The annual Tunes & Blooms concert series at the Cincinnati Zoo kicks off today. Despite the late-coming spring, the weekly series — which showcases two local musical acts at each event — is in honor of the blooming flowers of the Zoo's Botanical Gardens. At least the snow is gone … (If you're going purely for the flowers, the Zoo's website says, "Due to unusually cool temperatures, our horticulture experts don't expect our tulips to be in bloom until mid April.")The free concerts go down every Thursday in April and run 6 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. Admission to the Zoo is free after 5 p.m. If you park in the Zoo lot, it'll cost you $8.Today sees the return of Bluegrass supergroup the Comet Bluegrass All-Stars and Americana supergroup Magnolia Mountain.Here is the rest of the month's lineup:April 11: Jake Speed and the Freddies/The TurkeysApril 18: Shiny & the Spoon/Shiny Old SoulApril 25: The Ark Band/The Cliftones

Fans of live, homegrown American Roots music will want to keep their Thursday nights free for the next few weeks. Two strong, weekly events featuring several of the city's best musicians in the field (many of whom were recently nominated for 2012 Cincinnati Entertainment Awards) will continue (at least) until the end of 2012. Mark Utley (nominated for the best Singer/Songwriter CEA) of local Americana ensemble Magnolia Mountain (nominated for best Folk/Americana act) is December’s “artist in residence” at The Crow’s Nest in Price Hill, which has become something of a local clubhouse for area Americana artists. Utley performs solo (and with bandmate Renee Frye) every Thursday this month, each night joined by some top-shelf guests. The residency continues tonight as Utley is joined by David Rhodes Brown’s Kentucky Timbre and Kentucky Struts’ Todd Lipscomb join Utley, while Ed Cunningham of the Comet Bluegrass All-Stars and Amber Nash of Shiny and the Spoon are the guests Dec. 20 and Sassy Molasses’ Moriah Lawson and Wussy’s Chuck Cleaver join Utley and Frye for the Dec. 27 showcase. All Thursday shows at The Crow's Nest are free; music starts at 9:30 p.m. each night. Meanwhile, Country troupe Jeremy Pinnell and the ’55s have been hosting "Honky Tonky Thursdays" every week around the area for the past several months. The free event — currently held at Japp's on Main St. in Over-the-Rhine — has also showcased a plethora of special guests from the local Roots scene. Tonight is an especially strong lineup — the 55's will back up 500 Miles to Memphis frontman Ryan Malott (who just announced a Kickstarter campaign to finance his band's fourth LP) for a set of Country classics (and perhaps a few Malott gems) and fellow CEA best Country act nominee Tex Schramm and the Radio King Cowboys open up the night at 8:30 p.m. Pinnell and Co. today leaked a recording from the band's pre-production rehearsals for their debut album. Look for the LP next year. Here's the demo for "The Way Country Sounds." You can also, for a limited time, download the track from Soundcloud here. Cincinnati Entertainment Awards voting begins tomorrow at noon.

The summer music festival season is winding down, but area fans of Americana/Folk/Roots music of varying stripes have a big one to look forward to this weekend, as the fifth annual Whispering Beard Folk Festival returns to the Old Mill Campground in nearby Friendship, Ind., starting in just a few hours.Founded in 2008, Whispering Beard has showcased both the old and new guard of Americana, mixing legends, contemporary favorites and lots of Greater Cincinnati area artists. This year is no exception; in fact, it may be the best lineup yet. Check the full rundown of performers below, as well as video clips from each day's headliners. FRIDAY11:30 a.m. Easy Tom Eby12:20 p.m. Red Cedards1:10 p.m. Ben Knight2 p.m. Arlo McKinley and the Lonesome Sound2:50 p.m. Rattlesnakin' Daddies3:45 Kentucky Struts4:40 p.m. Sassy Molasses5:35 p.m. Al Scorch6:30 p.m. Frontier Folk Nebraska 7:30 p.m. Charlie Parr8:30 p.m. Pokey LaFarge and the South City 3 9:30 p.m. Whiskey Bent Valley Boys10:30 p.m. Langhorne Slim Langhorne Slim - The Way We Move from Langhorne Slim on Vimeo.SATURDAY11:30 a.m. Jive Creek Ramblers12:20 p.m. Billy Catfish1:10 p.m. Terminal Union2 p.m. My Brother the Bear2:50 p.m. Shiny & the Spoon3:45 p.m. Jeremy Pinnell & the 55s4:40 p.m. Josh Eagle and the Harvest City5:35 p.m. Henhouse Prowlers6:30 p.m. Bloodroots Barter 7:25 p.m. Chicago Farmer8:20 p.m. Caitlin Rose9:20 p.m. The Tillers10:20 p.m. Justin Townes EarleSUNDAY 11 a.m. Rabbit Hash String Band11:50 a.m. The Blue Rock Boys12:40 p.m. Mt. Pleasant String Band1:30 p.m. Ma Crow and the Lady Slippers2:25 p.m. Uncle Mike Carr 3:20 p.m. Magnolia Mountain 4:20 p.m. Ramblin' Jack Elliott (check out CityBeat's interview with the Folk legend here)Weekend passes are $70 (it’s $40 for just Friday and Saturday and $20 for just Sunday). All-weekend on-site camping costs $40 or you can camp off-site for free (while spaces last). Old Mill Campground is about an hour west of downtown Cincinnati. Here's a map from Fountain Square to Friendship.View Larger MapFor complete info on this year’s Whispering Beard Folk Festival, visit www.whisperingbeard.com.

