Steely Dan and the Grateful Dead are both American musical treasures – but couldn’t be more different in their approach to music. The epitome of precision and setlist free, organic, and loose.  Studio perfectionists and the omnipotent live music band. Yet in spite of these differences, many of us love both these bands. They’re huge parts of the soundtracks of our youth and present day. What better way to celebrate both bands then enjoying a merge of the two in a night of American rock-n-roll supremacy. 

Chicago guitarist, composer and improviser Bill MacKay's informed and creative approach to the electric guitar is breathtaking. Fountain Fire, his second Drag City solo album (and third DC album overall, including the 2017 duet album with Ryley Walker, SpiderBeetleBee), signals new flares in

Bill MacKay is a musician and a musician's friend - a genial guitarist/composer/improviser based in Chicago who has energized the experimental folk, rock and avant scenes around town with his polyglot approach to the guitar, combining the folk of Appalachia, the blues and gospel with rock, jazz, western-country and an array of eastern modes. Mackay's interest in this tactic - essentially, a personal blending of roots elements - has evidence itself throughout his discography.

Having lived and worked in Boulder, CO for almost 20 years now, I can’t help but reminisce about how my life has changed since I first moved here from the East Coast in 1992. In July of 2012 I will have officially lived here longer than where I grew up.

It had been way to long since I last saw Leftover Salmon play together as a band. I recall the last time, way back in 2004, driving to the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival in upstate New York, destined to see the band play as a festival headliner in one of their final gigs before ‘hiatus’.