Konrad Wert's first exposure to music was in the small Mennonite community where he grew up in southern Florida. The church setting taught him how to sing, and he later started picking up stringed instruments when his mother enrolled him in public school. Years later, it was a fellow student who inspired Wert to take music in a different direction.

While describing the influx of businessmen and record executives migrating from Los Angeles to his Nashville hometown, Justin Townes Earle emanates frustration. “It’s colonialism," he said. "The TV show 'Nashville'has made it sound like we are enjoying this new-found reputation. But if you ask me, we already had a pretty damn good one.”

It’s an interesting time to be in a band, what with society’s newfound hyperconnectivity and all. The seemingly endless tide of adept millennials pumping out totally decent music on bedroom laptops can bestow an unsettling urgency for artists to try and keep up. 

From psychological anthropology to tribal dance rituals, there isn’t much that doesn’t inspire Shara Worden. Since forming My Brightest Diamond in 2006, Worden has blurred the lines between classical, pop, cabaret and folk, while drawing upon wide-ranging themes. But to her, genre is irrelevant. Worden simply puts anything and everything she enjoys into her music.

For the third year running, the first weekend in November hosts Eastown’s Lamp Light Music Festival. The three-day gala of artistic delights brings together some of the area’s most ardent and talented creators, serving as a celebration of both really great music and a community’s potential to carve its own cultural niche.

For 30 years, the infamous band known as GWAR has been delivering its brand of heavy metal through signature, over-the-top live shows that sport everything from gargantuan alien monsters to staged celebrity executions.

Cat lovers are passionate. Beer lovers are passionate. That's the idea behind Rock for Crash's, a cat-themed musical event that benefits Crash's Landing, a Grand Rapids-based cat rescue and placement center.

Today it was announced legendary rock band Fleetwood Mac will perform at Van Andel Arena on Jan. 20, 2015. This date will include Christine McVie, who has rejoined the band after 15 years.

Max Lockwood didn’t make his first solo record so much as he grew it. Instead of hiring studio musicians to execute a defined vision, the Big Dudee Roo bassist simply took the 12 original songs he’d written for his senior thesis project at the University of Michigan and sowed them throughout his circle of friends.

Shoegaze fans, stand in solidarity; Kalamashoegazer is back. Now in it’s eighth year running, the show is West Michigan’s yearly bloodrite to the dreamy swells we know and love as shoegaze.