Johnny A. As he prepares for his third solo studio album, the guitarist Johnny A. - who will perform Saturday at the Redstone Room - wants to return to where it all started nine years ago.

"I kind of want to get back to a personified version of my first album," he said in a phone interview last week.

I'm not sure what "personified" means in that context, but I'm certain there's one problem with that plan: It would involve returning to a time when Johnny A. was learning a new genre - the instrumental - and his fellow musicians were learning to play with him. That age of innocence will be impossible to recapture, but Johnny A. hopes to rediscover the intimacy of his first solo work.

Reader issue #678

Thursday's concert at the Capitol Theatre featuring Spoon, White Rabbits, and the Walkmen represents the fulfilled potential of Daytrotter.com for the Quad Cities.

 

  Spoon

   When Spoon was finishing its 2001 album Girls Can Tell, the band didn't know what to do with "Chicago at Night," which would close the record.

 

In an interview last week, drummer and co-founder Jim Eno told this story about what he and guitarist, singer, and chief songwriter Britt Daniel decided to do: "I never would have tried this, but Britt and I were so young, and we were just like, ‘Oh yeah, let's do it.' We had to turn all the mixes in for mastering. ... We have these two versions, and we like different things about each version ... . So Britt says, ‘Why don't we use the left side of this mix and the right side of this mix?'"

 

  White Rabbits

   For a band with one independent recording under its belt, the White Rabbits have a lot going on. They appeared on Letterman in July - "Maybe U2 cancelled," joked bassist Adam Russell - and a feature-film documentary is in production. (See http://www.whiterabbitsdoc.com.)

 

Russell credits the band's publicist with the Letterman gig, and filmmaker Andrew Droz Palermo is a friend of the band dating back to some members' high-school careers.

 

But Russell said these early successes are a sign that people believe strongly in the band. "Having close friends that work with you does pay off sometimes," he said.

 

  The Walkmen

   The Walkmen have built enough of a legend that it would be easy to overlook their original material.

 

Guy Davis

Blues musician Guy Davis is the son of legendary actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. His 1998 CD You Don't Know My Mind led the San Francisco Chronicle to rave, "Davis' tough, timeless vocals blow through your brain like a Mississippi dust devil." His 2003 release Chocolate to the Bone received a W.C. Handy Award nomination for Best Acoustic Blues Album, one of nine W.C. Handy nominations Davis has received during his career.

 

So it comes as something of a surprise when Davis, during a recent phone interview, says, "The first time I remember hearing the blues, it was being played by white college boys.

 

   Tomy Temerson

   For contemporary American audiences, the zither begins and ends with the soundtrack to the 1949 film The Third Man - which famously featured the instrument in its opening. (See the credits at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4JpDUMXBqo.) The tune was a number-one hit in the United States in 1950.

 

But the stringed instrument has a rich history in Europe and Asia and dates back more than two millennia.

 

Throw Me the Statue Throw Me the Statue's debut album, Moonbeams, was largely built by one man, and you can hear it in the synthesized beats, the emphasis on front-loaded keyboards, the occasionally oddball instrumentation, the aggressive processing, and a complete disregard for the concept of "enough."

 

Cowboy Junkies The Cowboy Junkies first made a name for themselves with The Trinity Session, recorded live with a single microphone in a Toronto church in one night for a couple hundred bucks.

 

To mark its 20th anniversary this year, the Cowboy Junkies did it again.

 

Reader issue #675 Since his big-screen debut in 1981's Ragtime, and particularly since his 1983 breakthrough in Terms of Endearment, Jeff Daniels has been one of America's most familiar and sought-after character actors, with memorable roles in such films as The Purple Rose of Cairo, Something Wild, Arachnophobia, Speed, Dumb & Dumber, Pleasantville, The Hours, The Squid & the Whale, and Good Night, and Good Luck.

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