Beijing. A smoke-filled club bustling with people, clanging of bottles, chatter. There is a woman on stage with her banjo. She begins to sing old-time Appalachian music in Chinese. The effect produced is entirely original, a cultural mash-up between two distant yet not so different worlds. The crowd quiets down to listen.
Abigail Washburn never set [...]

Ani DiFranco has written hundreds of songs, played thousands of shows, captured the imaginations of legions of followers, and jammed with folkies, orchestras, rappers, rock and roll hall-of-famers, jazz musicians, poets, pop superstars, storytellers and a martial arts legend. She’s “fixed up a few old buildings” and minimized her carbon footprint before it was trendy [...]

It’s been quite a ride for Aphrodesia since their birth in 2003: a pilgrimage to the legendary Shrine nightclub in Lagos, Nigeria in 2006, a cross-country voter-registration tour in a vegetable oil-powered bus in 2004 and accolades everywhere from National Public Radio to USA Today. Through it all the San Francisco-based 11-piece ensemble has won [...]

The Arrogant Worms are a three-man comedy troupe. Using only guitar, bass, great stage presence, super-tight harmonies and the sharpest of wit, The Worms are on a mission to make you laugh. They are Canada’s self-proclaimed Clowned Princes of Humor, Purveyors of the Absurd, and Ambassadors of Fun. One of Canada’s most popular live acts, [...]

Twelve years after becoming the first hip-hop act to put the Twin Cities on the map, Atmosphere has grown into one of the most accomplished MC/producer duos around. Between Slug and Ant, they’ve released seven albums, 13 Sad Clown tour albums and various side-projects like Felt – amounting in well over a million units sold. [...]

The B-Side Players make music without borders or boundaries. On Fire In The Youth, their seventh album and first for Concord/Picante, they continue exploring the multifaceted grooves of Latin America and the Caribbean, incorporating the sounds of Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico and Brazil with the funk, rock, jazz and hip-hop rhythms of their homeland. With Latin [...]

This South Carolina-based indie-rock band’s swirling, dreampop-like musical backing, ragged Neil Young influences and tenor vocals initially drew comparisons to fellow Southern-based indie rockers My Morning Jacket. Multi-instrumentalists Ben Bridwell and Mat Brooke formed the group in Seattle in 2004 after their slow-core band Carissa’s Wierd broke up due to mounting financial problems. After releasing [...]

Barrage – A high-octane fiddle-fest that features an international, multi-talented cast performing an eclectic mix of music, song and dance.
“Barrage is too Wow for Words !” – Denver Post
Barrage has entertained millions of people around the globe .  Fans in Europe, Asia and North America have enjoyed Barrage at International Festivals, Concert Performances, Special Events [...]

Ben Klein is a dynamic musician whose high intensity performances have led him to regional renown in the Pacific Northwest. His unique style of extreme flute, which he calls Ben Flutism, consistently ignites audiences and gains the respect of fellow musicians. In all of his music, you can hear the multi-cultural influences from his wide [...]

Five years ago, Brett Dennen was a camp counselor who played guitar, wrote songs and performed fireside. With a self-made album, he began playing coffee shops along the West Coast and a devoted following formed. A modest independent record deal led first to his 2006 break-through album, So Much More, then to the attention of [...]

The Broad Comedy Broads: they’re savvy, irreverent, and they’re probably being followed by Karl Rove in a big black Hummer. These are the women who skewer the Bush White House with crowd-pleasing favorites like “The United States Extreme Right Wing Cheerleading Squad” and they gleefully lampoon the Teen Abstinence Movement with “I’m Saving My Hymen [...]

Alligator Records has set a May 5, 2009 release date for “LAY YOUR BURDEN DOWN”, the stunning label debut from American musical legend, Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural Jr. and his band, Buckwheat Zydeco. The New York Times says, “Stanley ‘Buckwheat’ Dural leads one of the best bands in America. A down-home and high-powered celebration, meaty and [...]

Three and a half years in the making, the efforts of writing and recording THERE IS NO ENEMY led Built to Spill founder Doug Martsch to wonder whether this would be the last album he ever makes. As his wife, I watched him work, pouring hour after hour , day after day into writing. Song [...]

