Legendary blues man B.B. King celebrated his 87th birthday last fall, not that you would know that from the busy schedule he keeps. He could have easily retired some time ago, with both his musical

 Bluesmen (and women) were once mysterious figures—voices across time and space to the college students who began the blues revival in the 1960s. In decades since, those students have done their homework. Witness

 From their snappy look and Romany-inspired name, one might assume Cream City Gypsys to be Milwaukee's latest exponents of the jazz genre Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli popularized so many decades ago. That's not

A simple way to distinguish the two converse personas of the Americana acts on Thursday’s Pabst Theater bill was to observe how the troubadours treated an obnoxious heckler in the third row. The slick and pensive Jason Isbell

 When guitarist Brian Venable of the Memphis band Lucero visits Milwaukee or Wisconsin to play a show or see friends, he’s always fascinated by the many historic and unique buildings dotting

 The McCrary Sisters come to gospel music through heredity as well as conviction. As daughters of a founding member of the seminal Fairfield Four, the quartet were reared in the ecstatic singing of the African-American church

 Revisit the grassroots of blues, folk and fingerstyle guitar this April at UW-Milwaukee’s Inova Gallery with the exhibition “The Avant Garde Coffeehouse Project.” In the 1960s, on the cusp of the counterculture, the Avant

 It’s no secret that the instruments a band uses help determine its sonic direction and can make a song work. In the case of Milwaukee band Calliope, one instrument—an organ

 Finland is home to a flourishing circle of improv jazz musicians. The latest CD from that floating cadre opens in fractured waltz time; one could imagine a couple, weary from sleeplessness and liqueur, dancing clumsily around the tiny floor of a broken-down café. Likewise, the smudges of

 Whether or not the legends surrounding Phil Lee as a Cain-raising outlaw are true, his songwriting is infused with genuine grit and he sings his compositions with authenticity. His thoughts on broken love and living out of a suitcase