Like a child growing out of the magic of Christmas, I wondered as the train pulled into New York City’s Penn Station on the rainy, windy Wednesday evening of Oct. 19 if the CMJ (as in College Music Journal) Music Marathon and Film Festival would be as incredible as I remembered it.

 An up-and-down evening with the former front man for the Black CrowesThe Chris Robinson Brotherhood is still trying to determine its place in the 21st century. Their style is undoubtedly 1970s,

Much about American culture has changed since Holly Near first lent her voice to the cause of social justice—by joining Another Mother for Peace in 1968. Indeed, her own career has evolved just as much; with forays into acting (from TV’s The Partridge Family to movies such as Slaughterhouse-Five), playwriting and teaching.

On Wednesday, Oct. 19, 3 to 5 p.m., Near will be joined by Sally Roesch Wagner for tea and conversation at the Matilda Joslyn Gage Center, 210 E. Genesee St., Fayetteville.

A self-described blast from the past, AmerikanPrimitive has acquired a following while gigging at Fusion, the Westcott Theater and the Lost Horizon. The band’s name suggests the bluesy avant-garde finger-picking music genre from the 1950s, but they’re actually named after a novel.

Life on the road is pretty glamorous for Erik “Goose” Henning, bassist of the Polar Bear Club. When he picks up the phone for an interview, he’s speaking from the parking lot of a Taco Bell in Twin Falls, Idaho. The night before the band did a show in Boise and now they’re road-tripping for a gig later in the evening at Salt Lake City.

When I was a sophomore at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. (a.k.a. the middle of nowhere), I got involved with my college radio station, WXJM-FM 88.3. I was a communication studies major and a music industry minor set on being a radio personality, with an internship-turned-temporary job at New York City’s WHTZ-FM 100.

There’s something special about putting a vinyl record on the turntable, letting it spin and listening to the tunes from start to finish. It’s the way the artists wanted it to be heard, even with those crackles and pops in between.

Keller Williams reaches into the refrigerator of his motor home and pauses the interview to quiet his children, Ella, 6, and Cabell, 3, who are shouting in the background. He’s on his way to the “Life is good” Festival in Canton, Mass.

Not long after the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra declared bankruptcy on May 10, several members of the unemployed ensemble received phone calls from a friend of the orchestra who was willing to offer his help. It wasn’t just any friend who reached out, either: It was Elmar Oliveira, one of the most well-known violinists on the planet.