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In the Pacific Northwest, there’s a culture of vibrant creativity. Hopeful artists flock to cities like Seattle and Portland, congregating in ramshackle apartment buildings or old houses, splitting the rent, trading shifts in coffee houses, pubs, or restaurants, and, in their off hours, spending time manufacturing their dreams. 

Poets, sculptors, musicians, novelists, painters—they make homes in the region and cultivate their creativity. The Helena, Montana-born Colin Meloy is one of those industrious people. The frontman for the folk-rock band The Decemberists moved to Portland, Oregon, more than two decades ago and took up residence in a warehouse with friends. And from those beginnings, so much of his life today has been built. That includes his band’s newest album, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, which dropped on June 14.

Carly Pearce always knew she’d be here. The CMA-, ACM-, CMT-, and Grammy Award-winning artist was sure of it—as a kid, then as a teenager, and even when things weren’t going so well as a young adult. She knew she would be a country music star, and that truth has continued to be her driving force—through heartbreak, divorce, unglamorous working conditions, and all of life’s other ups and downs. 

For Spike Slawson, frontman and lead singer of the San Francisco-born punk rock group Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, a live show is akin to an obstacle course. Slawson and the group don’t much care for easy-breezy despite their stage prowess. Instead, they appreciate a degree of difficulty. A challenge. That’s where the fun, the reward, and even the humor reside, both for the musicians and the audience—whether they know it at first or not. In many ways, this is the basis for the band’s new live album, ¡Me First and the Gimme Gimmes Blow It… at Madison’s Quinceañera.

When it comes to Gary Clark Jr.’s style as a musician, some have said the 40-year-old Austin, Texas-born guitar player is schizophrenic. But he thinks of his versatility in a less-dramatic and more generation-appropriate manner. 

Clark Jr. released his latest LP, JPEG RAW, in March, and is on an extensive U.S. tour that will place his eclecticism on full display. Clark Jr. thinks of himself as “an iPod Shuffle.” The musical devices were all the rage in the Aughts, before the age of the do-it-all iPhone. They allowed the ear to be awash in sounds with the push of a button. Whereas listeners once had to rely on radio or individual vinyl records, the postage stamp-sized Shuffles offered space for hundreds of tracks of any type. Clark Jr. has built off a similar penchant for sonic diversity—indeed, he embodies it.

Beginning in the 1980s, Mike Burkett—a.k.a. Fat Mike—has been pouring his energy into punk rock. He co-founded the beloved band NOFX in 1983 and the San Francisco-based record label Fat Wreck Chords in 1990. Ever since, he’s been signing bands, playing shows, writing books, creating documentaries, and he even started a company that makes panties for straight men. Most recently, in 2023, he co-created the Las Vegas-based Punk Rock Museum. Earlier this year, Vegas decreed April 1 to be Punk Rock Day (what Mike calls a “punk proc,” short for punk proclamation). It all comes together to mark the culmination of a life dedicated to the music he says saved his life.