the one after the big one

Few bands hit it out of the park with their first album quite like America did with their self-titled 1971 debut and its indelible single “A Horse with No Name.” The song is still played on classic rock and adult...

Rapper, singer/songwriter, country-funk bandleader, gutter poet, political lightning rod, proud Michigan man – ol’ Bob Ritchie (known by most as Kid Rock) is all of these things, a polymath’s polymath. He can name which breakbeats Jam Master Jay sampled on...

For a time in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s there were a handful of young musicians intent on preaching the gospel of country music to their peers (listeners and fellow players who were largely, if not completely, more interested...

The 1970 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album DÉJÀ VU was a highwater mark for all involved in terms of sales and musical impact, but it was the tour supporting that record, as well as a 1974 reunion jaunt across...

How were Mason Proffit not a huge band? Built around brothers Terry and John Michael Talbot, this Champaign, Illinois-based collective made five records – three for small labels, two for Warner Bros. – that deftly mined the same country-rock elements...

The overwhelming success of 1984’s CHICAGO 17 shook Chicago (the band, not the city) to its core. It was the biggest-selling record of their then-17-year career, racking up a fistful of hit singles (including the immortal “You’re the Inspiration”) and...

Let us all rise and sing in praise of the great Kip Winger. No mere lite metal god he; a classically trained musician and ballet dancer in his youth, Winger went from backing Alice Cooper in the mid-’80s to fronting...

Things don’t always happen when we think they should happen. Kids say mature things before we expect them to. Winter can come and go with nary a flake dropping from the sky, and then April comes around and with it...

Robert Plant made big news on 1988’s NOW AND ZEN as he, for practically the first time in his solo career, seemed to fully embrace the legacy of Led Zeppelin. It was something he had studiously avoided on previous records...