Photos from the Joe Bonamassa concert, April 19 at the Adler Theatre. For more work by Matt Erickson, visit MRE-Photography.com.

Photo by Matt Erickson, MRE-Photography.com

Joe Bonamassa. Photo by Christie Goodwin.Roughly a quarter-century ago, B.B. King said of Joe Bonamassa that "he hasn't even begun to scratch the surface."

It was an undeniable compliment to somebody not yet in his teens, but it was also a challenge - one that the blues-rock guitarist, singer, and songwriter apparently still takes to heart. Bonamassa continually scratches and scratches to get deeper.

His performance April 19 at the Adler Theatre will be one example, featuring a set with his acoustic band and another with his electric - both covering roughly 10 songs. The acoustic sets demonstrate that Bonamassa isn't content to skate by on instrumental virtuosity - unlike too many of his ace-guitarist peers. These shows require solid songs, nuance, and variety.

As he said in a phone interview last week, the two-set engagements are "very challenging vocally and on guitar, because you're essentially switching gears tune to tune."

Even better evidence of his range can be found in his recent discography. In the past two years alone, Bonamassa has put out the Driving Towards the Daylight studio album, live and studio releases with singer Beth Hart, the third and final album from the Black Country Communion super-group, a studio disc by the jazz-fusion Rock Candy Funk Party, Beacon Theatre: Live From New York, the live album An Acoustic Evening at the Vienna Opera House, and the four-disc Tour de Force: Live in London - documenting themed shows at four venues with different band lineups and more than 60 different songs. And he has a new studio album planned for fall release. (The old saw about the weather can be adapted for Bonamassa: If you don't like his latest record, just wait a few minutes.)

Brandon Decker. Photo courtesy Ashley Wintermute.

The band Decker calls its sound "psychedelic desert folk," and each of those words carries roughly equal weight.

The folk influence is a carry-over from earlier incarnations of the band. Before its fourth album - last year's Slider - leader Brandon Decker wrote the songs and brought people in to round them out. "I didn't feel they were really musical," he said in a phone interview last week. Rather, they were vehicles to say something.

But when the band performs at Rozz-Tox on April 20, Decker will be emphasizing the other two words. In its current form as a four-piece, the folk leanings are somewhat obscured by the wide-open space reflecting its home base of Sedona, Arizona, and the spaciness of psychedelic rock. (The band stylizes its name as "decker.", but for readability I'm ignoring that.)

On Slider and the epic "Cellars" (from the upcoming Patsy EP), there's a comfortable balance between direct simplicity and airy, patient exploration. Instead of being dense in any given moment, the songs wander purposefully, collecting detail to achieve their fullness.

From an Adler Theatre stage filled with more than 200 musicians, the Quad City Symphony forcefully premiered Gustav Mahler's monumental Symphony No. 3 on April 5. Moving from the dissonance of uncertainty to the transcendental climatic moments of harmonic resolution, the concert was abundant in gravitas, contrasts, and drama that revealed a thorough artistic vision from Music Director and Conductor Mark Russell Smith and included a valuable collaborative process with other area musical organizations.

The Bucktown RevueFor pianist Jonathan Turner, "It's a really unique kind of entertainment experience in the area. There isn't really anything like it."

For performer Korah Winn, "It's kind of like if you take the best play you've ever been in, with the best cast, with the best audience, and you get to do that once every month."

Producer/writer/musician Mike Romkey, however, has a slightly different take: "It's kind of like a local Prairie Home Companion ... but not in a way that would get us sued."

Bedroom ShrineFor all of about six seconds, the Quad Cities band Bedroom Shrine's new album No Déjà Vu seems content to set a mood.

The first sound on "Brown Recluse" is the whirring of a tape machine, whose unsteadiness makes the opening notes of acoustic guitar tremble plaintively.

But before that old-time folk vibe can register, the wind chimes tinkle softly, leading to some gentle feedback that builds to the simultaneous entrance (at the 19-second mark) of hand claps and electric slide guitar. Those two elements pull against each other, the hand claps establishing a pleasant groove with the acoustic guitar while the slide concisely articulates its grudge.

The instrumental is clearly meant as a table-setter, but it illustrates that Bedroom Shrine has no interest in dawdling. At all of 85 seconds, the track musically sketches out the band's Facebook blurb of "rock 'n' roll gets lonesome" and scurries off.

That's the basic method of the album, whose 12 songs run a total of 32 minutes. That by itself means nothing, but it relates to both the album's charm and its shortcoming: The vivid, sharply drawn songs leave you wanting more (good!), but they also feel like sketches that would be even better given the time and space to grow into more-mature form (less good!). It's telling that the only two songs that run more than three minutes - "You're Gonna Lose" and the title track - feel most like they've reached the ends of their natural lives.

Shemekia CopelandAs the daughter of the late, Grammy Award-winning blues guitarist Johnny Copeland, and herself the winner of six Blues Music Awards, it would be safe to describe 34-year-old vocalist Shemekia Copeland as blues-music royalty. In 2012, during a performance at the Chicago Blues Festival, she even became royalty (of a sort), when Copeland was presented with Koko Taylor's tiara and officially proclaimed "Queen of the Blues" by the City of Chicago.

So when you see the track listings for Copeland's most recent CD - 2012's 33 1/3 - and notice that they include covers of Randy Weeks' country hit "Can't Let Go," Bob Dylan's folk hit "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," and Sam Cooke's R&B hit "Ain't That Good News," you might think the album was designed as the singer's chance to, at least momentarily, escape the blues. Copeland, however, would respectfully disagree.

"I never want to get away from the blues," she says during our recent phone interview promoting her March 28 performance at St. Ambrose University's Galvin Fine Arts Center. "That's not what I'm trying to do. I'm a blues singer and proud. Extremely proud. But I just feel that blues is ... . Blues is the root of everything. I mean, what is country but blues with a twang? What is rock 'n' roll but blues with loud guitars?

Blake Selby understands that he's already at a disadvantage.

"Look, there are a few facts," he said in a phone interview this week. "Number one, I'm white and I'm in the rap game. ... I'm already fighting an uphill battle. ... The other thing is that I'm not from the streets. I never claim to be; I never pretend to be in my raps. ... This is kind of my way of fighting back."

"This" is his first full-length album, Ammunition. The Quad Cities-based hip-hop artist (who also owns Quad Cities Fitness in Bettendorf) has a record-release show Saturday at The Clubhouse in Bettendorf, and the album and show represent his musical introduction to his new community.

As the name suggests, it's no clammy handshake. The 16-track album is loaded with aggressive, surgical-jackhammer rapping. It features the Chicago hip-hop artist Twista and singer Sam Kay on "Never Let Go." It brings along the Quad Cities metal outfit 3 Years Hollow on "Monsta." And its straightforward production (by The Chemist) mainlines the hooks.

The Quad City Symphony's March 8 concert featured symphonies from a pair of big names, but the shortest piece on the program - the world premiere of local composer Jacob Bancks' Rock Island Line - stole the show.

The broad, moving lyricism of Brahms' Symphony No. 2 illustrated what the orchestra does well, while Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 revealed the Quad City Symphony's continuing struggle with rhythmic precision.

Yet they were eclipsed by the triumphant debut that opened the concert. Rock Island Line was the highlight of the evening at the Adler Theatre - an energized, complex, and entertaining performance that brought Bancks' vivid piece to life in ways I wasn't expecting.

Photos from the L.A. Guns concert at Rascals Live on March 7, 2014, with opener Halo of Flies. For more work by Matt Erickson, visit MRE-Photography.com.

L.A. Guns:

Photo by Matt Erickson, MRE-Photography.com

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