Mike Palm stories

When Meghan Kreidler and Michael Anderson started Kiss the Tiger almost a decade ago, she wasn’t taking it too seriously. “It was just like, let’s see how this goes,” said Kreidler, the band’s singer. Now 10 years later, the Minneapolis rock group is trying to make a go of it...

When Molly Tuttle finishes “Everything Burns” — the song she’s been using to open her current The Highway Knows tour — she knows she can breathe. “It’s honestly terrifying for me because it starts with this fast guitar riff, which is the hardest guitar part I play on the new...

PUP guitarist Steve Sladkowski already knows what he’s doing on the band’s off day before their show next week in Pittsburgh, and he won’t have far to go. The Canadian punk rock band will play Stage AE on Sept. 8, and Sladkowski planned to walk a few blocks down to...

Mike Urick feels like is he is carrying on the legacy of his grandfather, Mike Cilli, with his band, Mike Urick and the Modelaires. “He was a great musician and an amazing person,” Urick said. “We were really close when I was young and I grew up listening to his...

To celebrate the release of his new album last Friday, Daniel Donato played three Nashville shows in one day — with a solo pop-up at a record store, his band’s headlining show at Ryman Auditorium and a late-night covers set at a honky-tonk around the corner. “Three is the cosmic...

Indie pop rocker Sombr should be feeling pretty happy right about now. The 20-year-old, whose real name is Shane Boose, released his debut album, “I Barely Know Her,” on Friday, and his concerts keep getting bigger. Sombr’s Late Nights & Young Romance tour will hit Pittsburgh on Oct. 5 —...

Punchline singer/guitarist Steve Soboslai believes the Pittsburgh-based band is in a very good place right now. In the past few years, they put together a podcast series providing an exhaustive look at the pop-punk band’s history, marked the 20th anniversary of their “Action” album with a huge hometown show and...

Rapper Playboi Carti is bringing his Antagonist tour to Pittsburgh later this fall. Carti, whose “Music” album hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts earlier this year, will headline PPG Paints Arena on Nov. 1. He’ll be joined on the tour by his Opium labelmates Ken Carson, Destroy Lonely, Homixide...

Guitarist Jerry Cantrell may be heavily associated with the Seattle music scene from his work with the seminal grunge band Alice in Chains. But Cantrell, now 59, spent around a year in the Pittsburgh region — Finleyville in Washington County, to be precise — while in eighth grade during the...

The indie rock trio Essential Machine is more than a band — it’s a family, comprised of a husband (RJ), wife (Karen) and their son (Robert). “The benefits are that when we go on tour, we don’t have to leave behind our families. We are lucky that we all get...

Sister Hazel rhythm guitarist Drew Copeland can easily recall what he ate — if not the restaurant’s name — the day he wrote “Roll On Bye” with singer Ken Block more than a decade ago. “I was just telling a story this past weekend. We had the Hazelnut Hang in...

If “the hardest part of ending is starting again” — a line from Linkin Park’s 2010 song “Waiting for the End” — then their most difficult moments may be in the past. The potential ending of the band came with the death of lead singer Chester Bennington by suicide in...

With their country under attack by Russia, the musicians in Ukrainian folk band Kommuna Lux have a two-fold mission. First, they put on shows blending Balkan swing with klezmer music and traditional Ukrainian folk to help preserve the music and culture of their homeland. And second, those shows help raise...

Guitarist Bill Toms has played at dozens of venues throughout the Pittsburgh region over his almost 40 years as a professional musician. But on Saturday, he’ll add a new one to the list with a show at Crafthouse in Whitehall. Bill Toms & Hard Rain will headline a show which...

It’s been a while since Asleep At The Wheel played in the Pittsburgh region, but guitarist/singer Ray Benson is quite familiar with the area. The Texas swing band originally started in Paw Paw, West Virginia, back in 1970 before migrating to Texas a few years later. Over the years, Benson...

Joan Jett must have felt right at home Friday night on the Iron City Stage. The newish concert venue, nestled between the Allegheny River and Pittsburgh Brewing Co.’s Creighton facility, with railroad tracks running behind that, apparently sparked some childhood memories for the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer. “I...

Pittsburgh musician André Costello can pinpoint the weekend six years ago when he first started working on his new album, “Rocky Mountain Low” — because it coincides with a new addition to his family. “The weekend that I went to Youngstown to record this the first time, my wife on...

In some ways, Code Orange guitarist/vocalist Reba Meyers admits that her first solo tour is a bit premature. “I was just like, I have to do this, I don’t know why. I thought about it for two seconds,” she said. “Sometimes I think, oh, maybe I should have waited, but...

Plenty of classic rock bands seem content to rest on their laurels, coasting by on past hits and rarely, if ever, releasing new music. That doesn’t appear to be the case for Styx. The classic rockers — known for 1970s hits like “Lady,” “Come Sail Away” and, of course, “Renegade”...

Young country singer Josie Sal calls her appearance singing with Jelly Roll two years ago at the Pavilion at Star Lake a “crazy story.” “I brought a sign that said ‘Since Lainey (Wilson) is in Alabama can I sing SAVE ME with you?’ Next thing I know security brought me...