Driving across the North American continent with only a box of guitars, drum parts and the blues—and prolly the directions to dozens of roadhouses, dimly lit bars and rustic concert venues as companions—Bob Log III makes an appearance on Tuesday night at Low Spirits (2823 Second Street NW). He may or may not have his dinghy on board, but this mysterious and damn talented master of the six-string promises a jam party complete with dancing, boob-stirred drinks and lap sitting as part of the experience. Log wears a human cannonball outfit and microphone-equipped helmet during his performances. He recently chatted with the Alibi on his drive out west. The guitarist now calls Melbourne, Australia home, and stopped in the western desert to talk.

AM: So this is your big summer tour, eh?

BLIII: I get to come back home to America at least once a year, and I love it. I have a blast. I’ll play anywhere there’s a room full of people drinking beer, and that’s pretty much a lot of places.

AM: How’s it shaping up?

BLIII: This one’s pretty big, man. At one point, I’m going to be doing 37 shows in a row; it’s gonna get real interesting, but I’m also gonna get real good. I’ve been practicing 17 years for this show coming up in Albuquerque. But I keep it interesting. I change it up. I don’t do set lists. I just get up there and kinda see what happens.

AM: Are you touring as a solo act this time around?

BLIII: It’s just me and the car. My plan is to kidnap people. I do have an opening band for the stretch from Nashville to New Hampshire.

AM: You’re playing that legendary Silvertone guitar for this tour, aren’t you?

BLIII: I am, but I also have some Airline guitars right now too. I get acoustic guitars and put a Silvertone pickup on them, and I put a piezo-accoustic pickup on them. There are two outs, so I get a distorted sound and an acoustic sound at the same time; that way I cover every frequency a guitar can possibly make.

AM: Don’t you also play the drums at the same time?

BLIII: When I play drums, I try to sound like a tight drummer and a drunk drummer at the same time. So time becomes like a rubber band, and I can move it or change it or shape it anyway I want. All day, time rules your day … but for an hour and a half each night I get to be the master of time. For the drunk drummer, I have a kick drum and a cymbal. For the tight drummer, I use a drum machine. My two drummers kinda hate each other. I get to finger-pick on top of the fighting.

AM: That sounds kinda tense.What do you think about that kind of tension in music?

BLIII: It's really a kind of release. The first time people started banging on rocks, it was some kind of celebration. The first music—people banging on the stuff around them—probably would have been really fucking fun. I’m trying to keep music fun. That’s my job. I don’t know anything else.

AM: Besides being fun to listen and party to, some have said your act is deeply transgressive. What are your thoughts on that?

BLIII: I’m a guitar player, and I've played since I was 11. I take that seriously, but I try to turn that into a party, a guitar party. I’m trying to get people to dance, and to dance wrong. If they drop a drink and the glass breaks, I’m doing my job. People can come on stage anytime and get crazy, and I encourage that. They come up and sit on me and I bounce them around while I play. I couldn’t actually do that in normal time, but when I play guitar I get energy I don’t normally have.

AM: What about the boob references: boobs as accompanying instruments or boob-stirred scotch?

BLIII: It’s about making fun of people who use boobs to try and sell you something. I’m saying boobs are ridiculous; let’s take out the sexy, the commercial power. Let’s do something folks would never do with their boobs. I dare anyone in the audience to do it and not smile. As for the song itself, instead of writing a song about what made my day bad, I wrote a song about what made my day good. That day, a woman saw me drinking, said give me that drink and just put her boob in it. I took a sip, and that made me feel fucking better.

AM: How does that work within your music?

BLIII: It’s the blues turned into a party. It’s like Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. The songs aren’t about being sad anymore … Rock and roll came around, and then I decided to put on a funny suit and throw a party. It’s hilarious, and it’s the coolest guitar you’ve ever heard.

Bob Log III performs his one-of-a-kind take on the blues at Low Spirits (2823 Second Street NW) on Tuesday, July 22, at 9pm. Doors are at 8pm, and the cover is just 8 clams.

