• Bloodshot Records
• Robbie Fulks

Guitar wizard, country lyric genius and generally smart guy Robbie Fulks first played Solar Culture on September 15, 2001, four days after the towers fell in NYC. He told Thursday's audience he was then on tour and all he ould think of was going home. But the Tucson show was oddly magical; everybody, onstage and off, cut loose, danced and had a grand time. He always wanted to come back.

• Elliott
• Leftover Salmon

The band’s surviving founders, Vince Herman and Drew Emmitt, have decided to pick up the pieces of their once highly successful enterprise. The band’s timeline in the years following co-founder Mark Vann’s death in 2002 included a hiatus, disbandment, and a handful of reunions in 2007. But they appear to now be back for the long haul and are playing with a renewed vitality.

Hitting the stage at exactly 8 p.m., they opened with “Big Wheels,” a bouncy cover of an old New Riders tune. Aside from its catchy hook and a reference to Tucson, the tune distinguished itself as the only time in the set where Emmitt would pick up an electric guitar; he was otherwise killing it on the mandolin. For the most part the group best functioned as a high energy acoustic band with Herman on rhythm guitar, Andy Thorn on acoustic and electric banjos and new part-time member Jason Carter on violin.

While the term jam band has a certain connotation, as in long, meandering and seemingly endless solos, these feel-good tunes were delivered with crisp vocals and precise arrangements. While the solos may have been expansive, they rarely overstayed their welcome and were seamlessly handed off from one player to the next. This band is also a bluegrass band at heart, although bluegrass-on-steroids might be more appropriate given the relentless backbeat that powered so much of the show. Give bassist Greg Garrison drummer Jose Martinez credit for that.

When they weren’t doing the super-bluegrass thing at breakneck speeds it was faux calypso (“BooBoo” and “Zombie Jamboree”); and when it wasn’t that, it was Emmitt picking up a fiddle and dueling with Carter on a Cajun zydeco tune (“Tu N'as Pas Aller") that would have given BeauSoleil reason to smile. While their encore, “Take It Easy,” was a bit of a head scratcher, they still get the award for best reason not to be in front of a TV on a Sunday night.

Kix Brooks will be headliner of this year's official Tucson Rodeo opening concert this year.

Kix Brooks is best known for his '90s hits in the duo Brooks & Dunn, with songs like "Boot Scootin' Boogie," "My Maria," and of course the song that made me get into country in the first place, the classic "Neon Moon."

Despite Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn calling it quits in 2010, the country singer of 30 years came back strong into the music scene with songs like his title track and first single "New to This Town."

His most recent single, "Moonshine Road," is much more upbeat than his first single.

In the song, Brooks shows his country attitude as he shows a woman from the city his hometown.

Brooks told KIIM FM in an interview:

"I grew up with a boathouse in my backyard on this lake in Louisiana called Lake Bistineau and there was this place around the lake from us called Green Park Camp. And, my father, my poor father [laughs], used to beg me and my college buddies when we’d be loading up the truck not to go to Green Park because either we’d come back with a bunch of crazy girls or we’d be all beat to hell. It was always action oriented." He continues, "We went back and forth so many times, and most kids did this growing up especially if the moon was out, we would always turn the headlights out and cruise home with no lights on and we’d just finally referred to this stretch of road as "Moonshine Road.'"

After a strong, successful and long-running career, country fans in Tucson will be sure to enjoy Kix Brooks perform live at the Diamond Center at Desert Diamond Casino (Sahuarita) on Feb. 23. The show begins at 7 p.m. and tickets are available at Ticketmaster starting at $35.

Phoenix, the alternative rock band from Versailles, France, has just announced a tour that will make six stops in the U.S. Lucky for us, Tucson just happens to be one of them.

The tour leads up to the bands headlining slot at Coachella on April 13 and 20.

It will begin in Vancouver and end in Las Vegas just three days before their performance at the first weekend of Coachella.

The radius clause that Coachella has in place for the bands performing at the festival may be one of the reasons Phoenix is making two stops in Arizona along this short tour. The essence of this clause is that bands can't play shows in Southern California from the time they sign their contract with Coachella to 30 days after the festival concludes, according to the L.A. Times.

Whatever the cause, the band will be playing at AVA Amphitheater on April 9. Presale tickets will open for those who register for Phoenix Online on Thursday, Feb. 7 at 10 a.m. PST or 11 a.m. MST. Tickets go on sale to the public on Friday, Feb. 8 at the same time.

If you're tired of waiting for the Coachella lineup to be announced or for the tickets to go on sale so you can watch them sell out in half an hour, a March festival a bit closer to home might tide you over until those weekends in April.

The McDowell Mountain Music Festival in Phoenix is gearing up for its ninth year for a weekend of performances from March 22-24.

This year's lineup runs the gamut of genres, and includes a handful of mainstream artists as well as plenty of bands from the Phoenix area. Indie rock band The Shins will headline the festival's first night, their first show in two months after coming off their 2012 world tour. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros will have the stage before them. The second night's main stage will see Jimmy Fallon's house band and neo-soul group The Roots after a few performances by Deer Tick and Iration, among others. The festival's final performances include psychedelic rockers Dr. Dog, the progressive bluegrass Yonder Mountain String Band and progressive rock band Umphrey's McGee.

Since its beginning, the festival has supported family-based charities, and all proceeds will be donated to Ear Candy Charity, Phoenix Children’s Hospital and UMOM New Day Centers.

Tickets went up at the beginning of the year, and prices will stay at their lowest until the first of February. Day passes currently sit at $40, and ticket packages for the entire festival start at $120. Tickets can be picked up at the festival's website.

• NOBUNNY, sans pants.

Don't blame the kids, they were conceived while their parents were listening to Korn. Nevertheless, NOBUNNY's brand of punk rock doesn't fit in with Hot Topic and A Day To Remember. So, in the end, NOBUNNY freaked them out by challenging them to define what they were seeing. A lot of these kids got the joke and loved it; a few were offended and put their down turned thumbs in the air. They were then treated to the song, "NOBUNNY Loves You". It was funny.

NOBUNNY mocked himself, his music, his band, everybody and everything. It was great. When he whined, "Hey Mr. Soundman, how many songs do we have time to play?", the bellowed response was, "I'll give you a hundred dollars to put your pants back on!" So NOBUNNY played a song called "I Am A Girlfriend". When guitarist Bradford Trojan jumped on to top his amplifier for a hilariously long Chuck Berry guitar solo, the aforementioned soundman put a heavenly-white spotlight on him.

The whole experience was thrilling. It was the perfect coup and I was lucky to be there, to see the kind of reaction I only read about in punk history books about the '70's. And then it was over, just as jarring as it began.

As we all know by now, Green Day was forced to postpone its scheduled 2012-2013 tour dates so frontman Billie Joe Armstrong could enter treatment for substance abuse. The timing couldn't have been worse: He checked himself in just two days before the release of ¡Uno!, the first of three albums released at the tail end of 2012. (The other two are, of course, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré!)

Those tour dates included a show at Tempe's Marquee Theatre scheduled for Monday, Dec. 10, which would have been quite a treat for the band's fans, considering the Marquee is a fraction of the size of the venues the band has been playing in for years.

Today, in a press release, Green Day announced the first round of make-up dates for the tour, which are all in the upper Midwest and Northeast, including Canada, and run from March 28 to April 12. While the press release also stated that additional dates on the West Coast will be announced in early 2013, unfortunately, the number of shows the band will be playing in the announced dates rivals the number of shows in that region that were canceled with no make-up dates scheduled. Also notable: All of the venues on the new schedule are arenas, or arena-sized.

Which means that if the band actually ends up performing a show in the Phoenix metro area, it likely will be at a much larger venue than the Marquee. (The band's last Phoenix performance was in August 2009, at the US Airways Center.)

For now, Green Day fans will have to sit back, cross their fingers, and wait for the next round of shows to be announced.

The full press release is after the jump.

One of my favorite holiday season traditions each year is the Sonic Solstice radio show broadcast by KXCI FM 91.3.

Now in its 11th year, the program — which airs tonight, Monday, Dec. 17, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. — combines live, in-studio performances of holiday classics and original songs as performed by an always-stellar lineup of local acts, with recorded highlights from past years' shows and amusing DJ banter filling out the time between the live stuff.

Supplying that banter this year will be hosts Cathy Rivers (The Home Stretch), Matt Milner (Locals Only), Bob Girth (The Hub), and Laura Adams (The Music Mix); and the list of scheduled live performers looks a li'l something like this:

Hip Don't Dance
Jacob Acosta (of Race You There and Roll Acosta)
Al Foul
Boreas
Gabrielle Pietrangelo (of Silver Thread Trio)
Keli Carpenter and Taylor Bungard (of The Tryst)
Carlos Arzate and the Kind Souls
Kaia Chesney
The Great Collision (Ryan Green of Ryanhood and Paul Jenkins of ...music video?)
Hans Hutchison
Golden Boots

Pretty sweet, right?

It's the sort of "event radio" that just doesn't happen very much anymore. So, for one night, turn off the TV, put down the video game controllers, and suck back some eggnog with friends and/or family with your radio tuned to 91.3 FM (or stream it at kxci.org). If you're not in the holiday spirit at the end of those four hours, well, you're on your own this year.

Attention all daytime rockers: Because Tucsonans start shivering when it dips down to 60 degrees, and OK, because it might rain, thereby destroying all the equipment donated by our generous sponsors, all of the Great Cover-Up events this afternoon have been moved from the Hotel Congress patio to the Rialto Theatre.

I know, it's no big deal since they're across the street from one another. I'm just trying to save you a few steps and an egg or two on your face.

Admission to both today's and tonight's events is open to all ages. The daytime is FREE, and tonight will set you back an $8 donation to SAAMHA (Southern Arizona Artists and Musicians Healthcare Alliance).

Here's the schedule for the remainder of the event:

Saturday, December 15, (daytime) at Hotel Congress' outdoor patio the Rialto Theatre.

12:30p Evan Dando/Lemonheads
1:00 Robert Johnson
1:30 Supertramp
2:00 The Doors
2:30 '80s One-Hit Wonders
3:00 Cake
3:30 James Brown
4:00 Tom Waits

COVERED BY THE FOLLOWING LOCAL BANDS (in no particular order):
Kyle Brondson, Roman Barten-Sherman, Smallvox, Jumper, The Tangelos, Jeremy Michael Cashman, Roll Acosta, Sinphonics

Saturday, December 15, (evening) at Rialto Theatre

6:00p Joe Walsh
6:30 Quiet Riot
7:00 Flogging Molly
7:30 Leonard Cohen
8:00 Stevie Wonder
8:30 Dixie Chicks
9:00 The Kinks
9:30 Violent Femmes
10:00 The Smiths
10:30 LCD Soundsystem
11:00 Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
11:30 Outkast
12:00a Paul Simon
12:30 Red Hot Chili Peppers

COVERED BY THE FOLLOWING LOCAL BANDS (in no particular order):
Wolf Larsen, The Gallery, ...music video?, Skinkfinger, Awkward Moments , David Clark Band, Hank Topless, Holy Rolling Empire, LeeAnne Savage, The Gunrunners, Electric Blankets, The Distortionists, The Tryst, Some Of Them Are Old

Just a friendly reminder that the awesomeness that is The Great Cover-Up begins tonight at Plush.

You know all about it by this point, right? If not, read up here.

We've been posting a video (almost) every day this week of one of the acts getting covered at this year's event playing a cover song, and today is no exception.

Today's clip features The Pretenders — who are being covered on Friday night at Club Congress — playing a song originally recorded by The Kinks — who will be covered on Saturday night at the Rialto Theatre.

Enjoy!

More info and a complete, up-to-date schedule after the jump.