Category: Music

The five-and-a-half-hour, three-band odyssey that was the Foo Fighters’ “Take Cover Tour” stop at Lincoln Financial Field on Thursday started with a bang.

It came courtesy of a hellacious opening set by Mannequin Pussy for what was the Dave Grohl-led band’s first show in Philadelphia in 15 years.

The Philly punk rock-plus band earned a position of prominence in this review with an absolutely ripping performance that Foo fans who didn’t arrive at the sports complex by 5:30 p.m. on a weekday afternoon should be kicking themselves for missing.

I’m being effusive about Mannequin Pussy not simply to cheer on one of the best bands to emerge from the Philly music scene in the last decade. The Marisa “Missy” Dabice-led quintet did make the most of their biggest hometown show ever.

Nor is the cheerleading an inappropriate response, especially after the band performed in the home of its favorite football team all dressed in green and ending its action-packed set by leading the crowd in “Fly, Eagles, Fly” and an “E-A-G-L-E-S” chant before leaving the stage flapping their arms as if they were wings.

In 30 minutes, in a less than half full Linc, Mannequin Pussy found time to emphatically deliver seven songs from their top notch 2024 LP I Got Heaven, plus career highlights like “Drunk II,” “Control,” and “Romantic.” They also paid tribute to stage hands and support staff at the Linc while sharing several Go Birds! exclamations along with less friendly words for Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. John Fetterman.

With a take-no-prisoners attitude driven by bassist Colins “Bear” Regisford and drummer Kaleen Reading, Mannequin Pussy repeatedly displayed a knack for constructing compact songs that — much like a band that Grohl used to play drums with called Nirvana — move from passages of real beauty to explosions of fury.

I’m making a point of Mannequin Pussy’s concise, impactful approach because it contrasted so sharply with the Foo Fighters’ sprawling headlining set, which stretched over three hours.

In between, Josh Homme’s desert rock band Queens of the Stone Age was also excellent in an hourlong set. The band lived up to its stoner rock rep while riding a slinky, sometimes downright sexy groove, particularly on “Make It Witchu.”

It was impressively locked in, though Homme — which rhymes with “mommy” — sounded a little woozy at times. It was hard to tell if he was kidding when he quipped: “Wow, it was the wrong day to take mushroom before the show.”

The Foo Fighters hit the stage a few minutes after 8 p.m. Grohl trotted down the runway that extended onto the field of the stadium, by then filled with 60,000-plus fans of the band who first performed in Philadelphia at the Trocadero in 1995. They last played South Philly at what was then the Wells Fargo Center, in 2011.

Since then, there were several Foo shows across the river in Camden at the amphitheater now known as the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion. A scheduled 2022 show at the Linc was canceled after the death of drummer Taylor Hawkins earlier that year.

The Foos’ return features new drummer Ilan Rubin, who formerly pounded the skins for Nine Inch Nails. Earlier this year, Rubin replaced Josh Freese, who had replaced Hawkins in 2023.

On the “Take Cover Tour,” which kicked off in Mexico in January and runs through March, the Foos are exerting themselves as one of the world’s biggest bands, playing stadiums all over the globe.

Grohl — who sang and played guitar, except for one brief stint in which he switched places with Rubin and got behind the drum kit — repeatedly mentioned the Linc was the largest venue the band has played in Philadelphia. He also name-checked the Electric Factory, where the band performed three times in the late 1990s and early ’00s.

The stature of the band was also expressed by the length of the show.

Playing for three hours means you’ve attained epic status. Bruce Springsteen has done it for decades. It comes naturally to jam bands like Phish, whose identity is built around extended improvisation. And Taylor Swift also crossed the threshold with her career-spanning “Eras Tour.”

The marathon set gave the Foos — that also includes guitarists Pat Smear and Chris Shiflett, bassist Nate Mendel, and keyboard player Rami Jaffee — time to visit all its own eras.

That meant reaching back to the 1995 self-titled release on which Grohl played all the instruments, which is still the band’s best album. Of the two songs from that record, “This Is the Call,” was included in extended version. The other, “Big Me,” was part of a acoustic set and brimmed with a welcome melodic sweetness and light.

