“Every musician or music-making person has to have their solo project in which they can express themselves musically and make all the music by their lonesome,” Morgan Hoehne says of MRGN (formerly Morgokalips). “This is mine.” Hoehe has done time on guitar and drums in Medford metal bands Your Hands

Though the world at large is pretty clear about the distinction, locally, the line between reggae and hip hop is a blurry one. It’s a fluid definition you can see on display in The Yield, the latest from The Dream State, a collaboration between Ashland-based emcee Hi-Pressure Sodium and Portlander

There are times when it feels like Southern Oregon has more banjos than Deliverance, most of them making the baffling choice to dress up and celebrate the dustbowl, when people were poor, starving and battling polio; you know, “the good old days.” But a growing number of string bands are

What makes The Legendary Goodtimes work is a total lack of hypenation. While other bands are exploring sub-genres and micro-niches, they are unapologetic about their one-word genre: rock. Even the band’s cover of funk masterpiece “Superstition,” by Stevie Wonder is a purely power-chord affair, with amps cranked and no fucks

The Rogue Valley Messenger hasn’t yet been around long enough to make it onto all the industry mailing lists, burying us in a deluge of review-copies of albums by new side projects from the former bassists of the bands that sprung from the ashes of highly-influential underground acts you’ve never

Every critic has their biases that savvy readers can learn to take or leave. For purposes of transparency, know that this reporter’s proclivities include a total disdain for derivative instead of constructive nostalgia. No matter how many decades pass, a good sound will always be a good sound, but there’s