Kim Simmonds was 18 years old and living in London when he began a band. It was normal teenage stuff:

The Music Industry Conference, MIC, is returning to OnCenter, 800 S. State St., on Friday, Nov. 11, and Saturday, Nov. 12, this year featuring five music industry speakers. Friday’s headlining event will be the Syracuse Area Music Awards (Sammys).

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.

Ron Carter may have played on more than 2,500 albums throughout his 50-plus-year career as a double bassist, but that doesn’t mean he’s finished. In fact, the 74-years-young musician is still keeping up a grueling pace with teaching, writing and performing.

The Boise, Idaho, native has drawn praise from the Cascade Blues Association, who selected him as crowd favorite at the Portland Waterfront Blues Festival in 2002, and the Washington Blues Society, who labeled him as the show-stealer at the Winthrop Rhythm and Blues Festival in 2003.