The stripped-down set also included a breezy “Wheels” and “Marigold,” a rarity that Grohl put out on a cassette-only release in 1992 using the band name Late! And when he briefly dismissed the band to do a solo, “Under You,” from the band’s 2023 album, But Here We Are, Grohl delivered a not-on-the-set-list surprise.

It was a Philly special: a shortened version of New Hope duo Ween’s “Freedom of ’76,” a song that The Inquirer recently named one of the most iconic Philadelphia songs of all time. Ween FTW!

In April, the Foos released its 12th album, Your Favorite Toy, a bracing, disciplined record that benefits from brevity, with its 10 songs clocking in under 33 minutes.

For whatever reason, only one of those songs — the hard-hitting title song — made the cut on Thursday. Perhaps Grohl was worried about performing too much material unfamiliar to the crowd — a significant portion of which was in his mid-50s age cohort, but also with many fans a generation or two younger.

The show had its highlights, from crowd-pleasers like the crunchy “Monkey Wrench” to “The Teacher,” a tribute to Grohl’s mother, Virginia, who died in 2022. It was a heartfelt, lengthy elegy in which he played a double-necked guitar and sang: “You taught me how to be / Never showed me how to say good bye.”

Also entertaining was a medley where the band members were introduced, and got to play a song by a band they used to be in. It was especially fun since Mendel was once in Sunny Day Real Estate, Jaffee played with the Wallflowers, and Smear was a member of L.A. punks, the Germs.

Grohl was, as always, an ingratiating presence. He drops F and MF bombs at an astounding rate without seeming the slightest bit subversive or mean-spirited. The joy he takes from being on stage is infectious, and was reciprocated by a singing-along audience pleased to be hanging out on what turned out to be a pleasant and not-too-crushingly-humid of a summer evening.

The Foos have a number of memorable songs that the band has made stick over its 30-year career — such as “The Best of You,” “Learn to Fly,” and “Everlong,” which was the final encore, with fireworks.

But the band doesn’t have an endless supply, nor much variety in their meat-and-potatoes approach. Many songs like “Run” were burdened by drawn out arrangements that turned into a slog.

Early on, Grohl promised that as the evening went on the Foos would be generous in performing “song after song after song after song … three hours isn’t enough!”

On the contrary, it was more than enough.

For Keanu Reeves, 1991 was a very good year.

The future star of The Matrix and John Wick franchises made three memorable movies — Point Break, My Own Private Idaho, and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. He also met his friend Robert Mailhouse, whom he’s still playing music with 35 years later in a band that has three shows in the Philadelphia region in the next week.

Dogstar, the alternative rock band that Reeves and Mailhouse play in along with singer-guitarist Brett Domrose, will perform in support of their new album All in Now at Union Transfer on Wednesday, at Sounds Waves at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City on Friday, and at the Hershey Theatre on Aug. 18.

Reeves, who was born in Beirut and raised in Toronto, was a standout hockey player in high school. At age 20, he moved to Los Angeles, where he introduced himself to Mailhouse in a grocery store.

“We lived in the same neighborhood, and we went to the same grocery store,” recalled Reeves, who plays bass, talking via Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “And he was wearing a Detroit Red Wings sweatshirt. I asked him if he knew where there was a pickup game.

“From that came a fast friendship. I had a house that had a drum set and bass amp and a guitar amp, and Robert was playing drums and keyboards. So that’s the genesis of the rhythm section.”

“Keanu was a goaltender, which was really hard to find in Los Angeles,” said Mailhouse, picking up the story. An actor who has had roles in Days of Our Lives and CSI, he also joined the call from his own home in L.A.

“I remember I went back to the Thursday night skate in Burbank and told the guys, ‘I think I might have found a goaltender.’ And then when Keanu showed up, he was really good.”

Before Mailhouse, now 64, and Reeves, 61, played music, they played hockey. Dogstar was first fronted by singer Greg Miller, who led the band on a 1995 tour opening for Bon Jovi in Australia and New Zealand. But by the time the band’s debut album, Our Little Visionary, came out in 1996, Miller had left the band and Domrose — a former member of legendary punk band the Nuns — had taken over frontman duties.

