Troubadour

Calling all Bob Dylan fans -- tickets to see the iconic folk troubadour on Aug. 21 in Boston at the House of Blues go on sale Friday, Aug. 5 at 10 a.m. Tickets are $56.25 - $76.25 and there will be a four ticket limit per person. Visit the House of Blues website for more info.

Tom Weber is a Harvard man, class of '72. During his years in Cambridge he spent countless hours at Club Passim, the Unicorn Coffee House, and other venues that hosted singer-songwriters. He saw Jackson Browne, John Prine, Tom Waits, and many other performers who went on to stardom. "I got to see all my heroes up close and personal," says Weber, who now lives in Pennsylvania. Four decades later, Weber is still attending acoustic-music shows. For the past 10 years, he's done so with a digital video camera in hand.

MANSFIELD - In the hour and 40 minutes that George Strait was on the Comcast Center stage on Saturday, he sang a grand total of 27 songs. The way the math works out, even if all of them had been country chart-toppers - which they were not - he still wouldn't have covered even half of his No. 1 hits. Too bad, everyone who hoped to hear "All My Ex's Live in Texas": such is the (ironic) disappointment you face when your man's successes wildly outpace acceptable concert length. In fact, it wasn't until the show was three-quarters over that the Academy of Country Music's newly minted Artist of the...

FRIEND OF MINE: The Bill Morrissey Tribute Concert With Patty Larkin, David Johansen, John Gorka, Mark Erelli, and others At: Somerville Theatre, Thursday, 7 p.m. Tickets: $37.50. 617-625-5700, www.somerville theatreonline.com He was the epitome of a troubadour, a man who lived the adventures and struggles, the humor and heartache he chronicled so elegantly in songs that unfolded like short stories. When Bill Morrissey died on July 23, unexpectedly and too soon at 59, his loss was profoundly felt in the New England folk community he had nurtured since arriving on the scene in the early...

Sooner or later, it seems, the Great American Songbook grips even the most storied of rock 'n' rollers. It's not just Streisand and Michael Buble who are revisiting Tin Pan Alley these days; it's also Bette Midler and Rod Stewart, who has recorded not one but two albums of pop standards. With "A Foreign Sound," Brazilian troubadour and trailblazer Caetano Veloso joins the list with a collection of covers he considers American classics. It's no surprise that he salutes Cole Porter, the Gershwins, and Irving Berlin.

It’s hard to trust a prolific musician. If something comes that easily, it doesn’t seem earned. It doesn’t help when the artist’s entire shtick is built on two-minute song sketches that seem thrown together on the way out to the bodega to grab smokes. That’s the essence of an Adam Green record: casual, disinterested, observational humor set to lo-fi rock accompaniment that somehow, against all odds, still ends up being utterly compelling. On “Minor Love,’’ Green’s sixth solo record, he proves adept as ever traversing through the American popular songbook and filtering his...

HARTFORD - When Bruce Springsteen asked the musical question "is there anybody alive out there?" last night at the Hartford Civic Center he got back a roar of affirmation like only Bruce Springsteen can. The beloved New Jersey icon, sporting a shocking amount of hairspray in his endearingly poufy 'do, was back among his people. All his people. After Springsteen's troubadour detours - 2005's ruminative solo work "Devils & Dust" and the big-band folk of 2006's "The Seeger Sessions" - both the E Street Band and his fans transformed the opening night of the tour for the new "Magic"...

Memory is a powerful thing. Saturday night at the TD Garden, in the first of two weekend shows, James Taylor and Carole King opened the floodgates of remembrance with a smashing joint performance that merged their distinctive voices and justly celebrated catalogs. Members of the sold-out audience of 18,000 — whether they were firsthand witnesses to the early-’70s golden age the pair was celebrating, fans turned on by parents or elder siblings, or those from a younger generation just discovering the duo’s classics — were with Taylor and King every step...

Let's talk about lemonade -- the kind you squeeze from a lemon of a rainy day that threatens to derail a beloved annual charity concert at Fenway Park. Hot Stove, Cool Music was all of half an hour into a marathon line up when sprinkles turned to showers and Boston rockers the Gentlemen were whisked off the stage. Moments later the audience was instructed to take cover under the bleachers. Amps and instruments were hustled inside, a makeshift stage was hastily erected under a Lobster Roll sign, and -- in the words of local singer-songwriter Tom Glynn -- "it was the best...

