Photo by Marco Torres

Jeezy at Arena Theatre, August 2010

Jeezy
Arena Theatre, May 17

A self-proclaimed hustler on the mike, the Atlanta rapper known as Young Jeezy has grown up quite a bit since his 2001 debut album dropped under the name Lil J. Rising through the ranks via his several independently released Dirty South mixtapes, he's now sittin' pretty under the umbrella of industry giant Def Jam, working alongside 2 Chainz, Lil Wayne, and Ne-Yo, and even earning a Best Rap Performance Grammy nod for 2012's "I Do."

Jeezy has stayed true to that Southern hip-hop sound, though, and still reps his membership status in the United Streets Dopeboyz of America while using producers like The Renegades and Warren G on more recent mixtapes. ANGELICA LEICHT

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Welcome to the Rocks Off 100, our portrait gallery of the most compelling profiles and personalities in the far-flung Houston music community -- a lot more than just musicians, but of course they're in there too. See the entire Rocks Off 100 at this link.

Photos courtesy of Kimberly M'Carver

UPDATED (Thursday, 6:30 p.m.) Corrects the spelling M'Carver's last name and the songbird she was compared to by Jimmy LaFave. Our apologies to Ms. M'Carver.

Who? Sometimes a hunch will pay off. Kimberly M'Carver's -- not McCarver -- latest CD, Hard Waltz, showed up in the mail here at the Press a week or two ago. Rocks Off did not recognize her name (forgive us), but knew enough names on the one-sheet bio to raise an eyebrow. The muscians who appear on Hard Waltz have also worked with Little Big Town, Elvis Costello, Robert Plant and Austin acoustic sprites the Greencards, among others.

Once we had a listen to Hard Waltz, those names made a little more sense. M'Carver's fourth album, it's a no-frills, perfectly produced, largely acoustic set that should fit comfortably on your trad-country shelf next to the Dolly Parton, Kendalls and Sweethearts of the Rodeo records. Absent of any pickup trucks, shotguns, or crossover-pop ambitions, Hard Waltz requires little more than M'Carver's pristine soprano to carry it home. (Veteran Austin folksinger Jimmy LaFave once likened her voice to a meadowlark nightingale, which fits pretty well.)

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Photo courtesy of Molotov Compromise

Molotov Compromise's Jeremy Pacheco

Billy Munoz wants to reassure you would-be skankers to just get on the dance floor and do your thing. He won't judge you.

"It doesn't matter what you look like as long as you're moving," he says. "The goofier the better. We feed off our audience."

Andrew Garrigan agrees.

"Is there really a way to skank that doesn't look a little wonky?" he asks.

Munoz and Garrigan are Houston musicians, both well-qualified to speak on the subject. They're members of area ska bands and both agree they are seeing more fans attempting to skank because they're seeing more fans at shows.

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Tyler Sanders

Dick Dale at the Concert Pub North

"It's an exciting time for us," says Concert Pub North (CPN) talent buyer John Escamilla. "A year ago, we were a tribute [act] and local venue. Today we are being looked at like a live-music venue for touring acts."

Escamilla and I were waiting for Cinderella front man Tom Kiefer to take the stage for his first-ever solo performance in Houston last Friday night. I had suggested that Concert Pub North was booking acts and packages on par with her Warehouse Live -- after all, Warehouse hosted the Geoff Tate solo show a few months back, and by all accounts did pretty well with it.

But when the estranged Queensryche front man brought his touring outfit around for the Operation Mindcrime gig last month, performing the Seattle prog-metal band's classic 1988 album front to back, CPN was the winning bidder. And when the regrouped former members of Queensryche bring their new lead singer around June 8, CPN will host them as well.

Tate's show did about 1,000 admissions, filling the venue's new outdoor-stage area and christening its summer concert series with a rousing success. But CPN owner Jay Dee takes mild exception to the comparison.

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Photos by Alyssa Dupree

Walters and House of Creeps have relocated there. It's home to venues, businesses and homes. And now, the northeastern edge of Downtown near Nance Street -- an area coming to be known as the "Warehouse District" -- is home to the Doctor's Office, Houston's newest DIY house venue.

