Music

Nice barn!One way to describe Steve Kimock's career is that he became well known
for being unknown. Why? Well, once upon a time, Jerry Garcia called
Kimock his favorite unknown guitarist, and, as you'd expect, Kimock
became exponentially less "unknown" soon thereafter.

Kimock isn't exactly a household name even today. Rather, he's sort of
a musician's musician - a guitarist whose skills are as admirable as
the music he produces. He's also the sort of musician who is often
brought up whenever the always-contentious Rolling Stone's Greatest
Guitarists of All Time debate of 2003 is reprised. And after years of
playing in an array of bands, many of which are branches of the
Grateful Dead family tree (Heart of Gold Band, Phil Lesh and Friends,
Rat Dog and others), the past decade has seen Kimock achieve a senior
statesman status within the jam rock world. And now, he is taking his
new ensemble, Steve Kimock Crazy Engine, out on the road this spring,
playing what the guitarist implies is good times music for what some
people might consider bad times.

Huge in Scotland.We've already learned over the past few years that the
Sisters Folk Festival means business when it comes to booking and their
Winter Concert Series is no exception. Just this year, we've already
seen Sisters Folk wrangle in traditional bluegrassters Steep Canyon
Rangers as well as emerging folk stars Jeffrey Foucault and Kris
Delmhorst.

Now, the Winter Concert Series has gone across the
Atlantic to bring to Sisters one of Scotland's most respected musicians
in Dougie MacLean. Some have gone as far as to refer to MacLean as
Scotland's "preeminent singer-songwriter" leading us to wonder if
perhaps MacLean is to Scotland what Bob Dylan is to the U.S. For those
of you who enjoy SAT analogy format, here's another way to phrase our
proposed analogy…Dougie MacLean : Scotland :: Bob Dylan : United States.

Punking it old school.If you think punk rock got political
during the G. W. Bush administration, you're way off. For example, let
us introduce you to MDC (whose initials stand for the superbly
offensive - to some - Millions of Dead Cops), a band that was rocking
against Reagan for crying out loud.

That's right, back in 1982,
MDC was already railing against Reagan and playing with bands like the
Dead Kennedys and other forefathers of punk rock. From there, MDC
cultivated a hardcore punk following that helped the band survive until
1995, when they went on hiatus until 2000. But now, the band, calling
Portland home, are back on the road and with front man David Dictor,
now 52 years young, still holding the mic and flanked with other
original members.

Poor Man’s Whiskey: Just another five bricks in the wall…It won't be outside. And it won't be summer. You won't be able to bring
your own lawn chair and you also won't be able to walk back to your
tent when it's over. There won't be anyone selling veggie burritos and
you won't be advised to wear sunscreen or reasonable footwear.

No,
Saturday night's Spring Fling Tour stop at the Old Stone Church won't
be the 4 Peaks Music Festival, but as far as music goes, it will get us
as close to the jammy outdoor music festival - the exact future of
which is uncertain - as we're likely to get in late March. And this is
due, of course, to the show's bill, which includes Poor Man's Whiskey
and Blue Turtle Seduction, two bands that have played both installments
of the festival.

Dyna by candlelight.Three-fourths of Goodbye Dyna have gathered at the Source offices on a
Friday afternoon, all of them with the ruddy faces that can only mean
one thing on a sunny March day in Bend: they just got off the mountain.
The emerging local eclectic rockers admit that they've just finished up
their first ever "band day" at Mt. Bachelor - and this is just one of
several firsts Goodbye Dyna has chalked up as of late.

If you size up Goodbye Dyna against other local acts, it would seem
that this quartet has done everything backwards. Rather than earning a
following by slaving away in the bars for a couple years before
amassing enough material and resources to lay down some tracks in the
studio, Goodbye Dyna took a different route: they pretty much had an
album before ever playing a show. Well to say "they" is stretching it
to a degree, seeing as how front man Andrew Mowbray Jacobs played
almost all the instruments and produced the band's debut, XXVII, on his
own.

Live from Bonnaroo 2008 DVD
As if the announcement of the Bonnaroo 2009 lineup a couple weeks ago didn't get us inordinately (and prematurely) amped for the summer music festival season, we had to go ahead and get our hands on the 2008 Bonnaroo Live DVD and make that ache in our gut for summer a bit worse.
With performances by last year's headliners like Pearl Jam, Metallica and Jack Johnson, the disc also pays attention to the smaller stages for shows by de facto festival house band My Morning Jacket, as well as Broken Social Scene, The Raconteurs, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and plenty more.

Got suits, will travel.Chris Sterr and his band, Bump, are based out of Detroit. He says the
city isn't as bad as the death-and-despair rap it often gets, but the
former automotive capital of the world has definitely provided the
prog-rockers with a few stories.
This is just one of those:
"We
used to play these gigs downtown at this old venue called Fifth
Avenue," Sterr recalls. "It was a house gig every Tuesday and every
night we'd be loading out and these homeless guys would flock around us
and they'd be grabbing our gear to help us so we'd pay 'em. A couple of
these guys would have silver or gold on their lips and face because
they'd been huffing paint. It was crazy."
Maybe it's these sort
of instances that keeps the band on the road for several months of
hard-driving touring each year, like the band's current excursion that
takes them to the Silver Moon on Tuesday and then to Southern
California before finally ending in Florida in early April. Sterr says
that isn't so and that the Bump has a warm place in its heart for the
Motor City.