Chris Parker

A little-commented key to a vibrant local music scene is a good all-ages club where future jaded rockers can shed their naïveté while honing their chops. No place is hotter this moment than Los Angeles’ The Smell, which has hosted a mini-revolution with the anarchic experimental noise-pop of No Age, Mika Miko and Abe Vigoda. […]

Mexico is as much an idea as a place for Roger Clyne ” an escape both virtual and figurative. From the loose talk of absconding across the border on the Refreshments’ minor hit “Banditos,” to blood-on-his-hands desperados on the lam (“Americano”), or tourists whiling away their time under the spell of “Mexican Moonshine,” Clyne’s songs […]

The ship may harbor a different name, but David Eugene Edwards sails the same seas. The former 16 Horsepower frontman started his solo project, Woven Hand, during a break, and while the music has changed along the way, Edwards still retains the haunting atmospheres and stark lyrical outlook for which he’s known. Formed in 1992, […]

It took almost a decade, but at 31, William Elliott Whitmore is finally a free man. While the Iowa farmer turned musician has always loved to sing, he didn’t see it as a future so much as a mission. With the completion of his musical trilogy ” 2003’s “Hymns for the Hopeless,” 2005’s “Ashes to […]

In a mere six months, The Music Tapes’ Julian Koster has gone from borderline agoraphobe to a mad touring extrovert. A member of Elephant 6’s psych-pop collective in the 1990s, Koster performed with Neutral Milk Hotel and released his debut full-length, “First Imaginary Symphony for a Nomad,” in 1999, before retreating to a far-flung island […]

It’s been a whirlwind year for the Eli Young Band, and drummer Chris Thompson’s still trying to catch his breath. They’ve not only watched music from their Universal South debut, “Jet Black & Jealous” climb the Billboard country charts, but have fueled it with nearly nonstop national and radio tours. NORTH TEXASIMPRESSED “We’ve been together […]

T.S.O.L. were punk rock originals, and the flagship act of the late 1970s/early 1980s Orange County hardcore scene, headlining shows with Bad Religion, Social Distortion and Suicidal Tendencies. Though a hugely influential act, the group never attained the same acclaim beyond California, hampered by their ever-shifting sound, drugs and the adventures of mercurial front man […]

Some artists are crafted by outside forces, while others wind upward, vine-like, working their way slowly into the light, supported by the traditions that came before them. Rootsy singer/songwriter Jason Eady chose vine over product after being cured of his musical disillusionment by such artists as Steve Earle, John Prine and Townes Van Zandt. Although […]