COUNTRY-ROCK | Rob Crosby & The Rips
Thurs. Dec. 29
$10
Windjammer

Rob Crosby, currently a Nashville-based country/folk songwriter and vocalist, was born in Sumter, S.C. and got his start as a performer playing shows all over the Lowcountry and upstate in the early ’80s. Now, with three nationally released albums and eight chart singles, Crosby is an established player in the Music City scene. ” I was playing clubs in Columbia, Augusta, Greenville, Charleston, and all the small towns in between,” he says, “gradually put together The Rob Crosby Group, which toured Europe twice, for the Armed Forces, and played colleges along the East Coast. Eventually, I moved to Nashville and was signed to Arista Records. My first three singles, ‘She’s a Natural,’ ‘Love Will Bring Her Around,’ and ‘Still Burning for You’ were Top 20 hits.” In the years since, Crosby worked in studios and on tours with Travis Tritt, Brooks & Dunn, Willie Nelson, George Jones, Restless Heart, and many others. His latest album is titled One Light in the Dark (Dureco). —T. Ballard Lesemann THURSDAY

BRASS-FUNK | Dirty Dozen Brass Band
w/ Bump
Sat. Dec. 31
$25 ($23 adv.)
Music Farm

Baritone sax player Roger Lewis didn’t start the Dirty Dozen Brass Band thinking they might save what was then a dying tradition of New Orleans brass bands. He had a much more simple ambition. But 30 years later, DDBB can be credited with reviving the entire brass band form. They set aside the usual musical boundaries and immediately supplemented their repertoire of traditional brass band material by performing jazz songs by the likes of Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and other contemporary artists, reshaping the music in their own unique brass band style. It was all part of the open-minded approach the group had from the day it came together. “We started rehearsing and all kinds of different music, whatever musical idea you had, we would play it, sit down and work it out,” says Lewis. “Whether it was original or a cover tune … whatever you wanted to do. We didn’t care.” The newest release by the group is an anthology titled This Is The Dirty Dozen Brass Band Collection (Shout Factory). Featuring selections from virtually all of the group’s albums, it offers a good overview of their funky brass music and its evolution over the years. —Alan Sculley SATURDAY

ROOTS-ROCK | “Canine Conspiracy Tour”
w/ The Blue Dogs, Jupiter Coyote
Sat. Dec. 31
$40
Windjammer

Billed as “The Canine Conspiracy Tour,” Brevard-based, veteran jam band Jupiter Coyote (pictured above) — still at it behind their latest effort The Hillary Step — join forces with Charleston’s Blue Dogs for a series of shows this month, including a New Year’s Eve show at the Windjammer. The Dogs recently celebrated an anniversary with a return to the historic Dock Street Theatre, where the band recorded their first live album, Live at the Dock Street Theatre, in Aug. 1995. Frontman Bobby Houck, lead guitarist David Stewart, upright/electric bassist Hank Futch, and drummer Greg Walker will surely trade licks and harmonies with their longtime comrades in the Coyotes: singer/guitarist John Felty, guitarist/banjo player Matthew B. Mayes, bassist Sanders Brightwell, fiddler Steve Trismen, and drummer Noel Felty. Hawt dang. —TBL SATURDAY

FOLK/COUNTRY | Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion
w/ Bobby Houck
Sat. Jan 7
$17
Village Playhouse

With a crisp, acoustic sound filled with boy-girl vocal harmonies and lilting melodies, folk-pop duo Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion have a modern take on traditional roots music. Guthrie (the daughter of Arlo and granddaughter of Woody) and Irion (a S.C. native) have stayed busy over the last four years playing, recording, and traveling back and forth across America and overseas. The duo recently signed to Americana label New West Records. In March, they released their first full-length album, Exploration — a light, compelling, 11-song collection that combines elements of rock, trad-country, and folk styles. Produced by Gary Louris (of the Jayhawks) and Ed Ackerson, the album features, among others, Louris and his bandmate Marc Perlman, Son Volt veterans Dave Boquist and Eric Heywood, drummer Zeke Hutchins, (Irion’s former bandmate in Durham-based alt-pop band Queen Sarah Saturday, currently with Tift Merritt’s band), and Tao Rodriguez Seeger, who guests on his granddad Pete Seeger’s “Dr. King.” “Call it a Carter Family-meets-Crazy Horse kind of thing,” says the label. —TBL SATURDAY

BLUES-ROCK | Cyril Lance
Sat. Jan. 7
$5
The Pour House

Playing his licks from the Hendrix and Clapton side of the contemporary blues world, Boston-based singer/guitarist Cyril Lance knows how to wail and boogie. Growing up in Hawaii, he studied music in Boston at the New England Conservatory and first cut his teeth on the hard-rockin’ blues and modern jazz when he landed a gig with harp player Mel Melton and the Wicked Mojos. Lance recently recorded with Johnny Neel (Allman Brothers, Warren Haynes), C.J. Chenier, and Katherine Whalen (Squirrel Nut Zippers) and formed his own band, The Outskirts of Infinity Collective Experience Arkestra, featuring Neel, organists Matt Jenson and Dave McCracken, bassist Chris Carroll, and drummer Kelly Pace. The group stretches way out with some lengthy, Allmans-esque explorations on their new live album, Live from the Outskirts (Dog Talk). —TBL SATURDAY

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