Jordan Danielsen has made his living exclusively from music for seven years now, so it might seem a little strange that he's in his fourth semester studying music performance at Black Hawk College.

Part of the impetus, he said in an interview last month, was expanding his performance repertoire from his natural instruments of guitar and harmonica to piano and drums. And some of it was self-improvement, a desire to learn to read music and to better hear harmonies.

But he also had an eye to his career, hoping to meet horn players and wanting to learn to write charts so other musicians could play them. The ultimate goal appears to be flexibility - the ability to hire the musicians he needs at any time to get what he wants for a project, without being reliant on a fixed band.

The 31-year-old Danielsen recently released his debut CD, the 14-track Night Alone in the City, and it's largely the product of years hosting open-mic nights at venues such as Davenport's Bier Stube. The songs are straightforward and seem designed to connect instantly to an audience; one can almost hear where Danielsen expects a cheer or a laugh from his listeners. In that sense, the album works, even though the songs outside of a live context feel somewhat thin. ("Open Mic" probably works as a tone-setting invitation in front of bar patrons, but it feels out-of-place on a CD.)

(Editor's note: This article was originally published in advance of Canasta's February 3 River Music Experience show, which was canceled. It has been re-scheduled for Friday, March 25. Show information has been updated in the article.)

The six-piece Chicago orchestral-pop band Canasta began writing songs for its second album shortly after the release of its first - We Were Set Up - in 2005.

It took five years for The Fakeout, the Tease, & the Breather to get finished and released. That's a lifetime in the music business, and probably two or three lifetimes for a band that's still trying to break through - with all the members holding down "real" jobs in addition to their band duties.

Canasta will be performing an all-ages show March 25 in the River Music Experience's performance hall, and it should be evident that the labor that went into The Fakeout, the Tease, & the Breather was fruitful. Both the Huffington Post and Metromix named it one of the best Chicago albums of 2010. The Chicago Reader called it "so perfect - every note falling into place with deeply satisfying craftsmanship - that you'll swear you've heard it before." And The Onion's AV Club said: "You can almost feel storm clouds parting for the 11 sunny, rollicking songs that lay ahead. For nearly a decade, the local chamber-pop group has managed to retain its ambition and melodic optimism, without ever coming across as winking."

But in truth, the half-a-decade story of the album is less about nailing the nuances over time than an unusually liquid lineup.

The cliché says that good writers mostly write what they know, so it's little wonder that Paul Thorn has crafted an under-the-radar career as a respected songwriter and performer.

The title of his 2010 album is Pimps & Preachers, and he speaks of both from experience: His father was a minister, and his uncle was a pimp. "When I was a kid, them was the two guys that I hung around a lot," Thorn said in a phone interview this week. "I got to witness what went on on both sides of the tracks of life - the dark and the light side of life."

That uncle also taught the future songwriter to box and served as his trainer, and in 1988 Thorn fought (and lost to) Roberto Durán, considered one of the sport's greats. Thorn also used to skydive.

In the mid-1990s, Thorn was plucked from a day job in a furniture factory and a regular gig singing in a pizza joint, signed to a major-label contract. And the first concert he ever attended was a Sting show - at which he was the opening act.

Images by Quad Cities event photographer Chris Jones from February 14's Slash set at the i wireless Center. (Ozzy Osbourne headlined.) Click on any photo for a larger version.

For more of Jones' work, visit MusicRowPhotos.com.