Grog Shop will celebrate its 19th anniversary as a major force in Northeast Ohio’s rock music scene with a free show featuring four local bands on Saturday, Sept. 24. Musicians in the featured bands, which include Keelhaul, Puffy Areolas, Self Destruct Button and Mr. California, remember Grog Shop when it was a Coventry Road watering hole-in-the-wall a few blocks north of its current location on Euclid Heights Boulevard. “The old spot was smaller and darker, and they used to book a lot of the top punk and indie bands of the '90s,” said Lamont Bim Thomas of Puffy Areolas. “I’ve seen everything…

Over the last 20 years, Rick Stone has been developing original compositions — some with a more contemporary leaning, but always rooted in bop. Bebop, that is. The jazz guitarist, whose Rick Stone Trio will perform at Nighttown Sunday, Aug. 7, became enamored with bebop in 1974, the year he graduated from Valley Forge High School in Parma. “I was hanging out in a friends basement in what probably looked like a scene from That '70s Show when Sonny Stitt (jazz/bebop saxophone player) came on the WMMS Live from the Smiling Dog broadcast,” Stone said via email after getting home from a two-week …

The April 22 “Once Again: Cleveland Heights Throwback Artist Showcase” at Euclid Tavern has spawned follow-up showcases to be held closer to home at Grog Shop on consecutive Fridays, July 8 and 15. That first show “was magical from so many levels,” said Mai Moore, a 1995 Heights High graduate and producer of the showcases. Several artists, who mostly attended Cleveland Heights High School in the 1990s, created the magic the first time around, while showing off their talents and the diversity of their musical styles to alumni, teachers, the community, the media and music industry professionals…

Bert Stratton, who founded the Yiddishe Cup klezmer band in 1988, is often called “Klezmer Guy” by people who know him from playing clarinet at weddings and bar mitzvahs. Klezmer Guy also is Stratton’s identity as a blogger, who shares his comedic rants from a “klezmer” perspective at klezmerguy.com, and the name of a show and the trio who perform it. “Klezmer Guy, the blog, started in 2009, and Klezmer Guy, the show, started last year,” Stratton, a Cleveland Heights resident, said in a recent email. “The show is the blog live. It’s a mix of spoken word (blog posts) and music. A beatnik/…

Gary Kane, a freelance illustrator and graphic designer, joined Forged In Flame around five years ago. “Forged In Flame was a band without a singer, when I found them on MySpace in 2005 — or maybe it was 2006,” Kane said. “There were really rough demos but no vocals ever tracked. I tried out, and then was asked to join the band. The band grew legs in 2007 and started playing and rehearsing a ton. Our first two shows were at the Jigsaw in Parma.”  The stoner metal/rock band’s next show is Saturday at the Grog Shop. Kane and his bandmates, Jay Bonnell on guitar, Jon Vinson on drums and newcomer…

He credits his experience in Heights High vocal music groups for having the discipline to pursue a music career professionally. But what prompted hip-hop artist Darren Anthony to join the Heights Singers and eventually the a capella choir and honors choir was simple chemistry. “I was able to sing a little bit, and it was something I always did. But then I saw the young ladies in the choir, so I said, 'Why don’t I just do that?'” Anthony recalled. But don’t be fooled by his initial intentions — Anthony had played saxophone in the symphonic band freshman year and wrote songs on his guitar in …

The Four Freshmen, the world-famous vocal group that formed at Butler University in Indiana 63 years ago, will perform at four shows at Nighttown this weekend.  Pretty impressive for four guys who must be in their 80s by now, right? Not so. The fellows, who grace the Nighttown stage, are much younger than that, but the unmistakable Freshmen sound remains the same. The quartet’s current lineup features singer-musicians who hadn’t been born when the original Four Freshmen released a series of hit records in the 1950s that established their reputation for unique jazz harmonies. Those recordings …

Justin Markert, owner of Cellar Door Records, calls Joshua Jesty “a songwriting machine.” “He just keeps cranking them out,” Markert said. “And they're all good. He's a very funny guy. One of the nicest guys in the scene I've come across.” The two musicians met a few years ago when Jesty’s former band this is exploding played at Markert’s Cellar Door coffee shop in Madison. “Since then, Josh as a solo artist has played a number of Cellar Door Records-sponsored shows,” Markert said. “And when we decided to release a Cellar Door Records Volume III, Josh was one of the first guys I went to. He's…

Shelby Brown, a contemporary jazz saxophonist from Detroit, had ulterior motives when he persuaded Cleveland musician Alvin Frazier to join his 30-day tour of Asia in 2008. Brown already appreciated the diverse musical talents that Frazier brought to live performances. “As a musician, he’s superb,” Brown said by telephone from Detroit Wednesday, while he was preparing for his upcoming show with Frazier at Nighttown. “He sings, he plays multiple instruments, and he’s a songwriter.” Before the two men met, a mutual friend suggested Brown listen to some of the original music on Frazier’s website…

As a history major at Northwestern University in the 1980s, Hal Walker wandered around Chicago in search of parking garages and stairwells, where he could play his harmonica. He wasn’t looking for a rehearsal hall or an audience. The acoustics attracted him. “It was in those echo chambers that I learned about improvisation — making it up as you go,” the Kent native who plays many diverse instruments said. “With 10 years of classical piano lessons behind me, I was discovering ‘jamming’ for the first time.” On Thursday, Jan. 27, Walker will test the acoustics at Nighttown in Cleveland Heights, …

Veteran Cleveland musician and songwriter Mike Uva, remembered by many as the leader of Hook Boy, has nothing but praise for the Grog Shop, where he will play Saturday with his new band the Bad Eyes.  "The stage is exactly the right height off of the ground," Uva said. "It's a good place to see national acts before they become massively popular and graduate to House of Blues. Grog Shop staff are good-looking, and they don't even try." Mike Uva and the Bad Eyes will be joined by Afternoon Naps, The Modern Electric and Brian Straw for the third and last night of Grog Shop's Annual Free Weekend…