“It’s always been my dream to play in Greensboro at the War Memorial,” Steve Martin said to a nearly sold-out crowd on Friday at that very venue. “Tonight, I feel like I am one step closer to that dream.” The comedian-turnedbluegrass star has been going back to his roots on the tour supporting his third banjo album, Love Has Come for You,.

A year ago this past weekend, bluesman Eric Gales played a gig that would change his life. Before his headlining turn at the Carolina Blues Festival, he was known almost as much for his past recidivism as he was for his Herculean feats on the guitar,...

Kendrick Lamar’s Tuesday night stop at the Greensboro Coliseum didn’t possess the kind of indefinable swagger of his Wake Forest show last month — constantly being on the precipice of being overrun by a rowdy, drunken throng has that effect — but it was instead defined by the perspicuous nature of Lamar himself.

If Danny Brown is the poster boy for weirdo, internet-born, hip-hop parvenus, the scene that proliferated around his all-in, whiplashinducing performance at Greene Street Club Friday night was astonishingly familiar. Brown was barely midway through the stoned groove of “Jealousy,” the Biggie-referencing third release off his forthcoming album OLD,.

Judging from KC & the Sunshine Band’s nearly sold-out performance last Thursday at the Carolina Theatre Greensboro, disco is not completely dead, but it could certainly stand to lose about 50 lbs.

There’s a certain expectation among the great singers and performers that, as they age and their heyday appears further and further in the rearview, diminished skills are natural byproducts of the aging process. The voice weathers from use, movements become a little clunkier and enthusiasm for the music in general erodes.

The third Phuzz Phest this past weekend in Winston- Salem proved to be much more than just a mouthwatering indie rock charcuterie. New acts like Wilde Blood conquered their nerves rather emphatically; Ari Picker gave his folk orchestra Lost In the Trees a Freewheelin’.

Every few years, there’s an occasion that injects go-go music back into the mainstream consciousness. Most recently, it was last year’s passing of Chuck Brown, the man credited as the godfather of the oftenmisunderstood Washington, DC-based funk offshoot.

Supported on this final run by Martina McBride, whose voice remains as crystalline as his is oaky, Strait announced his intentions immediately with “Here for a Good Time.” Unlike his stoic stop here in 2010, Strait’s warm smile was as much a part of his ensemble and his dark felt Stetson.

It had been 16 months since Hall and Oates — specifically going under the nom de guerre Daryl Hall & John Oates, a slight augury of their current level of familiarity — last played the Durham Performing Arts Center, a way sold-out, hit-filled Wednesday night.

There’s an escalating case that electronic dance music is on the verge of disco-ing out, that some nebulous tipping point is on the horizon where EDM will hit its own version of Peak Oil — all of its resources tapped and suddenly those with the deepest means of exploration will control the current.

Anyone who came strictly to see Naughty By Nature perform “OPP” Sunday night at Ziggy’s didn’t have to wait long.

Outside the Lincoln Theatre in Raleigh in May 2008, there appeared to be merit to legendary drug stories that invariably trail Dr. Funkenstein.

I know we’re 800 miles from that magnificent bend in the Mississippi River, but there’s a real New Orleans vibe going down in the Triad this week, what with the Super Bowl at the Superdome this weekend and pictures of Mardi Gras parades flooding our...

The inside of the space that Krankies Coffee inhabits has known a few different personas over the years: The sporadic and unlawful pop-up raves of the early ‘90s gave way to the incubational noise of the Werehouse, which in turn birthed the current indierock enclave that exists there today.

Within the King of R&B’s first 45 minutes on a stage outfitted with plush couches, long-stemmed roses and buckets of Champagne, numbers at the event billed officially as the “R. Kelly Birthday Bash” had eroded by a third.

“Who amongst us has done this before?,” Infamous Stringdusters bassist Travis Book asked the serried and excitable Thursday night crowd at the Blind Tiger. “For those who don’t know why you’re here, it’s okay.

Like an only slightly more modern version of Betty Grable in How to Marry a Millionaire,.

Children of the ‘80s, there’s a certain reflection of your 10-year-old self on the face of Noah McCarthy.

The Isley Brothers’ red and white suits might have matched the occasion, but their Friday night oneoff at the Durham Performing Arts Center was the furthest thing from another collection of holiday jingles.