Julian Koster claims to trace his family lineage back through generations of Romanian circus performers, and he's shown a fondness over the years for unconventional tours and concerts. So commissioning a circus tent of sorts as part of the Traveling Imaginary, his latest project with the Music Tapes, is really just the next logical step. The ...

Danny Clinch Donald Fagen doesn't hesitate when he's asked to describe the theme of his new solo album, Sunken Condos. "Aging and death," the Steely Dan singer tells Spinner, deadpan. The album is Fagen's first solo release since Morph the Cat in 2006, which was the last entry in a narrative cycle stretching back to The Nightfly, Fagen's ...

Warrior Records Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith has learned plenty of lessons during 25 years in the music business, but one resonates louder than the rest these days: "It's all about live performance," Smith tells Spinner. It's obvious on the grand scale of the Chili Peppers, who have spent most of the summer filling stadiums in ...

Thirty Tigers Drive-By Truckers leader Patterson Hood was planning to write a book while on tour with the band a couple years ago, and he ended up with a collection of songs instead. Hood's latest solo album, Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance, grew out of the book project he shelved midway through. "It kind of happened accidentally," ...

Press Here It's not that members of JJAMZ weren't willing to consider other names for the band, it's that they didn't need to. The musicians, friends for most of the past decade, conceived of and formed the group (pronounced "Juh-Jamz") the same night they started writing songs for their recent debut, Suicide Pact. It all stemmed from a ...

Stephanie Colgan "Speed of Sound" is the centerpiece of Lions & Lambs, the new EP from Minneapolis band Communist Daughter. For a while, it was also the hardest song for bandleader Johnny Solomon to perform. The tune originally appeared on Soundtrack to the End, Communist Daughter's 2010 debut. It was a record that sounded like it was ...

Jim Goodrich Beachwood Sparks' new album, The Tarnished Gold, is the country-rock band's first LP in a decade, during which the group dispersed to grad school, other musical projects and life in general. Yet even though the band broke up, Beachwood Sparks was never really finished -- just worn out from the road after releasing two LPs and ...