My Radio | Photo by Brett Winter Lemon

My Radio could easily be on the road all the time. But this pop-rock quartet from Roanoke has other ideas about how to make music work for it.

Everyone in the band has his own successful work happening. Frontman/keyboardist J.P. Powell and drummer Hunter Johnson co-own the restaurant Lucky, where we did this podcast. Bassist Jeff Hofmann is gigging with someone, somewhere, just about all the time — except when he’s holding down the big strings for this band. And guitarist Brett Lemon is a photographer with lots of gigs, including one that had him in Arizona on the day the rest of the band met up with me at Lucky.

But My Radio sure gets the bang out of its musical output. Its “Yeah Yeah Yeah” was in the movies (“The Joneses”) and TV (“Homeland”) — the type of real money success that funded the band’s forthcoming album, “Starts in the East Falls in the West.” A song from that disc, “Life Is A Bitch Slap,” could see the same kind of success. Then again, the new disc is full of songs that people will want to hear. The band headlines a CD release show on Saturday at Kirk Avenue Music Hall.

Read more about it in Thursday’s Inside Out. And check out this podcast, which features streaming music from the new disc — “Something New,” “Aliens” and “Life Is A Bitch Slap.”

Eric Church | File photo

For country singer Eric Church, 2012 has been the year of the “Chief.”

That’s the title of Church’s third album, the one that gave Church a complete commercial breakthrough. The disc has sold more than a million copies, as have two of its singles, “Drink in My Hand” and “Springsteen.”

Along with the sales success has come award nominations – 12 from the Country Music Academy alone, and a Grammy nomination for best country album.

People are paying attention these days. But Church, who brings his act to Roanoke Civic Center on Thursday, is not that far removed from the days when he felt like no one knew who he was.

“There were a lot of years that we had 14 people on a tour bus, and just traveling up and down the road, and not making any money and barely making rent,” Church, 35, recalled in a phone call earlier this month. “I’ve had many of those years.

“So to have a year like this … has allowed us to travel a little bit differently, and my family can come out with me. We can go up and down the road a little more comfortably, especially for a baby. I’m just very thankful.”

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Danny Barnes | Facebook

Danny Barnes, who comes to Martin’s Downtown on Wednesday, opening for William Walter, is more than a banjo player. In fact, his latest creation, the BarnJo, is a hybrid of banjo and electric guitar, tuned to open E. He accompanies himself via an intense piece of software in his Apple computer. And he writes cool songs, with a voice kind of reminiscent of John Anderson.

Of his years of musical growth — combining the pure country of his Texas childhood with the avant garde and rock of his later years, Barnes says, “I look at myself like the postman, instead of the mail itself.”

On this special delivery, we talk cassettes — Barnes, a University of Texas audio production graduate, loves them and says hip-hop and metal sound the best in the format — the mysteries of the Mac and his interest in being commercial. Short answer to that last bit: He has no interest in what’s hot or what will catch on; it’s all about the music.

Show Details: 9:30 p.m. Martin’s Downtown Bar & Grill, Roanoke. Free. 985-6278.

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Grace Potter | Courtesy Williams + Hirakawa

Grace Potter & the Nocturnals have for years been part of the Southwest Virginia live music scene. With Potter’s explosive voice in front of a wall of rock, pop, soul, blues and psychedelia, the band that first came to the valleys in 2005, to play Blacksburg’s Steppin’ Out, has seen its profile consistently rise.

The band has headlined at Jefferson Center in Roanoke and FloydFest, and it opened for the Avett Brothers in 2010 at Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre.

A decade after its formation, the band has touring dates that include the Ryman Auditorium, in Nashville, Tenn., Zac Brown’s Southern Ground Music & Food Festival, in Charleston, S.C., and New York City’s Beacon Theatre. Closer to Roanoke, the band has sold out two of three scheduled dates at the 9:30 Club, in Washington, D.C.

