Ben Tyree (left) and Stephanie Rooker | Courtesy Stephanie Rooker

Radford native Stephanie Rooker, a jazz, soul, hip-hop and R&B singer and songwriter, plays Kirk Avenue Music Hall on Friday with her husband, guitarist Ben Tyree, accompanying her. Rooker, who lives in New York City these days, has workshop gigs, too. At 6 p.m. today, she is at the Music Lab at Jefferson Center for “Heart/Beats & Blood/Lines — Sounds of Hip-Hop.” On Wednesday, she hits the June Bug Center in Floyd for her “Voice Journey” Workshop.

Embedding podcasts is still a work-in-progress with our new website. As I have limited space on soundcloud, I’ve posted this podcast to archive.org, which doesn’t allow me to embed in WordPress. So here’s the link until things get better. Thanks for your patience.

UPDATED 11:19 a.m. 3.21.13: We’re live with soundcloud pro till we get our in-house embedding problem solved.

Southern Culture on the Skids | scots.com

As Roanokers, we sometimes lose perspective on our city. We’re here all the time. We take cool things for granted, or we don’t even know they exist. We tend to get mad at some of the new stuff and denigrate some of the old.

So it’s at least interesting to know what folks from other places think of the Noke. With Southern Culture on the Skids, an indie rock institution that returns to town on Saturday for a show at Growler’s American Grill, we can can get a multi-faceted perspective.

After all, two of the three core members — drummer Dave Hartman and bassist/singer Mary Huff — grew up here but have lived in the Chapel Hill, N.C., area for many years. Frontman/guitarist/songwriter Rick Miller has never lived here but has visited many times.

Here is what each member of the band has to say about their favorite things in Roanoke. It’s fun! Get show details via our Top Tickets page and read more — with cool photos — in Saturday’s Extra section.

Moreland & Arbuckle | Courtesy Gavin Peters

Coming up in the Wichita, Kansas, area, guitarist Aaron Moreland and harmonica player/singer Dustin Arbuckle were rare characters — young guys who were deeply into Mississippi Delta blues playing. Fortunately, the two came together at an open mic jam in Wichita in 2001.  It was instant chemistry for the pair, Arbuckle said in a phone call last week.

Their act, Moreland & Arbuckle, comes to the Rives Theatre, Martinsville, on Saturday. Get show details in Top Tickets, at music.roanoke.com. But if you come, don’t expect to get a relentless dose of that old-school Delta stuff. The guys love it, but they love hard rock, country, soul. They find space in their music from both Fred McDowell and Led Zeppelin.

“I don’t know that it was necessarily something that we tried all that hard to do,” Arbuckle said. “You realize at some point, well, you just can’t keep doing the exact same thing over and over again. But it really did happen pretty organically.”

The onetime duo is a trio now, with a pounding drummer and a recent record, “Just A Dream.” On this podcast with Arbuckle, we stream three tunes from that disc — “Brown Bomber,” “Purgatory” and “White Lightnin.’” The latter is a Steve Cropper song and the recording features Cropper. Hear Arbuckle talk about that connection and  more on the stream.

Flannel Church | Courtesy Margaret Willard

Duane Trucks, who brings the band Flannel Church to Growler’s American Grill on March 6, has quite a pedigree. (Go to Top Tickets at music.roanoke.com on to get show details.)

His oldest brother is guitar god Derek Trucks (Tedeschi Trucks Band), and his uncle is Butch Trucks, drummer for the Allman Brothers Band. From the time Duane Trucks was a child, he had big drumming influences. One of his brother’s early gigs was with Col. Bruce Hampton and the Fiji Mariners, and through Hampton, Duane was exposed to such drummers as Jeff “Apt. Q-258″ Sipe and Tyler “The Falcon” Greenwell” (now one of the drummers in Tedeschi Trucks Band). He got to hang out plenty with Derek Trucks Band’s longtime drummer, Yonrico Scott, too.

Growing up, the Trucks boys’ father would spin Allman Brothers albums and play bootleg tapes of band rehearsals. Duane Trucks didn’t realize it at the time, but he would wind up sounding like his Uncle Butch.

“I didn’t even realize it until I went out and started playing and hearing the first recording of myself playing live or seeing the first video that I ever say of myself playing, [and] I was like, oh my God, I sound like Butch,” Duane Trucks said in a Feb. 13 interview. “How does that happen?”

Read more »

Sami The Great | Courtesy Golightly Media

Roanoke College graduate Sami “The Great” Akbari returns to the valley with an original idea for a show. Akbari’s The Great Animation Tour — which hits Kirk Avenue Music Hall on March 5 — features animation inspired by her music and synced up to prerecorded, reimagined versions of her tunes, to which she’ll sing and play along. On this podcast, Akbari said, “It’s going to be quite the experience, I think, for the listeners and the onlookers.”

Streaming music: “Candyland.”

Check the Top Tickets page at music.roanoke.com for show info.

Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers | Courtesy ID

Onstage banter is a big part of bluegrass music tradition. Some of it is corn pone. Some of it is downright funny. Some of it is just awful. Steep Canyon Rangers used to do a lot of it — until the band started touring with comedian-turned-actor-turned-Renaissance-man Steve Martin. Martin, a serious banjo player and songwriter, can still crack up crowds from stages.

“We used to try to be funny in between songs and have jokes,” Steep Canyon Rangers lead singer and guitarist Woody Platt, 35, said. “And after working with Steve and seeing how you do it correctly and how you can really be funny in a unique way, we’ve gone out on our tours and just kind of backed off all the jokes.”

Martin and the Rangers join forces on Sunday night at Virginia Tech’s Burruss Auditorium. Get show details in Top Tickets at music.roanoke.com. And read the full story with Platt on Friday at music.roanoke.com.

The Campbell Brothers, from left: Darick Campbell, Phil Campbell, Chuck Campbell | Courtesy Jefferson Center

Where “Sacred Steel” guitar music is concerned, it all begins with the groove.

Steel guitar, played in a funky, bluesy, vocal style that is almost nothing like country music, gets the spotlight. But practically everyone who comes to that instrument starts out playing drums on Sundays at House of God Church Keith Dominion congregations.

The Campbell Brothers, who play Jefferson Center on Friday night, are a solid example. Pedal steel player Chuck Campbell, 55, started out on drums, even playing the church’s national convocation one year. His lap steel-playing brother, Darick, 46, was the most talented drummer in the family, according to brother Phil Campbell, 50, the band’s guitarist.

“The value of starting out on drums, it gives you that rhythmic foundation that says, you know, everything builds from there,” Phil Campbell said by phone on Monday from the band’s home base in the Rochester, N.Y., area. “I think that’s one of the things that helps make our music be so vibrant and something that truly can be improvised around, because you have that solid rhythmic foundation to build on that allows you to explore and do different things with the music.”

Read more at roanoke.com.

Streaming music: “Frammin’” and “No Mo’ One Mo’”.

James Cotton | Courtesy Alligator Records

James “Superharp” Cotton is the rarest of bluesmen — the only man living who worked with both Chester “Howlin’ Wolf” Burnett and McKinley “Muddy Waters” Morganfield. That makes him a great choice to be part of Jefferson Center’s Saturday night concert, Blues at the Crossroads II. (The show is sold out.)

Cotton joins onetime Wolf sidemen Jody Williams, The Fabulous Thunderbirds feat. Kim Wilson (no slouch himself on the harmonica), Bob Margolin and Tinsley Ellis (a late sub for J.J. Grey, who backed out of the tour).

On this podcast, Cotton, who years ago beat throat cancer, isn’t always easy to understand. But pay attention to his hoarse, near-whisper of a voice. He has a lot of stories to tell. Also, we stream “Buried Alive in the Blues,” from his last recording, 2010′s “Giant,” and discuss his upcoming CD.

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Courtesy Hoppie Vaughan

Blues and soul man Hoppie Vaughan plays everywhere. He’s usually covering beloved tunes, but on Thurday at Kirk Avenue Music Hall, it’s all original Hoppie music. And the players behind him, including his son Robert on drums, will lay down serious grooves. Get show information at Top Tickets.

On this podcast, we find out how Vaughan converted himself from a bass player to a guitarist, about the original music that he has written over the years, his musical relationship with Rob Vaughan and some tricks of the trade on performing and getting a show together while you’re on the gig.

Plus, we stream some Vaughan originals — “Hambone,” “Dead Man” and “King Size Fool.” Good original tunes from a guy best known for covering tons of stuff. He does sneak in his originals, but says he never announces them as originals. That way, he can gauge a crowd’s real response to songs nestled between familiar classics. Good idea!

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Jeff Sipe | Courtesy Jon Weiner Photography

Jeff Sipe brings his trio to Martin’s Downtown on Saturday night. Read the full story and get show details.

Here’s one from the personal anecdote file: I went to Nashville, Tenn., more than 20 years ago to audition for a band. I didn’t get the gig, but I got something better, something that keeps inspiring me.

Before the audition, I walked into a Tower Records store to look around. I heard something that amazed me, something that for one of the few times in my life drew me right up to the counter to ask, “What is that? And can I get a copy?”

The record was “Col. Bruce Hampton & the Aquarium Rescue Unit,” and there was nothing about it that I didn’t like. I still listen to it today. It combined seamlessly elements of rock, jazz, bluegrass, Afro-Cuban and psychedelic music, played by absolute instrumental monsters. I heard the band live three times, and it never sounded the same as the record. Often, it sounded better.

I have followed the careers of the players on that record – Hampton, guitarist Jimmy Herring, bassist Oteil Burbridge, mandolinist Matt Mundy, percussionist Count M’Butu and drummer Jeff Sipe (Chuck Leavell, the guest keyboardist on that record, is a member of The Allman Brothers Band and the Rolling Stones).

As a drummer, though, the player I most identified with was Sipe, aka Apt. Q-258. His drumming was so energetic, in the pocket and sympathetic, with dynamic control and a wild streak. His improvisational skills were – and are – phenomenal.

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