Every August, I look forward to driving up through forested northern New Mexico into God’s Country, southern Colorado to cover Rhythms on the Rio. This festival with a big heart has been going strong for eleven years and I’ve covered six of those. It’s always like coming back for a family reunion.

Grateful Web had a few minutes to speak with The String Cheese Incident's Kyle Hollingsworth at this year's Electric Forest.  Kyle touched on the evolution of Electric Forest Festival, String Cheese getting well deserved air time on the radio, and working with Elephant Revival's Bonnie Paine.

GW: How was it to work with Bonnie Paine professionally? I know you guys are neighbors.

The Summerfest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin celebrated its 50th anniversary this summer. The 11-day festival has been certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest music festival. The festival features over a dozen stages large and small of entertainment along the lakefront Henry Maier Festival Park. This years festival saw attendance rise to over 830,000 people over the 11-day run.

Recently, acclaimed New Orleans-based future funk collective Naughty Professor released their highly-anticipated new album, Identity. Available now on all digital service providers, Identity can also be purchased physically as a CD/DVD bundle, which includes in-studio footage of every track on the album, here.

“All I want to do is play music,” says singer/guitarist, Casey James. “Stripping it back to just me making a record of music that I love was a huge stepping stone in my life.” Released June 9, Strip It Down, his new album produced by Grammy-winner Tom Hambridge and featuring a guest duet with the legendary Delbert McClinton, does just that.

Songwriting and playing music has been a consuming passion for Gerry Spehar since he picked up his first guitar at age 14.  “I never went on a date in high-school without my guitar,” he admits.  If you look at the album artwork on I Hold Gravity, you’ll notice that there’s not one image of Spehar without a guitar except for the one in which he has his arm around his wife, Susan.  “Ever since I can remember, I have always had one or the other –usually both –with me.”  Susan was Spehar’s college sweetheart and his

Three Piece Suite is a specially curated selection of songs and compositions from Gentle Giant’s first three albums (Giant, Acquiring the Taste, Three Friends) presented in both 5.1 surround sound and stereo. There are nine tracks from the albums, plus a pre-debut song, remixed by Steven Wilson. The choices were determined by the limited availability of multi-track master tapes from the era. Only a few songs from each album are known to exist as multi-tracks, with the rest presumably lost.

Academy Award-nominated “king of indie animation” Bill Plympton takes viewers on a Technicolor ride to outer space, an underwater world filled with robots, and a concert performed by banjo-slinging aliens in the new video for roots-rocker Jackie Greene’s “Modern Lives."

Set to absurdist lyrics comparing Times Square to a graveyard and a rollicking, fiddle-heavy groove, the seemingly innocuous psychedelic visuals take on a darkly sardonic meaning and reflect the dystopia Greene sees when he looks at “this modern life.”

On August 5th, 2017, the rock 'n' roll quartet The Southern Belles will independently release their third studio album "In the Middle of the Night." They'll be touring the east coast from Florida to West Virginia throughout July in support of the release, mixing festival dates and club shows. To celebrate the album, they will headline The Broadberry in their hometown of Richmond, Virginia on August 5th. Full tour dates can be found below:

Grateful Web recently had the chance to speak with keyboardist and producer Chad Staehly. He’s a member of the rock’n’roll roots group Hard Working Americans. Featuring some of the most established talents in American music including vocalist/guitarist Todd Snider, guitarists Neal Casal and Jesse Aycock, bassist Dave Schools, and drummer Duane Trucks, the band which began as a group project has grown into their own after four years of touring and recording.