Ever notice how different sets of ears hear things, well, differently? Take Oakland, Calif., quartet Everything is Dirty. Peruse online reviews and you’ll find numerous references to grunge, art rock and psychedelic. The meaning of pigeonholing tags—which all us music scribblers adore—shift over time as music changes. For instance, “soul” used to mean cornbread vocals by Sam & Dave backed by plenty of horns. These days, soul means (ugh) Robin Thicke or (less ugh) Duffy. That '90s catchall phrase “alternative rock” referred to the watered-down but occasionally worthy successor to '80s “indie rock” on labels like Merge and 4AD but ultimately degenerated into describing knuckleheads like Fred Durst.

If Everyone Is Dirty is grunge, then so is Weezer. Art noise? Sure, there’s some droning here and there, but I guess anything vaguely atonal is “noise” to masses who nowadays prefer songs that are more beat than melody or harmony or anything else that was once the hallmark of popular (pop) music. Live, the band does tend to venture heavily into “improv” and “jam”—two words that always fill me with dread. Singer Sivan Gur-Arieh takes her electric violin into Jean-Luc Ponty territory, while Christopher Daddio's guitar solos are sometimes longer than necessary but not by much; that's good for a guy like me whose attention wanders when soloists noodle around above the fifth or sixth fret. Psychedelic? Please. Only people who have never taken drugs use that word.

Here’s my take: Everything is Dirty's recorded output is post-Breeders, post post-Pixies, texture-rich and crunchy with vocals reminiscent of Louise Post (Veruca Salt), Chrissy Amphlett (Divinyls) and Kristin Hersh (Throwing Muses). (And if three “posts” in one sentence isn’t enough, I don’t know what is.) Of course, I think I’m correct, but see for yourself at Low Spirits (2823 Second Street NW) on Monday, July 14, at 9pm. Cover is $5. Low Spirits • Mon Jul 14 • 9pm • $5 • 21+ • View on Alibi calendar

Here's the thing about Ty Segall. The dude is absolutely relentless. If he's not touring, he's constantly writing and recording. Segall is nothing, if not prolific. Adding to his already expanded catalogue of material, the garage-psych-fuzz wunderkind is gearing up to release a new record this year (Manipulator). And starting in August (well, he's doing one show in June), he's going to tour the shit out of that LP 'til the end of the year. The album drops on Aug. 26, but you can head over to NME for tour dates, tracklisting and whatnot. Also, you can view an album teaser below. Enjoy ...

Even though I don't consider myself a fan of The New Pornographers, I did have the privilege to interview band member A.C. Newman for my college paper. He proved to be kind and thoroughly interesting, which is basically all you want out of an interview. So it's nice to see the band still going strong. At least strong enough that they're coming out with a new record (Brill Bruisers) Aug. 26, and to give people a taste of what that LP will entail, they've made an album track available. So to hear that, and to read more info on said record, head over to Billboard.

Spoon was one of those rock bands that completely went over my head. But living in Austin, Texas, it was hard not to hear about them. Upon getting the chance to see them at ACL a few years back, I opted to see Gnarls Barkley instead, and I've never regretted it. Now the Texan group are releasing a new record (They Want My Soul), and they've shared a snippet in the form of the song “Rent I Pay,” which you can hear below via an unofficial video. Don't know if officiality is a priority to you, but there you have it. As for the release date: Buy it on Aug. 5.

Like most people, my only tidbit of knowledge surrounding Kimbra was her guest vox on the hit track “Somebody That I Used to Know,” as made famous by the probably-über-rich Gotye. But Kimbra has her own solo career, her own songs, her own identity, y'all. And if you haven't listened to her yet, her upcoming record (The Golden Echo) might be a good place to start. Some guest musicians include Van Dyke Parks (!), Omar Rodríguez López (from now-defunct Mars Volta) and John Legend, among others. That drops Aug. 19, but for more deets, head over to Pitchfork.

Here's another new album to look forward to, folks: It's Weezer's upcoming record Everything Will be Alright in the End. Produced by the Cars' Ric Ocasek, no release date has been announced. But what does that matter? You should just get excited that the group is coming out with some new material. View an album teaser below.

Former Burqueño Willis Earl Beal has decided to leave XL Recordings. In an interview with Under the Radar, Beal basically said the direction he's going and the direction of the label were like two separate roads, one road wandering toward a more “trendy” atmosphere, while he wants his music to walk the road less traveled, to be its own entity. Mind you, those are my interpretations, not actual pieces of the interview. But he's coming out with a new record (Experiments in Time) on Aug. 8, and that will be released independently. Read more about it here.