That version of Dogstar released one more album, Happy Ending, in 2000, and then lost momentum, breaking up two years later.

The split wasn’t caused by tension among the musicians, said Domrose, 57, a film composer who joined the Zoom call from his house in L.A. “We’d been going through the meat grinder with different record labels. It wears you out.”

There was also a little hiccup.

“Keanu had a movie career that was taking off to a new level” — the actor played Neo in the first Matrix movie in 1999 — “so we just felt like maybe it was time for a break.”

The trio remained friends, with Reeves briefly playing bass in another Mailhouse band called Becky. But they mainly pursued other paths, until the pandemic.

“You rethink your life,” said Mailhouse. “You get together and find you have all this time and less distractions. That put us all in a good mood to get back and try some stuff.”

Reeves says he never had rock-star ambitions, other than “playing air guitar on a tennis racket,” a la his character in the Bill & Ted movies. “But when I was 22, I went down to the Guitar Center on Sunset and bought a bass.”

He’s an anomaly among actors — unlike say, Jared Leto’s in 30 Seconds to Mars or Jamie Foxx and Kiefer Sutherland, who have recorded under their own names — in that he stays out of the spotlight, content to simply play bass and sometimes sing backup vocals.

Reeves’ rumbling bass is the first thing heard as All in Now kicks off with “Math.” But he’s essentially a supporting player in a power trio that refers to itself as “a brotherhood.” There’s a parallel there to the position Reeves favored in hockey, which also put the good of the team ahead of individual glory (and wore a mask).

“It is kind of a similar thing,” Domrose said to Reeves. “You are the last line of defense as a bass player and a goalie. If the bass player drops out, you’ve got nothing.

“He’s the melody of the team,” said Mailhouse.

“Oh my God —,” Reeves said, jokingly expressing discomfort at being analyzed by his bandmates as he sat in a bookshelf-lined room, bass by his side. “Enough about the bass player! We’re coming to Philly! We’re gonna rock! August 12!”

When Domrose, Mailhouse, and Reeves got together to play during the pandemic, Reeves says, they realized “we all missed it.”

“We plugged in, and Robert picked up his sticks and Brett put on his guitar … There it was.”

“You slide into your old comfortable slippers,” said Domrose. “I felt it right away.”

Dogstar released its third album, Somewhere Between the Power Lines and the Palm Trees, in 2023. Since then, the band has been a steady concern, headlining shows and doing festival dates in the U.S. and Europe.

All in Now is a rugged yet melodic grunge-adjacent album that would sound right at home in the mid-1990s alongside Bush, Stone Temple Pilots, and early Radiohead.

When asked what favorite bands they have in common, Domrose cites David Bowie and Reeves names the Replacements, referring to the Paul Westerberg-fronted 1980s rock band, not the 2000 football comedy he starred in.

All in Now was recorded with veteran producer Nick Launey, who outfitted Dogstar with a hard-hitting if not terribly original sound. The band is genuinely thrilled that such an esteemed producer signed up with them.

“I mean all this work he’s done with Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and more recently, Amyl and the Sniffers,” said Mailhouse. “All these great bands, and now little old Dogstar. I think we got lucky.”

Reeves’ movie-star career continues apace: He’s due in director Tim Miller’s Shiver next year. “Sharks, time machine, Groundhog Day … Fun!” is how the actor has summed up the movie, in which he plays a Caribbean smuggler.

But the friends are also committed to keeping Dogstar going as a working band.

All in Now’s title sounds like a statement of commitment, “but it’s not really a narrative of us,” said Domrose. “But unconsciously it does reflect where the band is now.”

“It’s got an energy to it, right?,” said Reeves. “All in Now is f— awesome! I think we came off tour and we were like ‘Let’s rock!’

“Making music can be so much fun,” he said. “The creativity, being together, the three of us in a room. To be able to make a record, and then to tour and do it again. I feel really grateful. This is our second album since we got back together. It’s exciting. So let’s make a third. Keep it going!”