Tickets for the forthcoming season at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park were put on sale this morning at 10 a.m. To celebrate, the Playhouse is hosting a lunchtime event on Fountain Square at noon featuring giveaways and other merriment, as well as a performance by a few excellent local musicians. Mark Utley, frontman for diverse Americana group Magnolia Mountain, Chris Cusentino (The Turkeys) and Cameron Cochran (Pop Empire, Jeremy Pinnell & the 55s) are slated to be on hand for the festivities this afternoon, performing a few songs from the remarkable songbook of Hank Williams. The performance is a tie-in to the Playhouse's forthcoming staging of Hank Williams: Lost Highway, a play that follows Williams' early career and starts in "the backwoods of Alabama and winds up at center stage of the Grand Ole Opry." Lost Highway — which features over 20 of Williams greatest tunes (including locally-recorded ones like "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry") — opens Nov. 3 and runs through Dec. 23. Click here for more info on this and all of the upcoming Playhouse performances for this season. (Meanwhile, it appears my karmic adventures with Hank will continue …)Utley's Magnolia Mountain recently debuted a brand new music video for its track "Bad For Me" off of the group's recent Town and Country album. Dig it …

Australian Dance Rock trio Art Vs. Science headlines the free MidPoint Indie Summer concert on Fountain Square tonight at 7 p.m. Also on the bill is Electro duo You, You're Awesome and unique Indie Rock group SHADOWRAPTR.AvS keyboardist/guitarist/vocalist Dan McNamee spoke with CityBeat this week about the band's "conversion mission"/U.S. tour and how they borrow elements from various Dance music styles to create their own distinctive sound. Read Brian Baker's interview with McNamee here. Below, check out a live video from Art Vs. Science, a recent clip from Shadowraptr and You, You're Awesome's cover of Gary Numan's "Metal."<a href="http://shadowraptr.bandcamp.com/album/friends-with-friends-underwater">Friends With Friends - Underwater by SHADOWRAPTR</a>• It's a night of Doom, Sludge and Crust as rising underground Metal locals Beneath Oblivion headline a free hometown show tonight at Baba Budan's in Clifton Heights. BO has been continuing to tour behind its latest From Man to Dust album, which was released by former local label The Mylene Sheath and has been receiving glowing reviews from outlets like Decibel Magazine and MetalSucks.com. The band will be hitting the road again in August. Performing with Beneath Oblivion at its 8 p.m show will be Grass (Sludge band from Philadelphia), Before the Eyewall (Sludge from Columbus) and Cincy Crust Punk crew Coelacanth.• The new group DAAP Girls makes its live debut tonight, opening for solid Detroit rockers The Sights at MOTR Pub in Over-the-Rhine.The Girls consists of members of local Rock band The Lions Rampant and NoKy Ska/Reggae crew The Newport Secret Six. Lions/DAAP Girls member Stuart MacKenzie describes the band as a “dance-oriented mix of early Stones’ guitars, Funk breakbeats, three-part harmonies and Reggae bass.” Tonight's free show kicks off at 10 p.m.Headliners The Sights begin touring with Tenacious D tomorrow (playing Nashville's Ryman Auditorium) and are promoting their latest release, Left Over Right. Here's the Garage Pop band playing the title track at a show in Ypsilanti last month. • Fans of Americana/Roots/Folk music can catch some of the area’s finest tonight at Paddlefest out at Coney Island, as WNKU presents the Roots on the River Music Festival. The fest (and parking) are free. Artists scheduled to appear (5-11:30 p.m.) include Jake Speed & The Freddies, Tex Schramm & the Radio King Cowboys, The Lewis Brothers, Magnolia Mountain and Brown County, Ind., Country Blues faves Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band. Full details on Paddlefest can be found here; click here for the music schedule. • The Jam band kings of Phish return to Cincinnati tonight for a 7 p.m. concert at Riverbend. Tickets are $41.50-$56.50. Perhaps because Cincinnati is becoming such a cool city to hang out in lately, like the members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (who hung out at the Radiohead concert and took batting practice with the Reds the night before their show in Cincy recently), the Phish phellas spent an off day in the Queen City yesterday. Singer/guitarist Trey Anastasio and bassist Mike Gordon spent at least part of the day shopping for and/or playing with gear at Mike's Music in Corryville. Check out the pics below of Trey and Mike noodling about in the store (from the Mike's Music Facebook page here). Click here for even more live music events tonight in Greater Cincinnati. 

