The Celtic Fiddle Festival concert Thursday night at Berger is practically the last gasp of this year’s long Irish season (that is, if you don’t count the ceili dance at O’Malley’s at 6:30 p.m., April 25).

Celtic Fiddle Festival is actually the name of a band, a troupe of three fiddlers and one guitarist who play music from three distinctive Celtic traditions: Irish, Breton and Quebecois. The three perform “their separate and shared traditions.”

Kevin Burke, born in England of Irish parents from the west of Ireland, played in Tucson last year. Growing up in a vibrant immigrant community in London, he learned the music of Ireland and its diaspora, mastering the brisk and ornamented fiddling style of County Sligo. He circled round to live in Ireland, and is now resident in the United States.

Less well known to Americans is the Breton style, played by Christian Lemaitre of Brittany, a Celtic enclave in the far northwest corner of France. Brittany has its own Celtic language and traditional music, which has been undergoing a revival since the 1970s. Nicholas Quemener, also of Brittany, is the guitarist, and a maestro of open-tuning.

French Canadian André Brunet not only plays the violin, he does the lively foot-stomping characteristic of Quebecois Celtic fiddling. The earliest French settlers to Canada were from northern France, including Celtic Brittany, and the massive Irish immigration to the eastern provinces in the 19th century only strengthened the Celtic cast of Quebecois music.

Show starts at 7:30 Thursday, at Berger Center for the Performing Arts, 1200 W. Speedway. $20 adults; $18 students and seniors over 60, at Antigone Books, the Folk Shop and www.inconcerttucson.com.

AC/DC isn’t retiring, yet.

The Telegraph spoke with Aussie rock band’s lead singer Brian Johnson about the rumors surrounding the band’s retirement. Johnson says the band intends on collaborating next month in Vancouver. "We're going to pick up some guitars, have a plonk, and see if anybody has got any tunes or ideas. If anything happens, we'll record it," Johnson told the Telegraph.

From Telegraph:

"I wouldn't like to say anything either way about the future," he said. "I'm not ruling anything out. One of the boys has a debilitating illness, but I don't want to say too much about it. He is very proud and private, a wonderful chap. We've been pals for 35 years and I look up to him very much."

Rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young was rumored to have suffered a stroke and unable to continue to play with the band. Fortunately, the 61-year-old is just taking some time off. It’s still unclear if the elderly rockers will play 40 different shows in 40 different venues in honor of their 40th anniversary.

In last week’s issue, we spoke with ambient composer Steve Roach about the 30th anniversary of his landmark album Structures from Silence. Originally issued in DIY fashion on cassette by Roach himself, the three-song suite quickly gained notice. On April 15th, the album sees deluxe treatment courtesy Projekt Records. In addition to a clarity-enriching remastering job, the new edition features 2012 and ‘13 recordings by Roach that find him exploring the Structures sound and style from his Timeroom studio in the Sonoran desert south of Tucson.We ended up with more material than we could fit into the feature, so enjoy this extended Q&A with Roach and a sneak peek at his next project.

Tucson Weekly: I understand that you drove race cars in your youth?

Steve Roach: Growing up in Southern California in that era of the ‘70s — the whole spawn of the baby boomer wave — motocross was really kind of born in southern California. I was right where it was all emerging. If I wasn’t out hiking in the desert I really embraced this sport that was right in our backyard. It wasn’t as incongruent [with music] as you would think, because there’s a real kind of discipline you have to have. If you’re going to do it, you have to be fully awake and present. Your life depends on it. You’re completely in. You’re inside of it; your life depends on it. That set the tone.

That makes sense in relation to your music.

The thing that really shaped me in that time was a lot of time spent in the deserts outside of San Diego. Just in quiet, in silence, [listening to] desert sounds, the sound of the space itself. Tuning into that. My parents introduced me to that while world before I could drive. We’d go out desert camping, that sort of thing. We’d go out into the mountains of San Diego and to the ocean. So later on when I was able to start driving myself to these places, I might start out in the mountains mid-day and watch the sunset at the ocean. Those kinds of landscapes and atmospheric dynamics set the tone early on for me as an artist in terms of the kinds of spaces I wanted to be in and draw from.