Dogstar at Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden at 8 p.m. Wednesday, utphilly.com; Hard Rock Hotel Casino, 1000 Boardwalk, Atlantic City, at 9 p.m. Friday, casino.hardrock.com; and Hershey Theatre, 15 E. Caracas Ave., Hershey, at 8 p.m. Aug. 18, hersheyentertainment.com.

My son and I sat on the tailgate of his truck on a recent summer afternoon, sipping beers and looking out at the crowd filling up the fields at the site of the original Woodstock.

He was shirtless in jeans and cowboy boots and a camo Eagles hat. Other trucks filled the spaces around us, but Subarus and Toyota Priuses rolled in, too. I saw an Arthur Russell bumper sticker on one truck and smiled, a man in a Primus shirt by another, not to mention hundreds of people, of all ages, I’d guess were major Phish fans.

“I don’t know,” I told my son. “This doesn’t look like a country music crowd.”

“Billy’s not country,” he replied.

About an hour later, Nashville musician Billy Strings was deep into a brain-melting jam, fingerpicking his Martin acoustic guitar for about 15,000 people at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in New York. Mandolin, banjo, upright bass, and fiddle filled in around him, and I flashed back to a similar, much smaller jam I saw atop a Tennessee mountain years ago.

“I don’t know anything about music,” I said to myself as Billy blistered on.

People told me as much, way back in 2013, when I wrote a story for the Daily News about the rise of country music in the Philadelphia area and how it baffled me.

I was — forgive me — snarky.

“There’s plenty of songs about booze or guns or bonfires or getting muddy with carefree girls. Often, it’s a combination of all those things in one song, and America eats it up,” I wrote.

Rereading the piece now, in 2026, it’s not as bad as I remembered. I interviewed experts, fans, and radio personalities, and let them have their say.

“It’s mainstream. It’s rock ‘n’ roll now; it’s not that old twangy country people think of. It’s music people can understand and relate to,” one fan told me back then, during WXTU’s 29th anniversary concert in Camden.

Still, a few people came for me online.

Former conservative talk show host Chris Stigall brought me on his Philadelphia-based show, and I knew I was in trouble. I can’t find a recording, but I recall him calling me an “elitist” or “smug,” and he may have laughed when I told him my favorite band was Black Sabbath.

I took that same son, a middle-schooler back then, to see Sabbath in Philly that very year. Friends were hitting up Toby Keith and Kenny Chesney shows at the time, though, asking me to tag along. I was still very much listening to metal and indie rock, bands like Built to Spill, who I’ve seen live about two dozen times. I held fast.

“What’s next?” I wondered. “Jimmy Buffett?”

But then a few things happened that changed me, life events that cut me down a bit: my best friend died, I got divorced, and some of my snark just faded away. I was also sent out into rural Pennsylvania after the 2016 election to get a better understanding of the state for The Inquirer. I wrote about deer urine farmers, demolition derbies, transgender women, immigrant families, terrible internet service, the Amish, and even an elderly yodeler.

I spent a lot of time driving, my radio scanning from country to Christian, and interviewed Pennsylvanians in barns, old coal towns, campgrounds, and general stores. Many of these people had different concerns, backgrounds, musical tastes, and voting records than most Philadelphians. The more time I spent with them, the harder it was to label anyone, anywhere.

I also met my second wife, who was from Chattanooga, Tenn., around that time too, and she introduced me to a South I didn’t know. During one early visit to her hometown, she took me to the Mountain Opry, a little community hall atop Signal Mountain where they served popcorn and soda. The tiny show, with artists as talented as Billy Strings, felt like a treasure she gifted me, and I remain grateful for that.

We went to an Austin honky-tonk together too, where I may have hooted and hollered when the Beaumonts played their raunchy songs. Later, in 2019, we danced to Chris Stapleton in a former church in downtown Chattanooga at our wedding. I still have “Rocky Top” in my running playlist.

During all this time, I thought about that 2013 story I wrote, with growing regret.

My children finally tipped the scales when they got to high school and became adults, and some of the lyrics coming out of their speakers began to catch me off guard, artists like Lost Dog Street Band and Zach Bryan. I went looking for more and found Sierra Ferrell, Sturgill Simpson, Lydia Loveless, and Margo Cilker.

