Canadian pop-rock icons Tegan and Sara have announced that they will hit the road with The Black Keys for the extension of their U.S. Tour later this year. Additionally, the girls are confirmed to play Austin City Limits this October.

Country music singer/songwriter Dierks Bentley has been added to the list of artists taking part in the fifth annual Record Store Day on April 21 with a special acoustic performance at independent record store Easy Street Records’ Queen Anne location in downtown Seattle, WA at 1:00P PT.  
 

The inaugural Catalpa Festival is coming to New York City on July 28th + 29th 2012 from 1pm to 11pm and is lining up to be the year’s most unique and original music and lifestyle event. Taking place on the remarkable Randall’s Island, just to the Eastern side of Manhattan, the festival is set beautifully to the backdrop of the world’s most famous skyline.

Out of over 200 live acts I was fortunate to catch this past year, here are 10 of my favorites:

Borrowing a thought from another Grateful Web writer, I’d say that you can tell a lot about a festival by how it handles its second year.  No festival is ever perfect, and the first year is definitely the experimental year.  In the second year, you get to see how the festival responds to the demands placed upon it by its patrons.  Do things get better or worse, smoother or more of a hassle?  Last weekend, July 18th and 19th, I boogied on down to the second annual Mile High Music Festival just outside Denver, Colorado.  Having rocked