Tory Troutman

Peter Case is a songwriter’s songwriter who took Bob Dylan’s route backward, unplugging to go acoustic after doing the electric thing years with California power-poppers The Nerves and The Plimsouls.  His latest album, “Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John,” is stripped-down, but don’t let the title’s allusion to Sleepy John Estes fool you: It’s not […]

There’s a good reason one-third of Cross Canadian Ragweed’s releases are live albums: It is first and foremost a live act. Although lead singer and songwriter Cody Canada acknowledged the group’s live albums are its best sellers because of the band’s road reputation, the last two studio discs have crept up. As the band prepares for […]

Mark Olson left The Jayhawks when they seemed on the precipice of “next big thing” status, having transitioned from Flying Burrito Brothers-style country rock harmonizing to Crazy Horse fuzz and thump to something both, neither and more. His decision to bolt for the desert with musical wife Victoria Williams left The Jayhawks in a tailspin […]

Stillwater’s rowdy five-piece No Justice will play the Wormy Dog Saloon, on Wednesday, Sept. 5, in Bricktown ” the band’s second show in a three-day home stand. The band also will play Okemah’s Red Dirt Harvest Festival on Labor Day weekend before heading back to Texas. Then, it’s back home to Stillwater to showcase the […]

Can the “jam band” tag can be fairly applied to Green Lemon? “That’s kind of what we get portrayed as, but it’s pretty different in a lot of regards,” said guitarist Steve Schaben. Green Lemon’s brand of danceable jams are big on slow-building, sparse grooves; progressive rock; electronica; and solos that have a point. In […]

Probably the best way to get an idea about singer Chris Knight is to think of him as a country guy with lots of dog-eared books on the shelf: novels by William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy.  “Reading Cormac McCarthy just makes me want to write more,” Knight said. “Some of the sentences in […]

A native of Baltimore, Amy Speace has a background in acting, and even once studied voice in hopes of an operatic future. She not only has performed Shakespeare, but also taught it. But she chucked it all for a $50 guitar from a pawnshop and a late start as a singer/songwriter. Speace’s first solo disc, […]

Albuquerque, N.M.’s Soular has spent a lot of time in Oklahoma ” the band has recorded in Norman, and even played Tulsa and Tahlequah, but never has played Oklahoma City. That all changes Friday when the quartet arrives at the Belle Isle Brewery with Oklahoma City’s Luma and Fayetteville, Ark.’s spiritual power popper Benjamin Del […]

For 11 years, San Antonio-based Two Tons of Steel has held down the fort at the legendary, un-air-conditioned Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, Texas, for its annual Tuesday-night summer concert series, averaging 12,000 fans each year. Yet despite trips to Europe and Cuba, they’ve never played in Oklahoma. “We go east and south, but we […]