Camper Van Beethoven introduced an eclectic, often humorous blend of hippie psychedelia, avant-garde improvisation, country-western shadings, pseudo-ethnic sounds, and a hardcore punch to the mid-’80s postpunk scene. What saved the group from novelty status was its genuine talent for making interesting, adventurous music. After its breakup, Lowery went on to greater commercial success in his [...]

Celtic Crossroads Short Trailer
Just when you think that you have seen the best that Irish music has to offer, a fresh new show from Ireland is taking the art form to an entirely new level. Celtic Crossroads presents Irish music like never before, they are doing to Irish music what Riverdance has done to Irish [...]

Bassist, composer and Montana native, Chad Langford teaches privately, and is adjunct professor of double bass at Montana State University, Bozeman. He has appeared in major festivals throughout North America, including NxNW, MusicfestNW, the Yellowstone Jazz Festival, and JazzFest International in Victoria B.C. He currently performs and records with Jeni and Jake Fleming in the [...]

Porterhouse Statement on Wharton Center/City Opera House Contract
Throughout Porterhouse Productions’ relationship with the City Opera House and Wharton Center, our purpose has been to stay positive and open to the collaborative opportunities presented by an entity like Wharton, while still asking the necessary questions to protect our right and the community’s right to access [...]

Are You Lookin’ at Me? is Colin Hay’s first studio album of new material in over five years. A tuneful, insightful meditation on life, love, sobriety, maturity and perseverance, the album finds Hay at the absolute peak of his craft. As a writer and vocalist, he has never been more masterful: finding intriguing new angles [...]

What happens when you combine trained musicians from the world-renowned Berklee School of Music in Boston, with an articulate emcee and breathtaking beat-wizard both born and raised in sunny, southern California? Crown City Rockers, that’s what – a genre-blending hip-hop sollective whose music is original, powerful and provocative all in the same breath and follows [...]

David Grisman’s bands in their various quartet and quintet configurations, have showcased acoustic music ever since he started the first DGQ in the fall of 1975. That band featured David on mandolin, Todd Phillips on mandolin, Joe Carroll on bass, Tony Rice on guitar, and Darol Anger on fiddle. Ever since then, the DGQ has [...]

Girl Talk (aka Gregg Gillis) is back with his 3rd album on Illegal Art. With each release getting closer to his notorious semi-naked live show, Night Ripper is focused less on beat-f**kery and more on bringing heat to the party. It bangs as a continuous mix packed with wildly disparate Top 40 genres and eras. [...]

“Sacramento’s Jackie Greene has more old-soul in him than most musicians twice his age. He’s been tagged as a blues phenom, but his album reveals an effortless flair for Texas-and-Greenwich Village-style folk, hillbilly stomp, bar-band boogie woogie, or just about any roots-related genre he cares to try on for size. He’s a songwriter, plain and [...]

When you think of “grassroots” and “down to Earth,” you don’t normally think of a movie star. You especially don’t think of a movie star the caliber of Jeff Daniels. Yet that is exactly what Jeff has accomplished with his second CD Grandfather’s Hat.
With the follow-up album to Live and Unplugged, Daniels has proven that [...]

Joe Craven wears many hats and plays many things.  He’s a madman with anything that has strings attached, including hospital bed pans, gas cans, cookie tins, roasting pots, fiddles, mandolins, tenor guitars, saz, cuatro and a world of percussion instruments including animal bones, latex squeeze toys, cake pans, waste cans, umbrella stands, martini shakers and…Himself. [...]

The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter catches the Idaho musician in the midst of a radical transformation. While last year’s The Animal Years had Ritter thinking about the state of the nation, his latest offering finds him pining for Joan of Arc, Calamity Jane and Florence Nightingale, all of whom seem to be stuck together [...]

Joshua James has been writing and singing songs for only six short years, but the 25-year-old heartland poet has the perspective of a wise, old soul.
On his second album, Build Me This, the follow-up to his critically acclaimed The Sun is Always Brighter, produced by industry veteran Shannon Edgar, James expands his musical palette to [...]

Keller Williams has built a career on his uncanny ability to captivate a packed house—all by himself. He’s been called a “one-man band.” A “solo cult-hero.” “Music’s mad-scientist.” All of which are clever labels for what seems to be an essential truth: On stage, Keller Williams works alone.
For over 100 shows a year, Williams [...]