CARCASSONNE, France -- From the window of the train, the medieval town of Carcassonne appears on the horizon like an apparition from the past. Crenellated stone ramparts and cylindrical towers with pointy-capped roofs sprout from the hilltop above the Aude River, as do visions of damsels in distress, troubadours with lutes, and flag-wielding crusaders laying siege for a cause. Next stop: the Middle Ages. Well, almost. The railway station is in the "new" part of town, the Bastide Saint-Louis, established as recently as 1247.

BOB DYLAN AND HIS BAND At: House of Blues, last night The only thing that sounds even older than Bob Dylan's ancient yet continuing canon of songs - a musical Mount Rushmore of folk, blues, gospel, and pop that's been both carved into, and chiseled out of, the bedrock of American music - is, well, Bob Dylan's voice. For half a century now, it has been an instrument (or weapon or albatross, depending on one's point of view) of endless debate, much like the mercurial man himself.

Calling all Bob Dylan fans -- tickets to see the iconic folk troubadour on Aug. 21 in Boston at the House of Blues go on sale Friday, Aug. 5 at 10 a.m. Tickets are $56.25 - $76.25 and there will be a four ticket limit per person. Visit the House of Blues website for more info.

Memory is a powerful thing. Saturday night at the TD Garden, in the first of two weekend shows, James Taylor and Carole King opened the floodgates of remembrance with a smashing joint performance that merged their distinctive voices and justly celebrated catalogs. Members of the sold-out audience of 18,000 — whether they were firsthand witnesses to the early-’70s golden age the pair was celebrating, fans turned on by parents or elder siblings, or those from a younger generation just discovering the duo’s classics — were with Taylor and King every step of the way....

It’s hard to trust a prolific musician. If something comes that easily, it doesn’t seem earned. It doesn’t help when the artist’s entire shtick is built on two-minute song sketches that seem thrown together on the way out to the bodega to grab smokes. That’s the essence of an Adam Green record: casual, disinterested, observational humor set to lo-fi rock accompaniment that somehow, against all odds, still ends up being utterly compelling. On “Minor Love,’’ Green’s sixth solo record, he proves adept as ever traversing through the American popular songbook and filtering...

MANSFIELD - In the hour and 40 minutes that George Strait was on the Comcast Center stage on Saturday, he sang a grand total of 27 songs. The way the math works out, even if all of them had been country chart-toppers - which they were not - he still wouldn't have covered even half of his No. 1 hits. Too bad, everyone who hoped to hear "All My Ex's Live in Texas": such is the (ironic) disappointment you face when your man's successes wildly outpace acceptable concert length. In fact, it wasn't until the show was three-quarters over that the Academy of Country Music's newly minted Artist of the...

Reprinted from late editions of yesterday's Globe HARTFORD - When Bruce Springsteen asked the musical question "Is there anybody alive out there?" Tuesday night at the Hartford Civic Center, he got back a roar of affirmation like only Bruce Springsteen can. The beloved New Jersey icon, sporting a shocking amount of hairspray in his endearingly poufy 'do, was back among his people. All his people. After Springsteen's troubadour detours - 2005's ruminative solo work "Devils & Dust" and the big-band folk of 2006's "The Seeger Sessions" - both the...

If you've ever dined out in San Francisco's gentrifying Mission neighborhood, it's likely that your meal came with a side of troubadour. After the woman selling roses passed by, a pair of men arrived to serenade the entire restaurant, or maybe just you. Perhaps you slipped them a dollar or two. Maybe you scowled and returned to your empanadas. Or maybe you wondered, who are these two fellows with the guitars and sad love songs? One of them might have been Carmelo Muñiz Sánchez , the 57-year-old Mexican musician whom Mark Becker films in the delicate documentary portrait,...

If you've ever dined out in San Francisco's gentrifying Mission neighborhood, it's likely that your meal came with a side of troubadour. After the woman selling roses passed by, a pair of men arrived to serenade the entire restaurant, or maybe just you. Perhaps you slipped them a dollar or two. Maybe you scowled and returned to your empanadas. Or maybe you wondered, who are these two fellows with the guitars and sad love songs? One of them might have been Carmelo Muñiz Sánchez , the 57-year-old Mexican musician whom Mark Becker films in the delicate documentary portrait,...