Ryan Adams (Photo by David Black)My Back Pages is a series that explores our relationships with the music we grew up with. Violent Femmes is the subject of this installment.

By James McCabe

“Lone Star belt buckles and old faded Levi’s …” has been a line in my head for as long as I can remember.  It’s said that a pint-sized version of me with long, bright blonde hair would cruise around my parents’ house sporting those Levi’s and a Willie Nelson-esque red bandanna.  I’ve always worn Levi’s.  I think it took me until I was like 25 to realize that song may have chosen my pants, and helped inspire my musical taste in years to come.

My parents listened to a lot of country music when I was growing up.  Waylon and Willie, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Kris Kristofferson, George Jones -- the heavy hitters.  It was the soundtrack to my childhood.  Naturally, as I got older I made it a personal quest to listen to anything and maybe everything else.  Country went pop and pushed me even further away.  The slick production and overall cheese foundation was enough to make me think that what I listened to as a kid must have been bad, too.  I was just a kid, what did I know?

By Nikki M. Mascali

MONTCLAIR, N.J. – The Wellmont Theatre could possibly be the best backdrop for a night of Flaming Lips music.  The cavernous venue, which opened in 1922, has crumbling plaster amid its opulent ceiling décor, and that shabby chicness is the perfect antithesis of the band’s modernistic “peace-and-punk-rock” vibe.

While a smaller stage than the Oklahoma City-based band is likely used to from its frequent festival appearances, there was no dialing down of the Flaming Lips’ well-known stage production, which can be described as a futuristic exploration of reflective surfaces.

The stage set consisted of a mass of shiny, silver domes overlaid with a nest of liquid light ropes with a giant video screen behind them.  Mastermind Wayne Coyne stood atop the chrome-plated altar, clad in a colorful, reflective-material suit, like a wacky mad messiah preaching to his subjects.

By Nikki M. Mascali

My Back Pages is a series that explores our relationships with the music we grew up with. Violent Femmes is the subject of this installment.

The details of how the Violent Femmes became part of my musical world are fuzzy, maybe even inconsequential, but the alt-rock trio from Milwaukee soon became a major part of my life during that oh-so-magical summer between high school and college.

You know the summer.  You just turned 18, had no responsibility other than to work your few select hours at your grocery store job each week and to raise a little hell because your parents finally (slightly) relaxed their watchful eyes to let you come and go as you please, to maybe drink an underage beer now and again (and again and again …) beside a moonlit lake …  Or maybe that’s just me.  Either way, that summer is generally the time you enjoy the freedoms of life before you start the path that will lead you to adulthood.

By Michael Lello

If there’s a universal message in the music of The National, it’s that it’s OK to not be OK.  Elegantly miserable, singer Matt Berninger is at again on “Trouble Will Find Me,” the group’s sixth album and first since 2010’s wildly successful “High Violet,” telling us, seemingly with a straight face, “I am not my rosy self.”

Sometimes, the delivery is as important as the content, and The National are a prime example.  Left in the hands of a less seasoned crew, sentiments like “It takes a lot of pain to pick me up” and “I won’t need any help to be lonely when you leave me” could be whiny and shallow pop-punk fodder.  But when delivered in Berninger’s lived-in tenor and buttressed by the simply sophisticated music of Aaron Dessner, (guitar, bass, piano), Bryce Dessner (guitar), Scott Devendorf (bass, guitar) and Bryan Devendorf (drums), it is something entirely different, something of depth and richness.

By Michael Lello/ Photos by Jim Gavenus

SCRANTON -- The intention of Old Farmers Ball was not to prove a point.  However, a major statement was made Saturday under gray skies and heavy rainstorms:  a large-scale grassroots music festival can work in Northeastern Pa.

What’s most important, of course, is the music, and each act that was trotted out on the main stage at Toyota Pavilion at Montage Mountain was as good as or better than any major million-dollar players that will hit the stage this summer.

By Michael Lello

Tom Keifer’s blues-drenched voice was a signature sound of 1980s and early ’90s hard rock – a voice that, unfortunately, has been silent for nearly 20 years, with no new recorded output from his band Cinderella and no solo efforts.  Keifer’s long-awaited solo debut, “The Way Life Goes,” then, is accompanied by quite a bit of intrigue, or, at the very least curiosity.  Will Keifer simply rehash the pop-metal glory of his heyday?  Or will he go in a completely different direction, latching onto some current trend?

The answer, thankfully, is neither.  A mix of strong, bluesy hard rock but with much less gloss than the songs he has come to be known for, thoughtful ballads and pure, unadulterated barroom rock, “The Way Life Goes” is quite a strong record.  It’s a fun listen, and one of the few hard rock albums to come down the pike recently that boasts as much substance as style.

Fittingly, Keifer blasts out of the gate with a piercing wail to kick off “Solid Ground,” a hard-charging number.  With guitar-heavy choruses and gospel-tinged background vocals, it follows in the footsteps of The Faces and the Black Crowes.  “A Different Light” is, well, quite different, a well-polished ballad that showcase Keifer’s softer vocal side.  The song would not sound out of place on the modern country charts.  The dirty, riff-driven “It’s Not Enough” brings back the no-frills rock.

By Will Beekman

My Back Pages is a series that explores our relationships with the music we grew up with. Social Distortion is the subject of this installment.

It was the middle of 1992, and I was just beginning my 14th year. To that point, my musical knowledge consisted of anything my dad had played on his stereo or his guitar, mixed with some Beastie Boys and a dash of Run DMC.  School was out, and the summer was ushering in warm days and cool nights in the Pocono Mountains.

One evening, my slightly older cousin suggested a new album to me – “Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell” by a band called Social Distortion.  I popped in the CD and skipped to Track 4, as instructed.

“Born to Lose.”  It was like a punch to the gut.

The Richard Thompson Electric Trio, The Mavericks, Asleep at the Wheel, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Jake Shimabukuro, Amy Helm, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars and Jeffrey Gaines are among the announced performers, and the festival will be yet again hosted by Gene Shay.

Richard Thompson/Photo by Pamela Littky“We are really excited about this

Cabinet (Photo by Jim Gavenus)By Michael Lello

The word “unique” comes up over and over again when discussing the Old Farmers Ball. 

And rightly so. 

The festival, hosted by Cabinet, is the first of its kind:  a lineup of non-major label bands, many of them local, playing at Toyota Pavilion at Montage Mountain, the Scranton venue operated by concert conglomerate Live Nation.

Even more unique:  It was Live Nation’s idea.

The band will perform on Saturday Night Live on May 11 and will headline the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Sept. 20.  The band does not currently have any other East Coast dates scheduled.