Mark Jordan

Joe Lewis is living testimony to the fact that you can dramatically alter your life at any time, even on a whim.

Valentine's Day is Tuesday, and area romantics are providing Memphians a number of ways to mark the occasion, beginning Froiday. Here are some special events:

While other 15-year-olds are preparing for homecoming or counting the weeks to spring break, Jacob Latimore is at a dance studio in his adopted hometown of Atlanta, Ga., polishing his moves. He's about to head out on the new leg ...

During the 54th annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 12, the Recording Academy will take a moment to honor a man whom many consider one of the greatest voices not just in country music, but in music, period. But once again, ...

Headlining a national concert tour for the first time would seem to be a stressful proposition, but the members of the New York City-based rock quartet MeTalkPretty seem relaxed on a recent day between shows in Houston and Dallas. "We're ...

Grammy nominated jazz organist Joey DeFrancesco has been one of music’s young guns ever since he emerged on the scene at the tender age of 17. Then, having come from nowhere to claim the mantle of the great Jimmy Smith ...

Given the cinematic sweep of the group's music, it is no surprise that the enigmatically named CT, lead singer of the Little Rock heavy metal band Rwake, is an unabashed moviegoer.

Unusual for a city its size, Memphis can lay claim to being a player in a variety of musical genres -- the familiar trio of blues, rock and soul, of course, but also gospel, heavy metal and even jazz. But ...

The clubs along Beale Street are filled with seasoned performers who have been honing their craft for decades in one of the most demanding musical settings around. So it was something of a surprise recently when the Beale merchants bestowed ...

When he first started playing music in high school, Justin Aubuchon had his goal set on becoming a jazz pianist. Barely a decade later, the Saint Louis, Mo., native plays a very different sort of keyboard as one half of ...

It was altogether appropriate that, toward the end of their show Friday night before a crowd of about 700 at the Gold Strike Casino's Millennium Theater in Tunica, Willie Nelson and his Family Band slid into a gospel mode, playing ...

In the old days, a performer like Austin-based roots singer-guitarist Meagan Tubb might have had trouble breaking into a market like Memphis without the help of a booking agent. But instead, when Tubb began piecing together on her own the ...

Since 2007, Michael Anderson, head of the local concert promotions firm AMS Productions, has been helping turn Martin Luther King Jr. Day into a weekend-long affair with the "Peace & Freedom Weekend," a multievent celebration of the slain civil rights ...

For Corey Davis, founder of Memphis Rebirth Entertainment, picking the right artist to play the organization's fifth anniversary party was a no brainer. Cassie Bonner was his choice. "Cassie by far is one of my favorite performers in the area," ...

Elvis Presley would literally give you the shirt off his back, says Larry Strickland, who as a member of J.D. Sumner & The Stamps sang backup for Elvis in his last years. Strickland recalls during the making of one album, ...

On New Year's Eve 2010, the rock band The Bright Light Social Hour was hard at work -- at least as close to work as the notoriously hard-partying quartet gets -- recording their year-end show at The Parish Theater in ...

Winding down after a whirlwind year in which he went from obscure local rapper to nationally recognized star-in-the-making, Cameron Drake Smith, better know to alternative hip-hop fans in the area as Skewby, was kicking back on his bed in his ...

Perhaps the most poignant New Year's Eve tradition in Memphis is the annual "Bury Your Blues" ceremony, where, following a funeral procession down Beale Street to Handy Park, people throw reminders of whatever bad news they may have had in ...

Considering it's the last/first party of the year, you don't want your New Year's Eve celebration to be a gamble. Fortunately, Mid-South casinos offer a safe best for revelers ringing in the New Year.

Whatever else might have gone wrong in 2011 — the economy, Japanese nuclear reactors, Charlie Sheen, Kim Kardashian's marriage — it was an uncommonly great year for music of all types.

Aside from the stink of marijuana emanating from the set of the 2008 stoner comedy "Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay," which was filmed in the Shreveport-Bossier City area, Northwest Louisiana and Jamaica would seem to have little in ...

In 2008, in what would have been a career highlight for any musician, much less a Catholic one like himself, contemporary Christian music artist John Angotti performed at a concert on the occasion of Pope Benedict XVI's first papal Mass ...

Growing up in Southern California in the 1960s, Andy DiMino looked up to Dean Martin, the Italian crooner/actor/comedian who with his similarly multitalented cohorts Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr., seemed to lord over the swinging decade like “Mad Men”-styled ...

In the 50 years since Patti LaBelle started in show business, a lot of singers have tried to imitate the vocal stylings of the R&B diva, with her unique combination of jazzy phrasing, gospel passion and pop drama. But after ...

On Christmas Eve, two days after he's scheduled to wrap up his current tour with the acclaimed Irish Tenors, Finbar Wright will be on a jet plane headed across the Atlantic, racing back to spend the holiday in his native ...

At 9 years old, the Ross Elementary School fourth-grader has in two years gone from Internet sensation to national television celebrity.

