Music City met Sin City when Las Vegas rock band The Killers performed at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville Sunday night. Dressed in black and armed with lasers, a projection screen backdrop, and a keyboard bedecked with an illuminated lightning bolt, lead singer Brandon Flowers was on fire as he tirelessly ripped through [...]

The Flaming Lips and The Black Keys turned in a high-energy show at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Friday, May 3rd, 2013. It was The Black Keys’ first official “hometown” date since moving here from Akron, Ohio two and a half years ago. The Lips showed off their revamped, psychadelic stage show, and focused on songs [...]

My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James performs at Cannery Ballroom in Nashville, TN, 5/2/2013.

Sometimes, you just have to get back to basics. That’s what former Passion Pit keyboardist Ayad Al Adhamy did when he started Team Spirit, turning to unabashedly straightforward rock instead. Taking over lead vocal/guitar duties, he recruited Toby Pettigrew (bass), Mike Adesso (drums) and Cosmo DiGiulio (guitar) to join him in making harmony-and-hook-laden tributes to [...]

After last year’s bountiful two-day outing, Zac Brown Band will be coming back for more with their second Southern Ground Music & Food Festival, to be held September 27 and 28 in downtown Nashville. The festival and lineup received nothing but praise in 2012, and this one looks to be just as good, if not [...]

Last month, Willy Mason and Brendan Benson rounded up an all-star team of musicians and entered the upstairs apartment at Nashville’s United Record Pressing. Years ago, that apartment was used by artists and record execs who came to the the segregated south and found themselves excluded from hotels due to the color of their skin. [...]

Nashville singer-songwriter Trent Dabbs, whose song “Shine” was recently featured on ABC’s Nashville,  invited us into his lair to hear “Mountain Song,” an elegant and beautifully understated track off his forthcoming album. In the latest installment of our Martin Guitar: Session series, Dabbs picked on a D-18, which is regarded as the ultimate bluegrass model. [...]

Everyone knows it’s finally spring in Nashville when thousands of aspiring songwriters and music fans invade the city for Tin Pan South. The world’s largest songwriter festival, produced by the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI), just finished its 21st go-round, as some of the music industry’s most famed songwriters of past and present times performed [...]

When you’ve got six members in your band — many of them multi-instrumentalists — you can cover a lot of ground. That’s the case with Nashville’s Kopecky Family Band, a group of instrument-swapping coeds whose songs bridge the gap between sweeping chamber-pop and indie rock. Directed and produced by J. Bryan Dill, this live performance [...]

At 66, Elton John has put together one of his most satisfying tours ever. Lasting for three hit-filled hours, John’s 40th Anniversary of the Rocket Man tour stop at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on April 5th covered all the bases of his remarkable career, from opener “The Bitch Is Back” to the closing number “Your Song.” [...]

Fiction collided with reality when the cast of Nashville (along with musicians Buddy Miller, Colin Linden, Sarah Buxton, Tyler James and Kate York) banded together at 3rd and Lindsley to perform songs from the show during the annual Tin Pan South Songwriters Festival. All photos by Danielle Holbert.