Todd Snider | Courtesy Gold Mountain Entertainment

Todd Snider played a Kirk Avenue Music-promoted gig at The Sanctuary way back on Sept. 20, and now I can post the video. Woot!

Anyway, he had a full house, including Corey Hunley on the front row. (You can definitely hear Snider’s influence in some of Hunley’s music). Surely Mr. Hunley and any other songwriter in the room got a huge kick out of Snider’s spoken introduction to “Ballad of the Devil’s Backbone Tavern,” which essentially apes the ragtime of such songs as Robert Johnson’s “Red Hot” and Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant.”

It was one of the first numbers he wrote, and he told the story of his earlier forays into songwriting and some sage yet hilarious advice he received when first setting out on that path.

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7 – Glam’r Kiti
8 – Marie Frith Anderson and Aaron Oberg
14 – Built To Write, Funk Punch
15 – Doghouse (Covington)
21 – Harvest Blaque
22 – Phantom Zone, and Anduril (rocking Christmas)
25 – Juice. 10 p.m.
28 – Atoadaso
29- Poe Mack
31 – Hanoi Jane, Compulsovich, Sins of Another, Black Mountain Revival

Wet Willie, still a powerful blues and soul variant of Southern rock, brought a flavor of the 70s to Big Lick Blues last Saturday (9.29.12)

Singer and /harmonica sax man Jimmy Hall brought powerful vocals, and the band was solid as all get out and just flashy enough to keep things loose.

Here’s the band doing its signature hit,  “Keep On Smilin.’” The Willie didn’t play “Weekend.” See, some songs just don’t hold up.

http://youtu.be/dfqOCPS1SwY

Corey Ledet and His Zydeco Band at FloydFest 11 on the Blue Ridge and Beyond Dance Tent on Saturday night.

Images from our 24 hours at Floydfest project were put together into a gallery.  Photographers Sam Dean, Rebecca Barnett, Daniel Lin, Stephanie Klein-Davis and Kyle Green have some amazing photographs.  Check them out!

That’s the word from FloydFest communications maven Linda DeVito. That makes four days of more than 12,000 people on the site, and three days of about 12,500 — by far a new attendance record. Gotta say, congratulations to FloydFest. How many more years can the organizers keep topping themselves?

-Photography by Sam Dean / The Roanoke Times

PolyChrome at Schooners, opening for Mother's Finest on May 3.

Roanoke pop-rock band PolyChrome played Schooner’s on May 3, opening for the mighty Mother’s Finest. This act, which combines popular cover tunes with its own nice originals, was a good warmup for that night’s funk-rock action.

Here, the band plays new songs from its upcoming CD, “Wild and Woolly” — “Scream,” followed by the title track.

See frontman Sean Bera and bassist Perry Mabry in their PolyChrome Duo configuration tonight at Brambleton Deli. See the full band on Friday at Billy’s Barn.