Since coming on the scene a decade ago, the Oklahoma rock group Hinder, which performs at Saturday's 6th Annual Jingle Jam hosted by radio station Q 107.5/96.1 at Harrah's Tunica Casino's Tunica Event Center, has cultivated an image of rock-and-roll ...

Last year, in the middle of making his most recent record, the March release Contact, contemporary jazz saxophonist Boney James was driving home from a concert when his car was rear-ended. James' jaw was fractured, he had a gash on ...

When Don Felder touches down in Memphis this weekend, before heading down U.S. 61 to his gig Saturday night at Fitzgerald's Casino, the famed guitar player and songwriter hopes to take a moment to stop by Graceland and pay his ...

For its first 10 years, the only people who got to see Kevin and Bethany Paige's annual Christmas concert were the lucky congregants at Midtown's Lindenwood Christian Church where the couple front the W.O.W. praise band. But for the first ...

They would seem to have about as much in common as a rattlesnake and a teddy bear, but Richard "Kinky" Friedman, the acerbic, irreverent Jewish singing cowboy from Texas, and Donny Osmond, the affable, earnest Mormon entertainer with the pearly-gates ...

What is DittyTV? If you can't attend Kinky Friedman's benefit concert for the Folk Alliance International on Wednesday night, you can catch it online for free. The show is being streamed as the latest and most high profile in a ...

Actor-comedian John Witherspoon, who begins a three-night run Thursday at Harrah's Tunica Casino's comedy club The Funny Bone, has created many memorable characters — mostly inappropriate fathers — over his long career.

The R&B band Prosody is a new name on the local scene, but those attending the group's concert/DVD shoot on Saturday at the New Daisy Theater may recognize some faces among the members.

One of the biggest acts in Christian rock for almost 20 years, the Nashville-based quartet Jars of Clay has no trouble putting bodies in the seats, so they usually tour alone with just a support act or two.

Sunday's "Memphis Unplugged" concert at Minglewood Hall's 1884 Lounge is not, as the name might suggest, an evening of acoustic performances. Rather, it is a showcase featuring up-and-coming hip-hop and R&B talent like Jessica Ray, Cerioso, Kris Thomas, PAT 24seven ...

Billy Burnette has been to the International Rock-A-Billy Hall of Fame in Jackson, Tenn., to honor other musicians. But when Burnette returns to the 10-year-old Rock-A-Billy hall on Saturday, it will not be to praise others but to be praised. ...

In making it to the semifinals of the first season of the hit television music competition show "The Voice" this summer, country singer Curtis Grimes boot scooted from the obscurity of the Texas roadhouse circuit to the national arena.

Lou Barlow has been revisiting his past. The singer and guitarist for the Massachusetts trio Sebadoh, which performs Saturday at the Hi-Tone Café, has been listening for the first time in years to the band's classic mid-'90s albums Bakesale and ...

With a rebooted "Hawaii Five-0" ruling the airwaves and phrases like mahalo creeping into the popular vernacular, it may be hard to believe that there was a time when even Hawaiians did not embrace Hawaiian culture. "When I was a ...

One of the most celebrated careers in jazz started by a process of elimination. Stanley Clarke, the award-winning bassist and composer who performs Saturday at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre, was a schoolboy in Philadelphia in the 1960s when he ...

Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift's life has been something of a fairy tale. Her sold out concert Sunday night at the FedEx Forum in Memphis before a crowd of over 13,000 shows that fans want to keep that fairy tale going. Though ...

A week out, Rebecca Zeller, violin player for the New York chamber pop group Ra Ra Riot, was still mulling what costume to wear when the critically acclaimed group performs a Halloween show in Memphis -- their first in the ...

With their oftentimes-brutal depictions of life on Memphis' tougher streets, the music of rapper Project Pat can seem like a horror story. On Monday, the rapper, real name Patrick Houston, the brother of Three 6 Mafia's Juicy J and part ...

Troy Andrews, better known to music fans as the New Orleans multi-instrument prodigy Trombone Shorty, answers the phone sounding dazed and tired. "I think I'm in Toledo, Ohio," he says when quizzed about his whereabouts. "I'm still on the bus ...

Dexter Haygood has traveled a long way to become one of 17 finalists left standing on the first season of Fox's "The X Factor."

Timothy Love, aka Memphis rapper Royal'T Top MC, deliberately planned the release party for his new record 4 All Seasonz on Saturday at the Hi-Tone to coincide with his 20th birthday.

Well-known for singing the praises of the working class and people who serve, country singer Aaron Tippin has long felt a special kinship with the men and women charged with battling blazes in this country. But the importance of what ...

If variety is the spice of life, then fiddler Sara Watkins' career is a mighty flavorful stew. When not headlining her own shows, as she will do Saturday in Memphis at St. Mary's Episcopal School's Buckman Arts Center, you may ...

Daniel Simmons III was born into hip-hop royalty. The 16-year-old's father is Joseph "Rev. Run" Simmons of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee group Run-D.M.C. His uncle is rap mogul Russell Simmons, the co-founder of Def Jam Records ...