Steve Knopper

Steve Knopper is a freelance writer for the Chicago Tribune.

Metric, with roots in how bad another band was, has had an erratic-but-measured track to indie stardom

March 22, 2019 at 3:37 p.m.

As the story goes, Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw met in summer 1997 at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto. They bonded over their mutual dislike for the band they were...

Shamir has moved from slick, danceable music to sounds that go crunch

January 25, 2019 at 3:16 p.m.

Before he plays an intense, rumbling rocker about how "all straight boys care about is how they're viewed from the outside," Shamir asks the straight men in the audience to...

Stephen Malkmus is still enigmatic, but with a big heart

January 23, 2019 at 2:07 p.m.

Somehow Stephen Malkmus managed to jam a sarcastic complaint about too many bike lanes into a poignant song about Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old African-American man who died after breaking his...

White Mystery is a pure Chicago force, from the glorious noise, right down to the two-flat

January 3, 2019 at 1:53 p.m.

On Christmas Day, Miss Alex White of the roaring Chicago garage-punk duo White Mystery posted an early Instagram photo from the band archives. It shows her as a 5-year-old, surrounded...

Noname, here during a Pitchfork Music Fest performance, returns to her former hometown of Chicago for a series of New Year's Eve shows.

Your roundup of New Year’s Eve concerts, from Noname to Bully

December 27, 2018 at 2:30 p.m.

For New Year's Eve, your Official Musical Entertainment ranges from a 90-year-old bluesman who moved to Chicago from Mississippi before his teens to a 27-year-old rapper who grew up in...

Vocal stalwart Kurt Elling, a Chicago music mainstay, talks politics and that Obama plant

December 13, 2018 at 4:27 p.m.

Important update on jazz singer Kurt Elling: The plant that Barack Obama gave him as a housewarming gift, before he became a U.S. Senator in 2005, is doing well. "It's...

Elle King brings those sounds of hers up from ‘deep inside,’ like an irresistible ball of energy

December 12, 2018 at 7:50 a.m.

Elle King has one of those voices that squeaks when she gets to a certain level of power or volume -- on her breakthrough 2015 single "Ex's and Oh's" and...

Tanya Tucker is country music royalty, and don’t you forget it

December 12, 2018 at 3:52 a.m.

Every day, Tanya Tucker goes into her closet and looks at her late father. Well, he died in 2006, so it's actually a papier-mache replica of his face, which she...

The Goo Goo Dolls forged a renewed relationship from the ashes of a legit disaster

December 12, 2018 at 3:29 p.m.

By 2014, the 34-year friendship between John Rzeznik and Robby Takac had frayed to the point of zero communication. That was a problem since they were still playing in the...

Luke Bryan is riding his ‘bro country’ all the way to the top of the charts

December 13, 2018 at 2:01 a.m.

When Luke Bryan first took up cycling, about 2½ years ago, it wasn't like you and me. He rode with Lance Armstrong. He broke his clavicle en route to a...

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