Music

Flagstaff folk-rock band Tow’rs recorded their new album live in studio, forcing them to abandon their quest for perfection. Like so many others during the pandemic, front couple Kyle and Gretta Miller felt like parts of their lives were out of control. Their new album is an intimate, yet brutally honest examination of the life they’ve built together and letting go of what doesn’t serve them.

The musical duo Sway Wild is scheduled to perform in Flagstaff on Saturday. It’s a homecoming of sorts for musicians Mandy Fer and Dave McGraw, to the place where they formed their band more than a dozen years ago. They have a passionate following of fans and are known for their ethereal vocal harmonies and heartfelt live shows. In the latest installment of KNAU’s series Eats and Beats, Sway Wild talks about their longtime musical partnership and artistic evolution.

In this week’s segment of KNAU's series PoetrySnaps!, Tucson-based writer Simmons Buntin shares his poem Indigo Bunting. It’s a celebration of sound, which is what led Buntin to poetry in the first place. Today, he talks about his original poetic muse...music.

Guitarist Nels Cline is best known for his work with the band Wilco. But one of his free-form side projects, the Radical Empathy Trio, couldn’t be more different and focuses on pure improvisation.

Fresh off one of her biggest album launches of her career, Taylor Swift announced a new U.S. stadium tour starting in 2023 in Glendale, Arizona.

Music can tap hidden wellsprings in the mind and help listeners solve problems that once seemed insurmountable. That’s the idea behind a unique collaboration called Rising Tide: The Crossroads Project. It mixes original music by composer Laura Kaminsky with the science of climate change. The Fry String Quartet brings the performance to Northern Arizona University tonight. In KNAU’s latest installment of Eats and Beats, stories about food and music, Melissa Sevigny spoke with a scientist and a violinist about how the project was born.

Blues is at the very core of the music made by famed rockers Gov’t Mule. For the first time they’ve recorded an entire album of traditional blues songs. In the latest installment of KNAU’s Eats and Beats, frontman Warren Haynes talks about the band’s bluesy exploration ahead of their show in Flagstaff this weekend.

Two western states - Utah and Colorado - are among the top ten best places for music lovers. That’s according to a recent study conducted by Mecart, a recording studio manufacturer.

Last week, Raven Chacon became the first Indigenous composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for music. The musician and educator grew up in Chinle on the Navajo Nation and was recognized for a piece called “Voiceless Mass.” He composed it specifically to be played on a pipe organ housed in a church in Milwaukee and premiered the work during Thanksgiving weekend last year. The music has an unsettling quality that, as Chacon says, reflects marginalized communities that served as the inspiration for the piece. In this installment of KNAU’s series Eats and Beats, he talks about “Voiceless Mass” and how it could serve as a touchstone for the under-heard and overlooked.

Grammy-winning songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Dom Flemons has been awarded an Honorary Doctoral Degree from Northern Arizona University for his contributions to the arts and education. His album Black Cowboys chronicles the role African Americans played in settling the West after emancipation in the 19th century.