Perhaps one day Jonny Lang will be so universally regarded that he’ll inspire a band named “The Bastard Sons of Jonny Lang.” In the meantime, though, only Johnny Cash can claim that odd honor—and, to be sure, it is an honor. The Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash, silly as their moniker may be, play updated outlaw country...

It’s unclear why anyone ever thought a band name as long and cumbersome as Fear Before the March of Flames was a good idea, but the Colorado metalcore band finally came to their senses this year, abbreviating their moniker to just Fear Before. The melodic group, which scored some major exposure on MTV2’s . . .

The music of Joy Wants Eternity won’t offer many surprises for those already acquainted with instrumental post-rock bands like Explosions in the Sky and Godspeed You! Black Emperor: Songs start off pensively before spiraling into gorgeous, controlled cacophonies. This Seattle outfit is nearly . . .

The Led Zeppelin tribute band No Quarter, who perform tonight at 8 p.m. at Shank Hall, promise to create the experience of seeing Zeppelin in their early ’70s prime, night after night recreating Zeppelin’s first album as well as “Stairway to Heaven.” Unlike other Zeppelin tribute bands, they pride themselves on having shows . . .

Banjoist Abigail Washburn has made an unlikely career by fusing seemingly incompatible musical influences: rustic old-time American music and dignified, traditional Chinese folk music. The eastern influences are particularly pronounced in her work with The Sparrow Quartet, the group she shares with fellow . . .

Every young blues performer in the late ’90s was burdened with comparisons to Jonny Lang, but Shannon Curfman got the worst of it, since not only is she from North Dakota, like Lang, but Lang even co-wrote part of her precocious 1999 debut record, Loud Guitars, Big Suspicions, which she recorded when she was just . . .

While staying true to its roots as a modest residential neighborhood, Bay View has over the last decade emerged as one of the Milwaukee’s most fashionable districts, as scores of young Milwaukeeans attracted by the affordable housing have quite literally set up shop there. The neighborhood’s signature . . .

Musicians from both Kenya and Milwaukee make up Oumar Sagna’s Sindoolaa African Music Band, an ensemble that plays traditional African music tinted by world-spanning shades of reggae and salsa music. The group headlines a 9 p.m. bill at Shank Hall tonight.

No band better mastered the marriage of ska and punk in the ’90s than Michigan’s Mustard Plug. In their perky horns, dynamic pop-punk chords and fist-pumping choruses they found a winning formula they stuck to even after their brand of punchy third-wave ska fell hopelessly out of vogue, though to keep with the . . .

In a city where accordions are used almost exclusively for celebratory purposes, singer-songwriter Margaret Stutt has the audacity to use them to make sad music. With her latest project, Pezzettino, she alternates between piano and an accordion, sighing restless, lovelorn songs, touching on Tori Amos’ stark . . .