One for the Road—It's an exciting time for local crooner Tommy Gearhart. Last September, he released a collection of standards called Autumn Serenade; his way of cracking open a window in a charming but creaky old house, inviting a fresh breeze to circulate through its rooms and ruffle the pages of the American song book. And now velvet-voiced Tommy will carry the torch of, well, torch jazz on a four-city tour across the Midwest (specifically, he'll light up Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, and Cincinnati).

Survival of the Illest

The Launchpad presents "Underground Rising 2," a beatified battle royale with Mantis Fist, Living Proof, Durt-e Sol, Habeas Corpses, SaintSinnerSuns, The Zoo and others. It's free, but only if you're over 21. Sorry, children. (LM)

Trumpeter’s quintet improvises with a lyrical edge

Trumpeter, composer and educator Ralph Alessi doesn’t have a problem winging it.

Sticking out like a sore thumb and loving every minute of it

For Nick Pena, frontman of Santa Fe's Latin rap-rock trio La Junta, school taught him a somewhat unintended lesson. "In high school," says Pena, "I was never really a good son or a good student. Looking back, I think that if it weren't for my art and music classes I wouldn't have stayed in school."

Reggae hero didn't set out to invent a style

Eek-A-Mouse is still in Ketchum, Idaho, when we speak. It's hard to imagine what the 3,000 or so people who live in Ketchum think of the Mouse, a six-and-a-half foot Jamaican reggae legend. But Eek-A-Mouse loves the West. He declared himself a cowboy in the mid-’90s and has donned a cowboy hat ever since. He's been on tour for about three weeks now, though really, he says, the road has been his home for the last 30 years or so. "That's how it goes," he says. "It's my life."