Named for its former use as a dentist's office, The Doctor's Office provides cheap thrills to anyone seeking out Houston's underground. That is, when it's not acting as home to four people in their early twenties.

"We want to provide a space for the community," says Matt, who relocated from Denton to Houston last May.

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Photo by Paul Elledge

Smashing Pumpkins 2013 (L-R): Nicole Fiorentino, Billy Corgan, Matt Byrne, Jeff Schroeder

Free Radicals
Avant Garden, May 13

Free Radicals is both Nick Cooper's revolving-door ensemble that at any given moment could be playing free jazz or Latin funk, and also Cooper's ongoing testimonial to how much he digs being a member of the Houston music community. He has so much experience at this point that he has very much become a one-man hub of that community.

Last year Cooper brought that same kind of musical civic pride to the Radicals' first album in several years, The Freedom Fence, and then in July watched it win a well-deserved Houston Press Music Award for Local Album of the Year; just while we're thinking about it, don't forget to nominate your favorites in this year's HPMAs right over here.

Free Rads' weekly jam, wherever it may be, is a true local-music institution. These days it happens to be at AvantGarden, a local-music institution of its own, and follows David Dove's They, Who Sound showcase -- still another. CHRIS GRAY

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Horseshoe on Facebook

Scott Daniels, right, with Horseshoe's Ken Jones

UPDATED (Monday, 10 a.m.): Corrects Daniels' moving to Austin, and adds information on the burial service and memorial.

UPDATE 2: Comments from Daniels' girlfriend, Candyce Prince have been added.

Scott Daniels, longtime Houstonian and guitarist for Carolyn Wonderland and Horseshoe, has passed. Like many rock and rollers, Daniels had long suffered with the demons of addiction and alcohol.

According to longtime friend and Horseshoe drummer/producer Eddie Hawkins, Daniels passed away around 2 a.m. Sunday morning, and was actually scheduled to check into rehab Monday for three weeks. Daniels was 43.

However, Daniels' girlfriend Candyce Prince says the guitarist had been seeking treatment in a local outpatient program for the past three to four weeks and, despite what Hawkins told us, was not headed to any inpatient facility. She discovered Daniels' body about 12:45 a.m. Sunday, she added.

"I miss him," she told Rocks Off Monday afternoon. "I love him. He had an immense talent. He was getting back on his feet -- everybody was getting a happy vibe from him."

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Photos by Marco Torres

The Greater Northside Management District classifies "The Northside" as the "24 square miles north of Downtown Houston" between Interstate-10/Katy Freeway on the south, Studewood/Yale on the West, Little York to the north, and Interstate-59 Eastex Freeway to the East (although for this article, we set the boundary at Hardy Street). This is the real heart of the city, the real Northside... as opposed to Spring or The Woodlands. Scattered within the working-class barrios of Northside Village, Lindale and Northline Park are several hidden gems in the form of ice houses and drive inns that are arguably Houston's best.

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Will Downing
Bayou Music Center, May 10

Known for his rich baritone vocals and an unabashed devotion to romantic ballads, Will Downing may be the quintessential ladies man, so keep a close eye on your woman as he croons a blend of contemporary jazz and R&B that would make even Luther blush.

With a catalog of smooth tunes that stretches way back to the 1980s, the Brooklyn-based Downing has been steadily hovering on the cusp of mainstream acclaim, dropping sophisticated soul albums and gracing us with some pretty decent covers, including a wicked version of John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme." With Gerald Albright. ANGELICA LEICHT

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Photo by Gary Sapone

Jewel Brown and Milton Hopkins at Houston's Continental Club, 2012

Blues artists -- like real, legitimate rhythm-and-blues players -- aren't in the headlines very often these days. But whenever they are, Rocks Off is both happy and proud to point out that unlike most other places, Houston still has quite a few of them, many of whom continue to do excellent work.

Those include local guitarist Milton Hopkins and singer Jewel Brown, whose album from last year, Milton Hopkins with Jewel Brown, is up for the Best Traditional Blues Album at the Blues Foundation's annual Blues Music Awards, which will be presented tonight at the Cook Convention Center in downtown Memphis.

Brown and Hopkins' album was released on Austin blues/gospel label Dialtone Records last May. Rocks Off wound up naming it as our personal favorite Houston release of 2012.

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