Hailing from Cadilac Michigan, Luke Winslow-King is a singer, songsmith, and composer inspired by New Orleans jazz, rock, ragtime, impressionism, delta and country blues, poetry, folk, and classical music.
Beginning his studies at Interlochen Arts Academy, King studied music theory and composition at the University of New Orleans where he was awarded an ambassador scholarship to [...]

LUKE WINSLOW-KING, a musician originally from Cadillac, Michigan, who now resides in New Orleans, sounds as if he’s a learned young man in all of the antiquated, but most soulful and vibrant principles of songwriting, winding us through the blues, R&B, dirty, rotten garage rock, swampy rock, ghostly structures of Spanish guitar and graveyard shifts [...]

1st Annual M-22 Challenge – 9am Saturday June 20, 2009 – Glen Arbor, MI
The M-22 Challenge is a multi-discipline event based in beautiful Leelanau County in Northern Michigan. The event is designed to challenge athletes against the natural terrain and environmental elements of the area : 1) Bike around Big and Little Glen Lakes, 2) [...]

A native of Syracuse, New York, Martin Sexton grew up in the 80’s, uninterested in the sounds of the day, and fueled his dreams on the timeless sounds of classic rock and roll. Sexton eventually migrated to Boston, where he began to build his following singing on the streets of Harvard Square and gradually working [...]

Born into a family of musicians, May Erlewine has been playing music all her life. She learned to sing and play piano at an early age, and her acoustic guitar is seldom far from her side. Erlewine, who was home schooled, paid her singer-songwriter dues in her late teens with several years of hitchhiking back [...]

Michael Franti is a very big man who has always dared to say very big things through his joyous and passionate music during an unusually diverse and highly impressive career.
Yet for all the wide-ranging, yet consistent excellence of his body of work, what’s most impressive about Michael Franti as a recording artist and live performer [...]

One of the more unexpected mainstream success stories of the 2000s was Modest Mouse. More than a decade after the arty Pacific Northwest indie-rock band formed, its sixth album, Good News for People Who Love Bad News, reached Number 18 on the Billboard 200, thanks in part to its Number One Modern Rock single “Float [...]

rooted in the lowlands of europe, conceived in paris, born and raised in the cornfield flatlands of midwestern america, myshkin is a chameleonic wanderer who writes songs with a wealth of experience, an arresting helping of raw honesty, and a painter’s eye. at twenty, a theater school dropout, she took a year off to live [...]

PATTY LARKIN has always prided herself in her creative approach to music. With WATCH THE SKY, Larkin has created a one of a kind release that she wrote, produced, engineered and edited. Larkin wrote and recorded much of the material as it came to her, assembling tracks and sounds as she went. The result is [...]

In an effort to share great music with fellow music lovers, we’ll be adding new “PHP Picks” on a regular basis. Enjoy!
Michael Franti & Spearhead
“Say Hey (I Love You)”

The interplay between Allison Russell, Awna Teixeira, Benny Sidelinger, and JJ Jones is truly something to behold. They are distinct voices with incredible harmonies; multiple instrumentalists who bring the perfect sound to each song and songwriters who pen poetic tunes you’ll find yourself humming. Po’Girl showcases a wide array of instruments-from gutbucket bass, accordion, [...]

Compare her to other eccentric, female, piano-playing crooners, but New York singer-songwriter Regina Spektor is an oddball unto herself. Less miserable than Fiona Apple, less wacky than Nellie McKay and less hippieish than Tori Amos, Spektor shows off her gorgeous, fluttery voice, her burgeoning writer chops and her God-given quirks on her second disc, Begin [...]

My father gave me a guitar for Christmas when I was in the third grade. Little black Fender Squier and a Squier amp. Pretty sick little set up for a 9-year-old, actually. I tried to play a few things, some blues my uncle taught me, as I recall. Even took some lessons from an older [...]

Bernard was born and raised on Earthwork Farm in Northern Michigan, surrounded by gardens, goats, hippies, rednecks and stringed instruments, smack dab in the middle of a tightly woven circle of friends and family throughout the Regan Era. Just outside Lake City. A fine small hometown. No shortage of churches, bars or lakes around. The [...]

