It’s a sentiment that should come standard-issue with any virtuosity.

“I do have to check myself, because sometimes I can find myself doing overly complicated things, and I think, ‘Wait, am I doing this because it makes the song good or because I’m trying to show off?’” said Kristian Dunn in a recent phone interview. “It usually ends up being the latter, and it gets cut. You’ve got to be tough with yourself in this kind of situation.”

“This kind of situation” is pretty funny, because it’s unlikely that El Ten Eleven has much company in what it does. An instrumental duo featuring Dunn on guitars (often a double-neck) and drummer Tim Fogarty, the band makes extensive use of looping and effects pedals to build tunes that would seem to need three or more players. “Fat Gym Riot,” from 2008’s These Promises Are Being Videotaped, climaxes with thick bass and twin (or perhaps triplet) lead guitars.

But when El Ten Eleven returns to RIBCO on September 27, there will be just Fogarty and Dunn and the latter’s 13 pedals, trying to make the extraordinarily complicated seem like merely good music.

The blurb that accompanies any write-up of the New Orleans-based rock band Cowboy Mouth comes from Cake magazine: “On a bad night they’ll tear the roof off the joint, and on a good night, they'll save your soul.”

For drummer, singer, and primary songwriter Fred LeBlanc, a great live show -- which will be on display at RIBCO on Friday -- is both natural and a necessity.

The band has been around for two decades now, with the constant core of LeBlanc and guitarist, singer, and songwriter John Thomas Griffith. By LeBlanc’s count, Cowboy Mouth has had 427 bassists and 1,628 guitar players.

“The crux of the band has always been me and John,” LeBlanc said in a recent interview. “John and I always had a chemistry, and we always built a band around that. We had all done stints in major labels before the band, and so it was: What do we have that they cannot steal from us? They can steal songs from us; they have. They can steal recordings from us; they have. But they can’t steal playing live. ... That’s how we built our reputation.”

It’s been more than two years since Dick Prall released his last studio album, Weightless, and while that’s a typical gap in the music business, the Iowa-raised, Chicago-based singer/songwriter doesn’t believe it works for independent artists generally, and him particularly.

“For me, it’s kind of daunting to say, ‘Okay, this is what I’ve done the last two years, here you go, and let’s see if that carries for the next two years,’” he said in a recent interview to promote his September 9 solo-acoustic show at the Redstone Room. (He’ll also be recording a Daytrotter.com session that day.)

The problem, he said, is that schedule forces a musician to re-build momentum with each album. So he’s determined to stop fizzling between releases. He’s prepping an EP for this fall, with another to follow in late winter.

In this new age of singles (and single-track purchasing), the EP looks to Prall like an ideal format.

Images by photographer Chris Jones from Thursday's Toby Keith concert at the i wireless Center, with opener Trace Adkins. Click on any photo for a larger version.

Toby Keith: