Dale Short

Imagine rock, rhythm and blues, soul, funk, jazz and a few other stray musical influences grated together with a sprinkling of Zydeco for extra seasoning, and the result is a genre that's been dubbed "blue-eyed prairie soul" by its instigatorTom Coryell and The Incorrigibles .

Searching for your lost inner child? Or outer child, for that matter?

Have you noticed a shortage of superlatives lately? That's because music critics and reviewers from Laramie to the Big Apple have used them all up in trying to describe a singular Wyoming artist named Jalan Crossland.

Remember the great quartet harmonies of the Grand Ol' Opry, with all four singers leaning in close to a single microphone? Picture that same arrangement but with one of them playing a cello and you have an idea of how the band known as Darlingside performs.

The phrase "Second Time Around" has double meaning for the eclectic string band known as Barefoot Movement.

Let's say you're the Devil, and you're a few souls shy of making your quota when you decide to check out backwoods Georgia and challenge a young fiddle ace named Johnny, betting him a fiddle of gold against his soul. For Satan--as the song lyrics demonstrate--it was a terrible career move...

One school of thought says that if you start out your musical career scrounging unpaid club gigs as the Illegitimate Jug Band, you've got no place to go but up. (This was in Long Beach, California, in the mid 1960s.)

Celebrating their 13th anniversary as a band has been far from unlucky for Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes. Among the group's many recent plaudits is a rave from music reviewer Adam Pitluk of the widely circulated American Airlines magazine: "The best live show I've seen in New Orleans in 15 years."

It's hard to imagine a more appropriate title than "Time Traveler" for the newest CD from the singer/songwriter duo known as The Likes of Us.

Sure, the Deadly Gentlemen could tell you how they got their name. But then they'd have to kill you.