Was it country? Americana? Folk? Bluegrass? Who cares, I’m a fan of whatever it is, and now, as I hover close to 50, I couldn’t care less about who listens to what.

When I went to see Tyler Childers at the Highmark Mann Center for the Performing Arts, I was surprised to see how young the crowd was and remembered, fondly, getting busted for underage drinking there at a Metallica, Danzig, and Suicidal Tendencies show decades earlier.

Fast-forward a few years, and my son and I were camping along the Delaware River, fishing and eating kielbasa, ahead of the Billy Strings show. I hadn’t heard of Strings before I visited the Martin factory in Northeastern Pennsylvania last year, but my son is a devotee, and I’d dragged him to metal shows as a kid, and even a jazz show in Philly last year.

“It sounds like everyone in the band is playing a different song,” he said about the jazz.

From quick listens, I assumed Billy Strings was playing country music, but my son was right. It’s something different, something I don’t need to label. I’ve seen Strings described as psychedelic or “jamgrass,” and they both sound fine to me. The crowd — he sold out two nights at Bethel — was losing its mind, twirling around for hours on the grass like at the original Woodstock on the grounds, back in 1969.

We drove back to the campground with smiles stuck to our faces.

Later, when I got home, I learned Strings grew up in Michigan, in a household full of bluegrass and heavy metal. One of his favorite bands, it turns out, was Black Sabbath, just like me: further proof that we can like what we like, without labels.

Wednesday, Aug. 5

Low Cut Connie

Philly rock and soul band Low Cut Connie doesn’t have a proper local gig that requires a paid ticket to enter until its Nov. 20 show at Union Transfer. But Adam Weiner and his South Philly crew are still finding a way to celebrate their new protest album Livin in the USA with a happy hour-timed free street party outside their local, Ray’s Happy Birthday Bar. 6 p.m., corner of Passyunk Avenue and Federal Street, instagram.com/lowcutconnie

Happy Together

This highly successful oldies package tour is now in its 17th year. It won’t be the same this time around due to the 2025 death of Mark Volman, aka Flo of Flo & Eddie, the dual front men of the Turtles, whose 1967 hit gives the tour its name. (His partner, Howard Kaylan, aka Eddie, retired in 2017 for health reasons.) But Happy Together rolls on without them, with hitmakers like the Association, the Troggs, and the Cowsills. Ron Dante, who was the lead vocalist for “Sugar Sugar” animated band the Archies, will do double duty and act as lead vocalist for the Turtles. 7 p.m., Lansdowne Theater, 31 N. Lansdowne Ave., lansdownetheater.org

Thursday, Aug. 6

The Isley Brothers

The Isley Brothers formed in Cincinnati in 1954 and 72 years later, the great Ronald Isley, now 85, is still singing. He and his younger brother, guitarist Ernie Isley, 74, are the only two of the six Isleys still alive. The Isleys were the first to have a hit with “Twist & Shout” — two years before the Beatles — and they have endured through the decades with songs like “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You),” “That Lady, Pt. 1,” and “Fight the Power.” Stephanie Mills and Breakwater open. 7 p.m., Dell Music Center, 2400 Strawberry Mansion Drive, dellmusiccenter.com.

NoName

Chicago rapper NoName — given name: Fatimah Nyeema Warner — first gained notice for her contributions to releases by her fellow Windy City artists Saba and Chance the Rapper. Now, she’s celebrating the 10th anniversary of her 2016 mixtape, Telefone. Opener Cleo Reed is touring behind her 2025 double LP Cuntry, which mixes blues, soul, country, and electronic music to, as Reed describes it, explore “the rage that comes from grappling with the grips of labor on both the body and in the American workplace.” 8 p.m., Brooklyn Bowl Philadelphia, 1009 Canal St., BrooklynBowl.com/philadelphia