Potter brings her band, The Nocturnals, to Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre on Thursday. Rayland Baxter opens the show. Read the full story in Sunday’s Extra section. Streaming music on this podcast — the title cut from her latest album, “The Lion The Beast The Beat,” “The Divide.”

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Sara Watkins | Courtesy Ted Caloroso

Sara Watkins’ musical life after Nickel Creek is turning out to be just as interesting as what she did with that young band of acoustic groundbreakers.

In the five years since Nickel Creek split up — its farewell tour included a stop at Roanoke’s Jefferson Center — Watkins has made two solo records, including the recent release, “Sun Midnight Sun.”

Watkins performs Friday at The Lyric Theatre in Blacksburg. Read the full story.

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Jorma Kaukonen | Photo by Scott Hall, courtesy Red House Records

Digital recording brings perfection closer these days. At least that’s how it seems on the surface. But Jorma Kaukonen, who comes to Kirk Avenue Music Hall on Saturday, inspires a great question: How much beautiful imperfection winds up squeezed out of the music folks are making today?

In our interview to advance the Kirk Ave. show, I asked Kaukonen about Jefferson Airplane’s enduring appeal. That act — which rose up in the mid-1960s to help define psychedelic rock and eventually to propel its members into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — is mostly famous for the song’s “White Rabbit” and “Someone To Love.” “Surrealistic Pillow,” the album that spawned both of those songs, was recorded to a four-track machine with no noise reduction. Overdubs had to be minimal, lest the sound be degraded.

That lack of overdubs forced the band to keep in something that Kaukonen would originally have preferred not make the final cut.

“On the end of ‘Somebody to Love,’ there’s a little out vamp where I’m playing against the changes, and then that last couple of bars, there’s a thing that’s a little bit out of tune, that I thought was a mistake at the time,” Kaukonen said in a phone call today. “But then over the years, it’s become iconic, and people I know that play the song play it that way.

“If I had to do it over again today and we were doing digital stuff, I would have fixed all that stuff and it wouldn’t be anywhere near as good.”

We talk about the Airplane, the blues, Kaukonen (and Hot Tuna) sideman Barry Mitterhoff and more on this podcast. Look for a story on Kaukonen in Friday’s Extra section.

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WilsonFairchild, from left: Langdon Reid and Wil Reid, opening for George Jones in November 2011 at Salem Civic Center. They used their middle names to create their band name | Photo courtesy Salem Civic Center

Wil Reid and first cousin Landgon grew up Statler — Wil’s father is Harold Reid, and Langdon’s father is Don Reid. If you don’t know those names, you are not old-school country. Harold and Don Reid are Country Music Hall of Fame members with the Statler Brothers, from Staunton.

The Statlers made music history with such songs as “Flowers On The Wall,” “Class of ’57,” “I’ll Go To My Grave Loving You” and more. And lets not forget their side act, Lester “Roadhog” Moran and the Cadillac Cowboys — Harold Reid was the “old Roadhog.”

To the younger Reids, it all seemed normal.

“We thought everybody’s dads had pointy boots and wore a tour buses,” Wil Reid said.

The two sons grew up to make their own country act, Wilson Fairchild, which opened last year for George Jones at Salem Civic Center. Wilson Fairchild returns to town on Saturday for Star-B-Q Salem 2012. Young country chanteuse Lauren Alaina is the headliner. Opening the show is the Roanoke Valley’s own Rutledge.

“The thing that’s always been tough for us is we kind of look like our dads,” Wil Raid said in a thick baritone not far downrange from his father’s. “Our voices kind of sound like our dads. sometimes it’s tough to get people to get past that. But we never wanted to ride coattails. And we’ve had a lot of good success ourselves.”

That success includes writing songs for such acts as Dailey & Vincent (huge Statler Brothers fans, who will hit New River Community College soon with that act’s Jimmy Fortune) and Ricky Skaggs.

