Early this summer, Downtown Grand Rapids Inc. announced that Movies in the Park would become Movies on Monroe. This sixth season of the free summer film series is taking place at 555 Monroe Ave. NW, located along Monroe just north of the interstate. Previously held at Ah-Nab-Awen Park, the move is part of the city’s acquisition of the sizeable riverfront property.
Most rock stars don’t name their records after their grandmothers — let alone a series of records. Then again, Brian Sella, lead vocalist and guitarist of The Front Bottoms, isn’t most rock stars.
At six feet, two inches tall and 260 pounds, violinist Kevin Marcus knows he’s not exactly what most people think of when they envision a classically trained string player.
Kalamazoo’s own Greensky Bluegrass has played just about every summer festival in America. From the esteemed Telluride Bluegrass Festival to the massive Bonnaroo and West Michigan’s own Electric Forest, the band has become an absolute staple on summer stages over its nearly two-decade history.
Everything that can happen, will happen. That’s the crux behind the so-called Murphy’s Law of inevitability, and if ever there was a place where it’s most applicable, it’s the world of live music.
Try to remember the last time you listened to Dashboard Confessional. Maybe it was in 2004 on the Spiderman 2 soundtrack, when a side-burned, dreamy-eyed Chris Carrabba shared a music video with a spidey-suit clad Tobey Maguire, singing the self-edifying lyrics of Vindicated. Or maybe it wasn’t that long ago at all. Maybe you caught Carrabba last month on Conan burning through a performance of We Fight, a single from Crooked Shadows, Dashboard’s first album in nearly a decade.
As the rhythmic core of musical renegades X Ambassadors, drummer Adam Levin has always brought a hip-hop bend to the alt-rock band’s beatific sound. He has helped spearhead the group’s unique fusion of styles and genres, often stumbling upon new sounds simply by embracing what he calls “happy mistakes.”
Months in the making, The Intersection will unveil its latest project this month with the opening of its new concert venue space: Elevation, and its new VIP room: The Mint.
If there was ever a physical and aural personification of anxiety, it would likely be experiential electronic music artist Elohim. Ever-elusive and often draped in an oversized jacket emblazoned with the word XANAX in block letters, Elohim presents herself as something intangible, yet relatable. Her real identity held secret, she chooses to let her music speak for her, only occasionally conversing with her audience or press via an eerily calm digitized speech program.
Perhaps best recognized as the fictional version of himself in the wildly popular television series The Office, Creed Bratton is known for his zany, off-the-wall and sometimes ridiculously insane comments and antics throughout the show’s nine seasons.
This time last year, Grand Rapids hard rock band Trixy Tang had the biggest show of its career: opening for ’80s glam metal icons Warrant in Detroit. It was a dream come true for lead singer/band founder Klay Fennema, and a huge gig for the still relatively new band. It was also the first time the current lineup had ever played together onstage.
In the summer of 1980, Cheap Trick guitar virtuoso Rick Nielsen walked into a New York City recording studio to record I’m Losing You with John Lennon. A few months later, the Beatle was assassinated.
Working alongside Lennon is just one of the many astonishing plaudits Nielsen has received in his long career that started in 1965 but took off in 1977 with the mainstream success of Cheap Trick’s self-titled debut.
Ani DiFranco is no stranger to politics. A leader in the feminist movement, the singer-songwriter and poet isn’t afraid to dive deep, meeting social issues head-on not only through her music, but in activism.
There was a time when she even considered taking a more active role, flirting with the idea of serving in public office.
With another NFL season coming to a close, Pop Evil frontman Leigh Kakaty couldn’t help but compare his band’s current state to that of the long-beleaguered Detroit Lions. “We know we’re not going to win a Super Bowl every year,” Kakaty said just days before the Lions failed to make the NFL playoffs.
