Blues Traveler In last year's snug release North Hollywood Shootout, Blues Traveler detoured from their jam highway with songs that are decidedly harder rocking, bluesier and tweaked into concise pop. But John Popper, the harmonica-wielding writer and singer of the long-established quintet, composed the numbers to allow for lots of stretching and eclectic exploration on Blue Traveler's much adored foundation, the live stage. The Fillmore (Samir Shukla)

California Guitar Trio There's a reason cooking analogies are so often made in regards to music. They're both forms of alchemy, really, where one takes specific ingredients and combines them in such a way to make magic happen. The CGT, then, are like those architectural chefs who can cook anything (and better yet, arrange it in such a way that it looks like a work of art), but forget to add that ever important soupcon of soul. Fretheads will be in heaven, but those looking for something truly rib-sticking might do better elsewhere. The Evening Muse (Timothy C. Davis)

Carolina Chocolate Drops The Durham-based CCD (Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson) are a big draw at musical festivals and art-house theaters and museum openings. And why not? They're great musicians, and they know how to entertain, too. Did we mention that they're all African-American, and play their native burgh's rural Southern string-band music? That they interpret standards and traditionals with the same flair with which they pen their own stuff? That they reinterpret the music at the same time they're re-enacting it, which is no mean feat? Why, it's enough to set a musicologist's heart all a-flutter. Bully for them that they're good enough (indeed, great enough) that all of the Great Black Hope shit doesn't even matter. The music, as the cliché goes, speaks for itself. McGlohon Theatre (Davis)