A friend of mine introduced me to the song “Ferris Wheel” by Possessed By Paul James years ago. And that's really the only thing I've heard, and the only thing I've ever cared about when his name is brought up. It's beautiful. It's heartbreaking. It's songwriting at its finest. And Konrad Wert, the man behind the moniker, is playing Low Spirits on Wednesday, June 25. And why am I so jazzed about this? Because I'll get to hear this song from the man himself. From his own lips. Listen to that below, and see why it's essential for me to attend this concert.

It's no secret that punk bands haven't exactly been chart-toppers. I mean, isn't that one of the requirements of being a successful punk band … no success? So it's a nice fact that the Ramones first record, their classic self-titled opus that carried a soaring energy, a gritty, yet upbeat mentality and a fun dynamic, has been certified gold after 38 years. That's right, they're officially über-famous. Not just famous. Congratulations dudes.

It's happening, motherfuckers! There'd been some talk about The Unicorns reforming, but that's all it was: talk. Now the band has confirmed that they are, in fact, reuniting, and not just that: They're also going to open for Arcade Fire for a few shows. The band has no touring or recording plans yet, but I’m sure new material will probably trickle out within the next year or so. One can only hope. Listen to my favorite Unicorns track below.

For all of you nostalgic folks who are still in the know (or would like to be) about Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys ... it looks like he's working on some new material. And some folks that might get featured on the record include Lana Del Rey, Frank Ocean and Zooey Deschanel. A lot of this is speculation, so fingers crossed that these assumptions bear fruit. Ya dig? Head over to Stereogum to read more about it.

The weirder and, in this writer's opinion, the more interesting of Stephen McBean's two mountain-named bands (the other being Black Mountain) the Pink Mountaintops is playing Low Spirits tonight. No self-respecting lover of drug music will miss this. My friend Pierre LaFarge turned me on to this Vancouver-based bunch of weirdoes a week or so ago and there's been nothing else on my speakers since. Can't wait for the sun to set so we can all see the Pink Mountaintops, who are touring in support of their new album Get Back. Did I mention the show is only TEN BUCKS!? C'mon!

Local and soon-to-be-no-more mysterions the Elevator Boys and psych-practitioners YOU open.

While updating my smart phone, said intelligent device offered to sync my favorite music. Along with obscure dark wave, stoner/doom and The Sound of Music soundtrack, I synced up The Angel Babies’ “Blew My Speakers.” This track from the New Mexico-born, Austin-based band’s debut 7-inch personifies the crunch and hiss of badland garage rock. When the group released their self-titled full-length in 2012, I described the result as ranging from “postmodern corrido-style numbers to fuzzy, electronics-laced rockers to slow-burning and darkly ethereal tunes.” Hang with The Angel Babies’ Frankie Medina and Calida Salazar at Captain America’s ninth Garage & Wax Night at Low Spirits (2823 Second Street NW) on Saturday, Dec. 7. The Klondykes and Ballets open this 21-and-over gig. The concert kicks off at 9pm and tickets are five bucks, but get there early for stellar vinyl curation. Low Spirits • The Angel Babies • Sat Dec 7 • 8pm • 21+

Originally billed as Nik Turner's Space Ritual, founding Hawkwind member Nik Turner finally gained the right to use the name “Nik Turner's Hawkwind,” which is a good thing since Space Ritual is actually a different band and not the one playing Low Spirits (2823 Second Street NW) on Wednesday, Nov. 13. Turner was using the name as long ago as 1994, which resulted in Hawkwind co-founder Dave Brock—still of Hawkwind (just Hawkwind)—suing him for trademark infringement. Coincidentally, Dave Brock's Hawkwind—really just called Hawkwind—also had a US tour scheduled, but apparently all this trademark crap tired Brock out, and the “real” Hawkwind postponed their tour. The fact is that both versions have one aging, original member of the seminal British space-rock band and both play decent sets filled with Hawkwind standards like “D-Rider” and “Orgone Accumulator.” But only the slightly lower-rent—and therefore cooler—Nik Turner's Hawkwind (featuring UK Subs guitarist Nicky Garrett) is coming through Albuquerque. The 21-and-over gig—also starring German krautrock outfit Hedersleben and local “grunclecore” crew Gusher—kicks off at 9pm, and admission is 8 bucks. Low Spirits • Wed Nov 13 • 9pm • $8 • 21+ • View on Alibi calendar