My Morning Jacket keeps Milwaukee guessing, excited in Riverside Theater return Cal Roach April 19, 2025 Nearing three decades as a band, My Morning Jacket have arrived at a rare career plateau: the sustainable-without-superstardom status. Since breaking through in 2005 with the critically-acclaimed Z album, the b...
Emmylou Harris honors Guy Clark at heartfelt Riverside Theater show Cal Roach April 6, 2025 Guy Clark may not be a household name, but his influence on country and Americana runs deep; even those who don’t know the name probably know a song or two that he wrote. Fans of Emmylou Harris should be plenty...
Mannequin Pussy serves punk and politics at Turner Hall Cal Roach April 3, 2025 A quick warning to our readers: the Mannequin Pussy show got political, and in the name of journalism, we will be forced to print language that some may find objectionable. We realize you may have clicked the M...
Umphrey’s McGee treats Riverside Theater to jam-packed performance Cal Roach March 9, 2025 The jam-band bounty continues to flow unabated through the Brew City. Over the past couple months, we've seen three-night stands by both Goose and Spafford, two nights of String Cheese Incident last fall, Phish...
Meshell Ndegeocello brings ‘Gospel Of James Baldwin’ to Vivarium Cal Roach January 28, 2025 For the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, the Recording Academy created three new competitive categories; one of these, Best Alternative Jazz Album, went to Meshell Ndegeocello in its inaugural year, for her 2023 reco...
King Diamond reigns supreme at Riverside Theater Cal Roach November 9, 2024 It’s been 17 years since metal godfather King Diamond released an album, but fans have been in a state of heightened anticipation for a few years now. At Hellfest in 2019, he debuted a new song onstage, “Masque...
Psychedelic Furs, Jesus And Mary Chain get loud at Riverside Theater Cal Roach October 17, 2024 Twenty-twenty-four has been a banner year for UK bands helmed by male siblings. Not only did Oasis announce a handful of reunion shows that are totally gonna actually happen, the U.S. is currently in the throes...
Bizhiki defies genres, maybe creates new one at life-affirming Vivarium show Cal Roach September 12, 2024 Way back in the before-times, there was a festival called Eaux Claires, an outdoor music fest that did away with most of the annoyances and hype of your typical festival and focused on music and spontaneous col...
Wilco kicks off summer tour, smooths over brief crowd fracas at Riverside Theater Cal Roach June 13, 2024 Last month, the Chicago folk-rock veterans of Wilco celebrated their 20th anniversary as a band. Again. Yes, although many fans will recall the band's 2014 Milwaukee stop on its 20th anniversary tour, plenty do...
“Come on, we don’t get to play in Milwaukee every day!” Marc Ribot brings Jazz-Bins to Vivarium Cal Roach April 11, 2024 After years of honing his craft in obscurity, Marc Ribot got his big break in the mid-'80s playing guitar for Tom Waits. Listening to those records now—Rain Dogs and intermittently onward—you hear a restrained ...
“I got a connection with you.” Herbie Hancock delights, inspires at sold-out Pabst Theater Cal Roach April 3, 2024 Before launching into a two-hour-plus set with his band Tuesday night, Chicago jazz legend Herbie Hancock spent several minutes addressing the sold-out Pabst Theater crowd. "The first really professional gig th...
Buffalo Nichols comes home, plays the blues to chatty Vivarium crowd Cal Roach March 3, 2024 Most articles you'll find about Carl Nichols these days wrangle with definitions of the blues. Musicians and songwriters of this genre provided a framework that gave rise to most of modern popular music, yet an...
The Back Room @ Colectivo closes its doors with show from Chicago’s Bitchin Bajas Cal Roach December 16, 2023 It's time to say farewell to The Back Room @ Colectivo. The performance space on Prospect Avenue opened up in 2015 and has served as a great intimate space for local and traveling acts for almost a decade, but ...
Angel Olsen gives raucous Turner Hall crowd something to cry about Cal Roach December 1, 2023 "Thursday is the day of sin, don't you know,” said Angel Olsen from the Turner Hall Ballroom stage—after asking the audience what day it was. She was in a typically conversational mode in Milwaukee, the second ...
Mudhoney delivers the (new) hits at sold-out X-Ray Arcade Cal Roach October 20, 2023 When the Seattle grunge scene blew up in the early 1990s, the scramble for underground cred began immediately. It all seems tragically moot now, as few of the alt-rock superstars of the day remain except Pearl ...
Bonnie Raitt pays tribute to John Prine, Paul Cebar, Hamm’s Beer at Riverside Theater Cal Roach October 11, 2023 The first generations of rock and rollers didn't have long-term career plans; maybe they hoped they'd die before they got old, or maybe they figured on some day getting haircuts and getting real jobs. Now in th...
Nick Cave enthralls the faithful at sparse, powerful Riverside Theater show Cal Roach September 28, 2023 Nick Cave's most recent studio release is a 2021 duo album with multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis called Carnage. Given that Cave's current tour is a rare one without the Bad Seeds backing him, it seemed a goo...
Goose fly into Miller High Life Theatre for night of polished groove-rock Cal Roach September 18, 2023 Everybody skips Milwaukee—it's a tired lament, and one that jam band fans can't chime in on, at least not this year, as nearly every artist from that sprawling community has stopped or will stop by the Brew Cit...
Extreme and Living Colour bring signature tunes (and more) to Pabst Theater Cal Roach August 16, 2023 At first glance, the pairing of Extreme and Living Colour—a couple of American rock bands whose last charting singles came out in the mid-'90s—for a tour in 2023 seems odd. Both bands are dangerously close to o...
Stevie Nicks wows, pays tribute to fallen collaborators at Fiserv Forum Cal Roach August 9, 2023 Is Fleetwood Mac still a band? Following the passing of Christine McVie late last year, the group has at least been on hiatus, with only three members remaining from Mac's '70s-'80s heyday. However, while Mick ...
