Justin Townes Earle is 25 years old and his age belies his experience. Growing up in Nashville he mis-spent his youth playing in bluegrass/ragtime combo The Swindlers and the louder, more rocking The Distributors and developing some very bad habits. During tours as guitarist and keyboardist ("…and not a very good one," laughs Earle) in his father’s band, his problems became untenable and he was fired. Ultimately he cleaned up his act, dropped his self-destructive habits and began to focus on songcraft. "You don’t have to torture yourself to write songs," explains Earle, "I used to write a lot, a whole lot, and half those songs I don’t even remember. Now, I sit there and I write it and I finish it and I keep it." "The Good Life" melds the qualities of a short story with the lyrical acuity of excellent songs, celebrating grand southern traditions and blowing a fresh breeze across the musical gardens and dive bars of Nashville.

Justin Townes Earle performs at the Baltimore Chop in Baltimore located across from Camden Yards. He has a special CD release show at the IOTA Club and Cafe in Arlington, VA.

Bloodshot Records
Baltimore Chop

"Maps: Finding Our Place in the World" is an exhibition of some of the world's rarest and greatest cartographic treasures. From a marble street plan of ancient Rome to a map of Lewis and Clark's expedition to a London Underground map, the exhibition explores how humans define their world. "Maps: Finding Our Place in the World" is at Baltimore's Walters Art Museum until June 8, 2008.

The Walters Art Museum

"By George! By Ira! By Gershwin!" is a show by the versatile soprano Carolyn Black-Sortir about the incredible musical contribution of George & Ira Gershwin. Teamed with the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, the program is a musical tribute to these two geniuses. The tour begins Apr. 10th in Westminster, MD at 8pm at Winters High School, moves to Annapolis' Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts at 8pm on April 11th, travels to Baltimore's Performing Arts Center in Brooklyn Park on April 12th at 8pm, and finishes Apr. 13th at 3pm in the Owings Mills Gordon Center for the Performing Arts.

Carolyn Black-Sortir

In an effort to ward off evil spirits from churches and other buildings, medieval carvers delighted in creating frighteningly grotesque gargoyles. The tradition continues at the Washington national Cathedral, which has more than 100 imaginatively carved, one-of-a-kind gargoyles. Along with adding a touch of whimsy to the cathedral’s roofline, the gargoyles have a practical purpose: they keep rainwater away from the building. The Washington National Cathedral offers gargoyle tours every fourth Sunday from April through October.

Washington National Cathedral

Opera Vivente celebrates its 10th year! Ten years of bringing innovative, high quality chamber opera to Baltimore. Their initiative when they began their company was to attract new audiences to opera and support local talent in both the performance and design realm. They have done that and more. Introducing performances exclusively in English has been a boon for Opera Vivente. It allows audiences to engage in the story that the opera has to tell without being fettered by reading subtitles and lost in translation. We introduce the company, Opera Vivente, as they perform the classical operetta entitled, Orpheus in the Underworld, written by Jacques Offenbach. Offenbach’s parody of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice was a shock to audiences of its day and still entertains with a humor that is quite risqué; the finale is entitled the "Galop Infernal," otherwise known as the "Can-Can."

You can see Orpheus in the Underworld performed by Opera Vivente from April 11 through the 17 in the Emmanuel Episcopal Church at 811 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, MD. Evening performances begin at 7:30pm. For more information call 410-547-7997.

Opera Vivente website

This week's salon artist is Sy Mohr. Mr. Mohr is a contemporary American oil painter known for his large, colorful mural-like depictions of people, their architectural environs and activities. He has had a career that has spanned two-thirds of a century with paintings that celebrate the cultural and ethnic diversity of people in many parts of the world including the U.S., the Caribbean, Haiti, Ireland and Mexico. In February of 2008, Mr. Mohr's painting, "Monhegan Island" was accepted by the U.S. Department of State to be displayed in the U.S. Embassy in Banjul in The Gambia, Africa. In celebration of Maryland Day, Mr. Mohr currently has a solo exhibition of 50 paintings on display at the Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts through May 9. The location is 801 Chase Street, Annapolis, MD. Gallery hours are 9am to 5pm, Monday through Saturday.

Sy Mohr Gallery
Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts