As the founder of the preeminent label in contemporary blues, Alligator Records boss Bruce Iglauer has impeccable taste for the sound. When he brought the vaunted Texas duo of Smokin' Joe Kubek and Bnois King into the fold, it gave him the opportunity to work with a truly rare animal in his world: the eponymous twin lead guitar.

The first record was made in a really quick amount of time. We recorded the first song in June 2011 and recorded the rest from July to September. We kind of wrote a lot of it pretty quickly. Even by the time it came out in November, they had been done for a few weeks.

With drummer Matt Lynch, the group is the brainchild of Brand New Life saxophonist Walter Fancourt and Between the Buried and Me bassist Dan Biggs, born from a larkish mutual affection of fusion pioneers Mahavishnu Orchestra.

MerleFest bills itself — with good reason — as a homecoming. For a quarter century now, the festival that honors the memory of guitarist Merle Watson has been the magnet that lures fans of a broad amalgam of acoustic-based music from all over the globe to Wilkes Community College.

“Panama” didn’t come until the very end of Van Halen’s set Saturday night at the Greensboro Coliseum, but judging from the temperature inside the building, its ambiance was a long time in the making.

Where: Silk Hope (approx. 60-80 minutes) When: April 19-22 Why you should go: Shakori is essentially the gateway to the summer festival season in this region, with the spring event kicking everything off this weekend and its fall event culminating with the final throes of warm weather.

There`s a scene in Xan Aranda’s illuminative documentary Andrew Bird: Fever Year.

Few festivals experience nearly 250 percent growth from the first year to the second, and even fewer do so while starting deep in the red. That Phuzz Phest has managed to grow from 18 bands to 45, from being hosted in two venues to spread over five, is a testament to the power of community.

There’s an angle to the origin story of the Black Keys’ name, the one about the schizophrenic artist back home with an unconventional way of calling someone duplicitous, that’s often overlooked.

Anne Buchanan’s face is almost perfectly square, accented by plump lips and long, swept brown hair. She holds it stock still, but not in a tense way at all, so that it’s almost as if you’re looking into a still frame. Sure enough, that idea is defeated the moment a tear rolls out of her unblinking eye.

Fifteen, 10, maybe even five years ago, if an aspiring hiphop artist had revealed that he grew up going to opera camp or spent a summer on Broadway, it would all be over before it started. Credibility shot. You just didn’t go from playing Young Simba to being a young stunna.

Singer Crystal Bright, Crystal Bright & the Silver Hands The closest approximation to Crystal Bright’s haunted incantations is that of another North Carolina native: Tori Amos. As audacious of a comparison as that might seem, it’s not only her vocal ability that approaches that of Amos, but the raw emotion with which she delivers it.

“Once Philip joined, we recorded with Caitlin Cary,” Caleb said in reference to their collaboration “I Don’t Think Heaven Would Take Us (If It Couldn’t Have Us Both).” “We did ’12 Dead Roses’ and some other pretty country-tinged stuff,” added bassist Kyle Caudle.

You could say that Eric Church’s North Carolina homecoming at the Greensboro Coliseum Saturday night went a lot like the lyrics to his recent No. 1 country single “Drink In My Hand.” He filled it up, he threw down and, judging from the careful attention he paid to the red Solo cup full of whiskey on his mic stand, he likely got a little hungover.

By about 12:10 a.m. early Saturday morning at Greene Street Club, the scene on stage had essentially crumbled.

As much as she might have liked the room to believe her, such expectations were more or less foolish. The tragicomic tale of the offspring of D. Ray and Bertie Mae White was appallingly detailed in the 2009 documentary The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia,.

Nostalgia, Frank Fairfield pointed out last Friday night, is an affliction to which few in history have been immune. Like a walking compendium of folk music lore, the old-time iconoclast could spend as much time talking about the songs he played at the Haw River Ballroom as he did playing them.

They started under another name in 2003 with only keyboards and bass out of necessity. Today they’re essentially still a group of just keyboards and bass, but that’s because it’s who they are. You’d hardly know it from the arresting stage presence of Herring, but there was actually a time that he and his bandmates were nervous about performing.

Zydeco heir apparent CJ Chenier, at last working in a period where there was a Grammy to be won for the style of music his father Clifton singlehandedly made popular, goes about his usual, methodical process of conceiving new music.

While Gary Clark, Jr. was busy pulling in all the accolades as the young savior of black blues music in 2011, Joe Lewis put out an album that recalled a vastly different segment of it.