A super-group of two, Broken Bells played to a packed house that expected the best on Sunday night, April 13 at the Rialto Theatre. Minds, and expectations, were blown. The duo, comprising producer and recording artist Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, and the Shins' James Mercer delivered a 360-degree experience that was perfect in every discernible detail. The crowd was in thrall from the moment they took the stage with a full band, designer-furniture-worthy keyboards, lights and cameras pointing in every direction and a video backdrop we would have probably paid to see as a movie. It was like being in a music video, and if there was a crack in the perfection anywhere, it was this: The show was at least 45 minutes in before Mercer seemed to respond warmly to a crowd in the throes of adoration. The music, it should go without saying, was sublime; 

Neko Case has had several homes, the most recent a farm in Vermont. But Saturday night at the Rialto, she seemed very much in touch with the time she's spent as a Tucsonan and the friends she's made here. Occasionally portrayed as seeming prickly, Case was obviously attitude-free on Saturday. She built an easy rapport with the Rialto crowd early on and continued to engage them throughout the set.


Songs from her 2013 release, The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You  powered the set. That record is more than worthy of all its hype; fans cheered their favorites. But the full house was silenced by an as-yet-unrecorded song that filled several hundred eyes with tears. It was an a capella number from the point of view of an abandoned child. Case said it was inspired by a youth service organization run by the wife of multi-instrumentalist Jon Rauhaus. Kelly Hogan provided light touches of harmony as she did throughout the set.

"Hex," a song by Freakwater's Catherine Ann Irwin that Case frequently covers was another show-stopper, featuring backing vocals by Hogan and Carolyn Mark.

Arizonan Rauhouse, a stalwart of Case's band,  was well-known to the crowd, having frequently performed in Tucson with his own band. In addition to playing guitars and pedal steel, he introduced an emerging talent on trombone.

NPR has reported that singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester passed away Friday morning. Wincheseter was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus in 2011. The Juno award-winning vocalist collaborated with The Everly Brothers, Wynona Judd, Jimmy Buffett and Elvis Costello.

From NPR:

Winchester, like hundreds of thousands of other anti-war protesters who left the country or otherwise avoided the draft, was able to return to the U.S. after President Carter granted them unconditional pardons on his first day in office — Jan. 21, 1977.

He was 69.

Fans of smart, hard hitting and emotionally unguarded pop-rock  had a mid-week treat on Tuesday, April 8, when The War on Drugs stopped at Club Congress on  tour behind its buzz-busting new record Lost in a Dream. Luckily, our woman-on-the-scene C. Elliott took some photos for you. Get your Google on to find out more about the music, the new record, and the story of The War on Drugs.

We have some bummer news, White Lies fans. "We’re sorry to announce that due to circumstances our date in Tucson has been cancelled," the gothic band stated on their Facebook page. Refunds are available at the point of purchase, according to the Facebook status. No reschedule date has been set at this time.

KFMA, the station formerly at 92, now over at 102 on your FM dial, announced its annual KFMA Day (May 24 at Kino Stadium) lineup this afternoon and hey, great news, Korn's not on the bill.

Instead, we get Linkin Park (who you might know as the band that guy singing with Stone Temple Pilots is from), Sublime with Rome, metalcorers Memphis May Fire, and in the section of bands playing early that Dan Gibson likes, Phoenix's Kongos and the energetic SKATERS. More bands will likely be added because they generally are, but as it goes for the alt-rock crowd, it's a solid bill for $47.50 in advance. Even better, you can get tickets on Saturday at your local Pizza Hut (or online at KFMA.com) for $35.

You probably need a Spotify account to make this work (most people do at this point, right?), but as part of our Tucson Music Month feature this week, I put together a playlist of 35 songs by bands coming to town this April. The Coathangers! Riff Raff! Trampled by Turtles covering the Pixies! Broken Bells! Young & Sick! Waka Flocka Flame! It's a genre-hopping trip through the next month in local concerts. Enjoy.