Peoria's The Smokers Blues Band hopes its blues-rock music can be part of a broader scene helping unite deep political divisions among Central Illinois music fans.

It’s not that Brett Conlin secretly eavesdrops on conversations in his downtown barbershop to mine material for new songs.

The folk/bluegrass quartet The Dead South has been described as "the evil twin" of Mumford & Sons for their twisted lyrics that often depict violence and gruesome deaths.

Bloomington musician Edward David Anderson recorded his new album "Chasing Butterflies" in the musically fertile Muscle Shoals, Alabama, area. He said he wanted to use musicians in that region to organically build and arrange his newly written songs.

When the Memphis-based alt-country rockers Lucero plays the Monarch Music Hall in Peoria this Sunday, Sept. 30, they'll be performing songs from "Among The Ghosts," their latest album getting plenty of play inside Waiting Room Records in uptown Normal.

Bloomington Central Catholic High School grad Ryan Latham said succeeding as a session musician and on-call live performer in Nashville is all about saying "yes."

The Bloomington-Normal psychedelic rock band Flaccid is calling it quits after six years. But founding member Nolan Kelly said members are not splitting without releasing a final album, and performing a final show at the Castle Theatre on Saturday, Sept. 22.

Bloomington native Jenny Bratcher-Crafton, a.k.a. "Jeni-B.," has an opera and musical theater background. But debilitating health issues sidelined the music career of this talented vocalist and songwriter just over a decade ago.

Matt Garrison says bandmates in Bloomington-Normal cajoled him out of a seven-year music hiatus that began with the birth of his son nine years ago.

Music industry experts have predicted the demise of the traditional recording studio for nearly two decades.