Hear more on this podcast, including streaming music from the act’s newest CD, “Get Your Country On.” The Reid boys decided to avoid getting involved with a record label on this one, content instead to be DIY country guys.

“It is definitely working better for us than ever, that we are just doing what we do,” he said. “And we don’t have to fit into a mold of what Nashville or a record label thinks you should be doing. If there’s enough fans to support what you do, then you can do it.”

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Todd Snider | Courtesy Gold Mountain Entertainment

There are plenty of great lines on Todd Snider’s most recent album, “Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables,” released earlie rthis year on Snider’s own imprint, Aimless Records. And many of them center on the tensions among the so-called one percent and the 99 percent.

“There’s some threats on that record, where people are threatening to kill other people and stuff,” Snider said. “I was just trying to make my head rhyme, you know. But the older I get, the more confused I feel, or the less I feel like I know. And it comes out less linear or something, or at least I don’t understand the songs as well as I used to.”

If the songs leave Snider wondering, the results are direct. The song’s opening track, which counts as a “stoner fable,” is “In The Beginning,” during which Snider narrates an early human problem — a man with a lot of stuff trying to dissauade a crowd from killing him and taking it all with them.

“God gave me this, because I’m humble, and he can do the same for you too … You better find some way to humble yourself. May I suggest helping me clean up around here?”

Snider plays The Sanctuary on Sept. 20. Kevin Gordon opens the show. Read the entire story in Saturday’s Extra section. On this podcast, we talk about the music and Snider’s collection of father figures, which includes John Prine and Jimmy Buffett. Also, we learn how Snider was inspired to learn guitar and write songs after seeing Jerry Jeff Walker performing in Austin, Texas, years ago.

It “just looked like he’s not moving his hands much,” Snider recalled. “Doesn’t look like Stevie Ray Vaughan. It just looks like he holds his hand in one spot for a long time.

“And then also the stuff he was singing about felt like stuff I was living, you know, and I thought I could rhyme my own life and maybe do this.”

He was correct.

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The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band is (from left) Aaron "Cuz" Persinger, Joshua Peyton and his wife, "Washboard" Breezy Peyton. | Photo courtesy Scott Toepfer

The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band returns to Roanoke on Friday, rolling with the success of what frontman Joshua Peyton says is the band’s best album yet.

That disc, “Between The Ditches” (Side One Dummy), is also the band’s most commercially successful release. The record, which came out on Aug. 7, debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard blues albums chart, right behind Bonnie Raitt’s latest, “Slipstream,” which has ruled that chart for weeks.

Read the full story. Streaming music on this podcast — “Devils Look Like Angels,” “Big Blue Chevy 72″ and “Don’t Grind It Down.”

UPDATE [3:46 p.m. 9.4.12]: Roanoke band Watershed Conspiracy opens the show. Hit time is 9 p.m.

Old Crow Medicine Show, with new member Chance McCoy third from left | Photo courtesy Big Hassle Media

Old Crow Medicine Show‘s newest member — multi-instrumentalist and singer Chance McCoy — didn’t know the members of Old Crow, but he knew the band’s music well by the time he received an invitation to audition for the act in Nashville, Tenn. McCoy’s own band, the Floyd-based Old Sledge, had split up in a spate of drama during a festival in Maine, and McCoy was not looking to go back on the road immediately. But it was the kind of opportunity that a good player does not pass up.

He made the audition, got the gig and is now touring with the band, which comes to Salem Civic Center on Aug. 17. On this podcast, we talk about the end of Old Sledge, joining Old Crow and about the solo projects that he is trying to balance when not working with his new band, which includes Harrisonburg-area natives Ketch Secor and Critter Fuqua.

Read more about McCoy and his new band in Tuesday’s Extra section or at roanoke.com/extra.

Streaming music from Old Crow Medicine Show’s new album, “Carry Me Back” — “Mississippi Saturday Night” and “Ain’t It Enough.” McCoy joined the band after the recording was done, but he  said his vocal work is featured live on those numbers.