Here’s where you’ll find Joe’s music news and opinions — the latest on bands, venues, festivals, and the live scene.
This is the corner of the site where I go a little off-script. Most of what you’ll find here started as a “did you see this?” text to a friend before it turned into a full post — tariffs squeezing touring musicians, AI tools reshaping how songs get made, the Live Nation-Ticketmaster mess up here in Canada, tribute acts filling rooms that original bands can’t. Some of it’s reporting, some of it’s just me sounding off, and I’m not always sure which is which (hence the disclaimer above).
If you’re into blues and jazz specifically, you’ll see plenty of that too — festival announcements, venue closures and openings, and the odd rant about the state of live music in general. I try to cover the stuff that actually affects the musicians and fans in this scene, not just the headline-grabbing industry noise. Ticket prices, streaming payouts, how a tariff on Canadian goods somehow ends up hitting a working blues band’s bottom line — if it touches the people actually making the music, it’s fair game here.
I also use this space to keep tabs on the broader shifts happening in the industry. AI tools are changing how records get made and marketed, whether anyone likes it or not, and I’d rather write about that honestly than pretend it isn’t happening. Same goes for the business side of live music — when one company controls most of the ticketing in North America, that’s worth talking about even on a blog that’s mostly about blues and jazz.
None of this is meant to be the definitive word on anything. It’s one guy who’s spent a lot of nights in clubs and green rooms, trying to make sense of an industry that changes faster than most people realize. New stuff goes up whenever something’s worth saying, so check back often or grab the newsletter below and I’ll do the work of reminding you.
