Broken Grass and Tony Furtado and the American Gypsies will hoot and holler their way into the Capital City this Saturday, with a "Harvest Hoedown" that promises a roaring night of real music for anyo]]> Much has been made of Neko Case’s peerless pipes, and rightly so. Her voice, a resonant contralto, is as loud as a marching band, as bright as church bells, as delicate]]> In 1998, Champaign-based Amasong, a chorus consisting of only lesbians and feminists, won a Gay and Lesbian Music Association award -- a GLAMMY -- for its song, "The Water is Sweet Over Here." For the]]> Now that President George W. Bush’s approval ratings are stagnating around 30 percent, protest songs are fashionable again, with everyone from Pink to Pearl Jam clamoring to kick ol]]> Susana Baca Traves'as (Luaka Bop) Travesías means “passages” in Spanish, and it’s an especially appropriate title for Susana Baca’s latest album, her ]]> When I was 5 or 6 years old, I believed that musicals were real. When the time was right, the people around me would burst into song, and we could finally stop worrying about what to say nex]]> Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs Under the Covers, Vol. 1 (Shout! Factory) When it comes to covers, there are two schools of thought. Adherents of the first try to re-]]> "She is almost too good to be true," says The Washington Post of mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves. "A vital artist, a beautiful woman, a regal presence," the newspaper gushed. There are opera singer]]> There’s a reason Vetiver gets lumped in with the freak-folk crowd, but it doesn’t have much to do with its music. Andy Cabic, the San Francisco-based collective’s only perm]]> Cold started 2003 on a roll. After a five-year apprenticeship with fellow Florida nü-metalheads Limp Bizkit, the band was turning away from the chest-beating aggressiven]]> In 1990, two average groups from the Boulder, Colo., area joined forces, and ended up creating one of the most popular jam bands to fill the void left by the decomposition of]]> This past weekend marked the end of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra’s 20th anniversary season, which was the first under the musical direction of Maestro Alastair Willis. Willis did not conduct ]]> Elvis Costello and the Imposters The Delivery Man (Lost Highway) On the title track of his latest album, Elvis Costello sings, "I want to be your delivery man." True to form, he's layered the l]]> Almost no one reads poetry anymore, which means that you probably haven’t read Actual Air, one of the very few poetry collections written by a working singer/songwriter]]> The musicians of the “Winter Dance Party 1959” played Kenosha, Wis., on Jan. 24 of that year, one of the few stops on an ill-fated sojourn which ended for Buddy Holly in an Io]]>