The first song Shawn Colvin completed for These Four Walls, her Nonesuch debut, was the wistful “Summer Dress,” which opens with Colvin singing over the austere strum of a lone acoustic guitar, then builds into a lilting folk-rock arrangement. Colvin maintains a delicate balance between confidence and vulnerability as she describes a dream-like venture out [...]

Near the turn of the 21st century, rebel forces attacked Freetown, the capital city of Sierra Leone, forcing a panicked mass exodus to neighboring countries. Among the thousands who fled were musicians and future band mates Reuben Koroma and Francis Lamgba (Franco) who connected in a refugee camp in Guinea, West Africa. Along with Reuben’s [...]

Rare indeed when a collection of songs creates an entire world. Yet that’s exactly what transpires with Steppin’ In It’s “Simple Tunes for Troubled Times.” Sonically painting with a pleasant array of old time country swing and blues, this Lansing, Michigan, quartet brilliantly updates a resurging American musical genre. Populating this 11-track collection is an [...]

Check out Storyhill on Mountain Stage, featured on NPR in January of 2009 : http://bit.ly/6EyyFR
Popular acoustic folk-pop duo Storyhill comprises John Hermanson (The Hopefuls) with long-time buddy Chris Cunningham, and features insightful, introspective songs with sweet harmonies and highly complementary guitar work, all in the tradition of Simon and Garfunkel, Loggins and Messina, and Hall [...]

What an awesome festival … thanks for coming out and supporting music,
brews, and our community!
Below you can find a great video recap by Robert Moran, reviews, and some great photos.

Thanks to leelanau.com:
What occurred at The Village Saturday afternoon was no small feat. Had the sun simply offered her face in typical August fashion, hosting a [...]

Another great event – thanks for coming out and supporting music, brews, and our community!
A great video recap by Weston Film : TC Winter Microbrew & Music Festival
Some kind words:
Just a quick note to let you know that your event was stupendous!  All the staff that had an opportunity to go said what a good [...]

Hello all!
After the success of this summer’s first ever Traverse City Microbrew & Music Festival, we are excited to bring the festival back next month (February 12) for a sister winter version at Grand Traverse Resort & Spa. If you attended the August event, you know what a great time everyone had – especially the [...]

Ten Foot Tall & 80 Proof is a four-piece ensemble covering a wide variety of musical flavors including bluegrass, old-time country, honky tonk, blues and rock. Our performance arsenal is comprised of acoustic and electric guitar, piano, mandolin, upright and electric bass, harmonica, drums and percussion and tight vocal harmonies. Our energetic twist of twang [...]

The Winnipeg, Manitoba-based Duhks have always gravitated towards traditional roots-based song structures, but they’ve never stopped evolving since their inception five years ago. Due in part to a collective musical worldview that knows no boundaries, that evolution led the band to their latest offering Fast-Paced World, the first Duhks record to feature wunderkinds Sarah and [...]

The Hold Steady was born out of some loose talk in my Boreum Hill apartment in 2002. I had moved to Brooklyn about two years earlier. I was thirty-one years old, and the other dudes were about my same age. Our concept was to start a straight rock band, with low aspirations. Just local shows, [...]

With seven gold and six platinum recordings and over three million albums sold, this four- member vocal group is one of Canada’s top international success stories – they have become a global institution and a legend in the world of vocal music. The group has performed over 1000 concerts in dozens of tours worldwide including [...]

Those eager to partake of Umphrey’s McGee’s fruitful outpouring during the recording sessions that resulted in 2006’s Safety In Numbers can rejoice. On April 3, 2007 the sextet released The Bottom Half, a double-disc of unreleased songs, bonus material and odds and sods that will essentially tell the whole story of those extraordinary sessions. Upon [...]

Saturday, October 31, 2009
Z-MASH featuring LYRICS BORN
The Terminal | Traverse City, MI
FIRST SHOW (All Ages) : Doors @ 6:30 PM | Show @ 7:00 PM
SECOND SHOW (18+) : Doors @ 9:30 PM | Show @ 10 PM
All Ages / Non-Alcoholic Show : Doors 6:30 PM, Show 7-9 PM | Advance Tickets: $10* | Day of [...]