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Every fan of the independent band, Dispatch, has a favorite song. The group, which was born from three singer-songwriters in Vermont’s Middlebury College in the mid-90s, released its fair share of underground hits. Some like the melodic “Two Coins,” others like the edgy “Headlights.” All Dispatch fans, though, can agree on one thing: “The General” is a classic. But the track, which after its release would go on to be one of the biggest file sharing success stories of the early 2000s, almost never came to be thanks to a passed out engineer and some rickety equipment.

“The recording of ‘The General’ was really ramshackle,” says Chad Urmston, one of Dispatch’s co-founders, along with Brad Corrigan and Pete Francis. “Pete was sick. And the guy recording it – we were just doing a one-off with him. Brad and I had to press record on the tape machine and run into the room to lay it down because our engineer drank and smoked himself to sleep on the couch.”

To complete the new record, Invisible People, the Los Angeles-based four-piece rock band, Chicano Batman, had to learn to trust one another again. Together since 2008, like many partnerships, the members needed to address some simmering issues regarding the quartet’s communication and creative processes. In fact, bassist Eduardo Arenas, who had been going to therapy for a few years, helped to apply some of the tools he’s learned there to the band. It worked. The result was a breakthrough in the group’s relationship and a signature LP, which Chicano Batman released on May 1st.

Chicano Batman has been a band for twelve years. The group has enjoyed critical and popular success (including gigs with Jack White), to be sure, but with that comes new worries. If one is to devote a life to music – to writing, recording, collaborating, touring, playing late night gigs – pressures of success and repeated success come hand-in-hand. Ten years in can feel like a lifetime with a mortgage over one’s head. Going into the recording of Invisible People, as a result, there was a push to make the album perfectly polished. This, however, doomed the initial days of recording.

Like so many, Matt Gervais and Charity Rose Thielen have turned to Tiger King during quarantine. The married couple and members of the famed group, The Head and the Heart, have debated Carole Baskin, wondered about the odd private zoo owners and marveled at the entire spectacle. Gervais and Thielen, who live in Seattle, Washington, aka America’s Ground Zero for the Coronavirus, have also taken up cooking more often, playing Scrabble, wood-working, tie-die and making a sweet homemade frothy coffee drink.

“It’s amazing,” says Thielen. “It’s called a Dalgona. You just take instant coffee, hot water and sugar and whip it with a handheld blender. I want to make it for our regular afternoon tea time.”

Feeling frustrated, Jessica Dobson, front woman for the dreamy rock band, Deep Sea Diver, did just about the only thing she could do these days: she went for a walk.

Dobson, whose Seattle-based band had just finished tours with Wilco and Joseph and was on the precipice of releasing a highly anticipated new LP, had to, like so many other bands worldwide, change professional plans on a dime. Like so many, Deep Sea Diver had to stay home, cancel festivals and tours, and regroup. But, unlike many, Deep Sea Diver came up with a new plan to connect with fans and push the boundaries of their creative process amidst the dramatic shift.

Enter the band’s latest single, “Stop Pretending,” a pensive, distorted mini-masterpiece made in the moment of pandemic mania. The new track, released only on the band’s Bandcamp page (so far), is something Dobson and her husband and band mate, Peter Mansen, say would never have happened without the current quarantine. Yet, they’re glad the song was born.

It might seem like a difficult task. To play a style of music today made popular when the Old West was still rounding into form. But for the Americana harmony- and string-rooted group, Fruition, the process of superimposing modern complexities overtop a classic musical style is natural. The five-piece band, whose members live in cities throughout the United States, create contemporary compositions and have, in the past six months, conceived of an intriguing way to release music to the ever-changing world. 

To understand the alternative Southern rock band, The Drive-By Truckers, is to comprehend the idea of duality. The group is constantly subverting the conventional world around them. It’s founding members, Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, are longtime brothers in music and former combatants. Their histories are rooted in the South while their politics are rooted in liberalism. They are nuanced. And all of these elements show up on their forthcoming record, The Unraveling, set for release on January 31st. 

On the final day of recording sessions for their latest LP, Good Luck, Kid, the trio of sisters that comprise the Americana group, Joseph, stayed a few extra hours to get something new on tape. The result is a five-song EP, called Trio Sessions, featuring stripped-down versions of recent songs. The soon-to-be-released collection – the first track of which, “Without You,” is premiering here – harkens back to the band’s early days playing secret shows in Northwest art galleries or filming stirring music videos just the sisters and a guitar.

When Duane Betts, son of Allman Brothers founding guitarist, Dickey Betts, and co-founder of The Allman Betts Band, first started to play guitar around 13 years old, he asked his Hall of Fame musician father for a little advice. While Dickey was known for his robust – even shrieking – playing style, he offered his son a more philosophical, even Zen-like response.