Indie Funk Pop greats of Montreal's live show is like Prince and the Spiders from Mars doing Mummenschanz, and it's so entertaining, everyone should see the band live at least once in their lifetime (even if you hate all music, the band's theatrical presentation is something to behold). If you still need to cross "see of Montreal in concert" off of your bucket list, tonight's the night. The band performs at Covington's Madison Theater at 8 p.m. with Yip Deceiver (a side project of oM's Davey Pierce and Nick Dobbratz's) and Brooklyn "Pscychedelic Soul, Island Romance Pop, Space Rock" quartet Chappo. Tickets for the all-ages show are $15. The headliners are touring in support of its latest album, Paralytic Stalks. Here's the official music video for the track, "Spiteful Intervention." • Tonight at the basement Ballroom at the Taft (a great place to see a show, if you haven't yet), Punk-to-Metal veterans Corrosion of Conformity headline a night of sludgy modern Metal madness. The show features opening acts Torche, Black Cobra and progressive Salt Lake City-based Math Metal ensemble Gaza.Click here to read a little more about Torche, then enjoy the Floridian band's video for the track "King Beef" below.• If you're a little short on funds, Fountain Square has a great free show this evening. The 7 p.m. "American Roots" concert features two of the area's finest Americana acts — Magnolia Mountain and Wild Carrot (with its back-up crew, The Roots Band). Click here for even more live music events in Greater Cincinnati today.

When people are confronted with my ridiculously voluminous music collection, they are most often struck with its distinct lack of commonality. Growing up within 70 miles of Detroit in the ’60s will do that; anything you can imagine between and beyond Motown and The Stooges will generally light my sparkler. In reference to music specifically and to life in general, I have often remarked, “Specialization is for insects,” but if Mark Utley would like to borrow the phrase when he’s talking about his band, Cincinnati's Magnolia Mountain, he’s more than welcome. From the band’s beginnings six years ago, Utley has endeavored to reconcile his Rock past with his fresh love of all things Americana by investing his Magnolia Mountain output with a reverence for the Bluegrass, Folk, Country and Rock forms while investing them with fresh angles, lines and perspectives. Like a sculptor who has immense respect for the permanence of the stone but also implicitly trusts his chisel and creative vision, Utley shapes the raw material of Americana’s various stylistic permutations into songs that are comfortably familiar yet blazingly original. That ethic was a hallmark of Magnolia Mountain’s last double album, 2010’s Redbird Green, and it comes into even sharper focus on the band’s third and latest release, the aptly titled Town and Country.Part of Magnolia Mountain’s variance from album to album is at least partially due to the shifts in personnel that have affected the band from the start. At the same time, Magnolia Mountain has always been something of a rotating collective with guests becoming permanent members and members becoming guests. Town and Country follows that template, as Jordan Neff and Amber Nash (who left to devote full attention to their side project, Shiny and the Spoon) and David Rhodes Brown (who has defected from his numerous band affiliations to concentrate on solo/side work) appear sporadically on the album’s 18 tracks. And once again, guests abound on Town and Country, including piano master Ricky Nye, Tillers banjo ninja Mike Oberst and Americana chanteuse Lydia Loveless, among others. Utley’s grounding in and love of vinyl forces him to think of his dozen and a half songs in the context of four separate sides (which he also did on Redbird Green; both albums are available in double vinyl format), and the first side is indicative of the broad range of Town and Country. “Black Mollie” kicks things off like a traditional Folk ode, “One Waking Moment” is a classic Appalachian Bluegrass break-up jaunt and “Baby Let’s Pretend” is a bopping Country thumper that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Rodney Crowell or T Bone Burnett set. But just when you think you’ve got Magnolia Mountain pinned down, Utley and company (Jeff Vanover, Melissa English, Renee Frye, Bob Lese, Kathy Woods, Bob Donisi and Todd Drake) blister the paint with the wicked Blues menace of “Set on Fire,” with sweet “sugar, sugar” backing vocals, searing slide guitar and thundering rhythm section. That quartet is a mere hint at the broad spectrum of styles and approaches that Magnolia Mountain achieves on Town and Country, from the funky twang soul Blues of “Rainmaker” to the supercharged Roots Rock swing of “Shotgun Divorce” (Utley’s duet with Loveless) to the atmospheric swamp boogie of “The Devil We Know,” as well as superb covers of Will Johnson’s “Just to Know What You’ve Been Dreaming” and Wussy’s “Don’t Leave Just Now.” As usual, the brilliance of Utley’s songwriting is that he and Magnolia Mountain craft each track as a separate jewel that fits perfectly into the gorgeous crown that is Town and Country.(Click here for more on Magnolia Mountain)