Thinkin’ Big

Fun will be had at the Black Squirrel Club with this 15-piece ensemble, officially billed as Taylor Kelly with Thinkin’ Big Featuring Tennishu, Aquildawud + Gizelxanath Rodriguez. Philly trumpeter and singer Kelly will join his old Berklee School of Music classmate, Thinkin’ Big band leader Jonah Francese, with guests that include multi-instrumentalist Tennishu, Philly R&B artist Aquildawud, who opened two recent shows for Jill Scott at the Met, and Rodriguez, who is a Latin jazz vocalist and music professor at Bucknell. 7:30 p.m., Black Squirrel Club, 1489 Street, BlackSquirrelClub.com

Chicken Bone Beach Jazz Series

The weekly Chicken Bone Beach free jazz concert series on the Atlantic City Boardwalk kicks off this Thursday with Baltimore vibraphonist Warren Wolf. Keith Hollis opens. The series will continue with Marcus Gilmore on Aug. 13, Amina Figoroa on Aug. 20, and Jen Carne on Aug. 27. 7 p.m., Kennedy Plaza, between Mississippi and Georgia Avenues on the Boardwalk, chickenbonebeach.org

Friday, Aug. 7

Billy Idol & Devo

There’s a new documentary streaming on Hulu called Billy Idol Should Be Dead. However, he is not. On the contrary, the “White Wedding” and “Eyes Without a Face” singer, who is going into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in November, is enjoying a renaissance. And on this “It’s a Nice Day to … Tour Again!” tour, he’s teamed up with Devo, the “Whip It” men who also are the subject of an excellent doc, simply called Devo, which is streaming on Netflix. 7:30 p.m., the Pavilion at Montage Mountain, 1000 Montage Mountain Road, Scranton, montagepavilion.com

Red Clay Strays

Alabama country band Red Clay Strays leans into both its rock and roll and gospel influences on the new Grateful, the follow-up to the Brandon Coleman-led sextet’s 2024 breakthrough Made By These Moments. The Revivalists and Brent Cobb, the cousin of Grateful producer Dave Cobb, are the openers. 6:30 p.m., Highmark Mann, 5201 Parkside Ave., HighMarkMann.org.

Joan Osborne

On her 1985 debut album Relish — which includes her biggest hit, “One Of Us,” written by Eric Bazilian of the Hooters — Joan Osborne covered Bob Dylan’s “Man in the Long Black Coat.” Since then, she’s dug more into Dylan, and her current tour shares a title with her 2017 interpretive album, Songs of Bob Dylan. Jeffrey Gaines opens. 7 p.m., Concerts Under the Stars, 175 West Valley Forge Road, King of Prussia, concertsunderthestarskop.com

Hot Tuna

This team-up of justifiably revered blues guitar Jorma Kaukonen and his bandmate Jack Casady — both once members of Jefferson Airplane — is an all-acoustic affair. Ross Garren opens. 8 p.m., Scottish Rite Auditorium, 315 White Horse Pike, Collingwood, scottishriteauditorium.com

Saturday, Aug. 8

Iron Chic

You a real jabroni if you don’t go to this free Iron Chic show. (Sorry, that’s an Iron Sheik joke.) This Iron Chic is a Long Island pop punk band whose rugged approach and shout-along choruses often get compared to New Jersey punk stalwarts Bouncing Souls. Free, 7 p.m., Spruce Street Harbor Park, 121 N. Columbus Blvd, delawareriverwaterfront.com

Sunday, Aug. 9

Hilary Duff

Former Disney channel Lizzie McGuire star Hilary Duff released her first album in 11 years, Luck … or Something, in February. Now she’s out on the “Lucky Me” tour, with Jade LeMac and La Roux opening. 7 p.m., TD Pavilion at Highmark Mann, 5201 Parkside Ave., HighMarkMann.org

Ardmore Rock N’ Ride

Eight bands will play on two stages in downtown Ardmore during this daytime event which mixes music and cycling. Too Many Zooz headlines the Suburban Square stage, where Young Gun Silver Fox also performs. Palmyra and Oh He Dead are highlights on Schauffele Plaza, where Brass Queens go on last, and then lead a Second Line across Lancaster Avenue. Free, noon, Anderson and Coulter Avenues, Ardmore, ardmorerocknride.com