely for several years. They had grown tired of the rigors of the road and the mediocre sound in the venues. “At the point where we jumped out in the ’70s the control that we had over presenting our music and the way it sounded was pretty much hit or miss. Today it’s more consistent; the band sounds good every night and that really was not the case in the ’70s,” said Becker.

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:: Rusted Root ::

:: Mishawaka Amphitheatre :: July 7 ::

:: Gothic Theatre :: July 8 ::

:: Fox Theatre :: July 18 :: 

By Monica Banks 

In the early 1990s Rusted Root exploded into the music world with a neo-hippie vibe and a blend of rock and world music that few had seen before, at least in such a mainstream realm.

Snatching up hits and critical acclaim with songs like “Send Me on My Way,” “Ecstasy” and “Rain,” the band’s second album, 1994’s When I Woke went platinum and there was barely a dormroom in America that didn’t have at least one copy of the album in its collection.

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:: Lamb of God ::

:: With Slayer on the Unholy Alliance Tour::

:: Fillmore Auditorium :: July 26 :: 

By Matt Marty 

Staring down the barrel of their most highly anticipated record to date, the progressive metal quintet Lamb Of God is rising to the top of the metal world like their music — fast and ugly.

The roots of Lamb Of God trace back more than 15 years to Richmond, Va. It was there that college students Mark Morton, John Campbell and Chris Adler began their savage journey to becoming one of the hardest playing metal bands in the country. Today, Lamb Of God has two more members, Randy Blythe and Willie Adler, brother of Chris.

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 By Damon Ruckel

 As alt-country continues to come of age and defines its place nationally on the musical landscape, The Unknown Americans are, locally, melding traditional country melodies with rocking backbeat and beautiful harmonies, unveiling a cleaner, “poppier” side to Colorado singer/songwriter Danny Shafer’s writing and performing.

During his fifteen year tenure as a musician on the Front Range, Shafer has built a reputation as one of Colorado’s most prolific singer/songwriters, often playing several gigs a week with different line-ups under different band names. He might have been playing with The Danny Shafer Band, Danny Shafer & The Red Glory Ramblers, The All-Night Honky Tonk All-Stars or, most recently, with The Unknown Americans. 

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 I was reading Lester Bangs last night, on the night that I celebrated my 34th birthday (yes, birthdays are that exciting in your 30s).

For years I’ve heard the statement uttered in a number of different ways that Bangs died at the right time — 1982, for those who are counting.

For those of you who don’t know Bangs, seek him out. Trust me on this one. He is arguably one of the most influential rock critics ever. Writing in hyper-intelligent benzedrine prose that calls to mind Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson, Bangs eschewed all conventional thinking as he discussed everything from Black Sabbath being the first truly Catholic band to Anne Murray’s smoldering sexuality. Some of you may know him from Philip Seymour Hoffman’s role in Almost Famous … if that helps.

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The Man in Black’s fifth collaboration with famed producer Rick Rubin is a another masterpiece

Johnny Cash

American V: A Hundred Highways

American Recordings

5 out of 5

Almost three years after his passing in September of 2003, some of the final musical moments of Johnny Cash’s legendary career are finally being released. A Hundred Highways is the fifth installment in Cash’s series of collaborations with producer Rick Rubin, and Rubin’s ‘midas touch’ is once again evident throughout the record.

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