Eli Stein 220 posts 0 comments

When Water Street Music Hall came back on the scene last year after a short liquor license renewal process, they promised to bring some big acts to town that had previously skipped over Rochester as The War On Drugs coming to town, in…

It's Memorial Day weekend, the official opening of barbecue season. In Rochester, the land of festivals, what better way to celebrate then with a barbecue festival? Enter the ROC City Rib Fest. Local barbecue enthusiasts will gather in…

The first Rochester Lilac Festival dates back to 1898. It added musical entertainment just a few years later in 1901. Over a century later, in 2015, Pokey LaFarge would grace the Lilac Festival stage playing music that harkened back to the…

May 6, 1993. I was a high school junior, two weeks out from my 17th birthday. It was a Thursday night and Colonel Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit were playing a gig in Syracuse at the Pump House, a semi-dive bar in a semi-seedy…

New Jersey's Screaming Females may have started as a punk rock band, but they currently are just a rock band. But not "just", they have distilled the mere essence of rock, consumed it, and ooze it out of their every being. The rhythm…

New England has unexpectedly become a hotbed of the new folk scene that has emerged in the past decade. At first glance it felt like it was just a perceived and inflated importance caused by the Newport Folk Fest favoring regional bands in…

If there is always a lesson to be learned, then the one imparted to those in attendance at the Flour City Station in Rochester last Thursday night was simply: Lyrics are overrated. Two rising young bands - Consider the Source Ocular Panther…

Touring behind their early 2015 album, What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World, The Decemberists brought their show to the Center for the Arts in Buffalo. It was their third time at the venue, but the first time that they sold it out.…

Aqueous - a four-piece out of Buffalo - has been making waves recently in the ever crowded and continually diversifying jam band circuit. Those waves hit my ears finally on a frigid night at the Flour City Station in Rochester. Flying out…

The members of Dr. Dog waltzed onto Buffalo's Town Ballroom stage all in varying levels of “disheveled-ness,” each with their own unique style. But one thing was uniform across the board. Saddle shoes. They all wore those dapper looking…