The Blues Brothers of Miami Band Juke

Joe Ely and Joel Guzman Live Cactus ely.com Though he hails from the same West Texas environs that birthed Buddy Holly and he practices the same roots regimen as fellow Flatlanders Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely is still an original. A crossover country troubadour, he delivers dust-blown…

Rod MacDonald After the War (Blue Flute Music) With a new president and a slightly more optimistic national outlook, you’d think there wouldn’t be much for your ordinary, everyday protest singer to still rail about. Apparently nobody has told that to Delray’s favorite folkie, Rod MacDonald. Though its title might…

Local band Ex-Norwegian’s name doesn’t make much sense — we’re not talking about legitimate Scandinavian expatriates here, after all. But consider it an improvement over ringleader Roger Houdaille’s former nom de plume, Father Bloopy. Fortunately, there’s reason enough to forgive Houdaille for his unfortunate choice of monikers; it doesn’t diminish…

Tapping into tradition isn’t exactly a shortcut to notoriety. But when the Mavericks set out to carve their niche in country music in the late 1980s, they were arguably the most unlikely outfit ever to emerge from South Florida’s music scene. They eschewed the dance designs that had propelled the…

James Dunn The Long Ride Home jamesdunnmusic.com Even the title boasts an air of familiarity, one that translates to the sound of the songs themselves. It breeds a connection that finds these muscular melodies recalling the angst-filled anthems of Bruce Springsteen as they might sound if sung by Jackson Browne…

A covers album from a South Florida combo is hardly breaking news, considering this a locale where well-crafted original music is a rare commodity. But when you’re talking about the sophomore set from the Postmarks, a group widely hailed for purveying a distinctive style, it should bring you up short…

If you’ve never heard of I Set My Friends on Fire, it’s the same two Miami homeboys — Matt Mihana and Nabil Moo — who used to play around town as We Are the Cavalry. The music on their latest project still has plenty of teen appeal and encompasses everything…

We ‘R’ Us is a better album than its self-serving title might imply — in fact, it might be one of the best recent South Florida rock releases, period. Chock full of effusive grooves, resilient melodies, and supple hooks, it finds the New Planets in a unique orbit, spinning rings…

Legend has it that during Ronald Reagan’s first run for president, his wife Nancy suggested he use Bruce Springsteen’s popular anthem “Born in the U.S.A.” as a campaign song, maybe to siphon off the youth vote. So Nancy arranged for a backstage visit following one of Springsteen’s shows. As they…

The case of Charlie Pickett is one of rock and roll’s classic stories of almost-was. The Dania homeboy spent much of the Eighties working the road from here to the heartland, produced three highly acclaimed albums and an EP, and garnered a rabid local following in the process. But it…

Considering the fact that 2008 marks the 40th anniversary of a year that produced countless musical milestones, it’s surprising how little has been made of it so far. While pundits were quick to offer retrospectives of 1967, the year that ushered in Sgt. Pepper, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Cream…

With his turnip hairdo and a voice that evokes an infusion of wanderlust and yearning, South Florida’s Shawn Snyder could be Adam Duritz’s forgotten sibling. The tangled emotions Duritz puts forth with Counting Crows share much common ground with Snyder’s introspective musings. Still, Snyder’s confessional style is clearly borne from…

In today’s tough economic times, being a one-man band could be considered as much a function of financial necessity as a measure of instrumental dexterity. After all, given the ever-increasing costs of hotels, meals, and transportation, portability is a plus. Take Ben Prestage, for example. Labeled as “one of the…

The Bonzo Dog Band, an eccentric Sixties British group with a penchant for silliness and satire, once released a song whose title begged the theoretical question, “Can blue men sing the whites?” That is, of course, a twist on the age-old argument about whether white musicians, who never experienced the…

With another St. Patrick’s Day upon us, we’ll once again don the green, approximate some lame Irish accents, and prepare to ingest massive amounts of oddly tinted beer. Worthy pursuits all, but why not add some music to the mayhem? The Irish music of today effectively merges irreverence and tradition…