Photos: Roman Gokhman Featuring the Smith Westerns, Surfer Blood, Band of Horses, The National and Paul McCartney. Paul McCartney performs at Outside Lands Music Festival in Golden Gate Park on Aug. 9, 2013. Photo: Roman Gokhman. Surfer Blood performs at Outside Lands Music Festival in Golden Gate Park on…

Photo: Roman Gokhman I met up with Lizzy Plapinger and Max Hershenow in June, prior to MS MR‘s opening set for CSS at the Independent. It was the duo’s second time performing in San Francisco, and their Outside Lands set will be just their third. Still, they can imagine…

Two weeks ago I spoke to Matt Berninger, lead singer for The National, who perform just prior to Sir Paul McCartney next Friday at the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival. In fact, I have twice before interviewed the band’s bassist, Scott Devendorf. You can read a story here and…

Photo: Roman Gokhman Today’s Outside Lands Music Festival preview is about French rockers Phoenix. The story ran Monday. Here are some more of guitarist Christian Mazzalai‘s thoughts on the definition of ‘cool’ and what he misses from the time the band was not as well known. Catch the band next…

Last week I spoke to Allen Scott, an executive vice president at Berkeley concert promoter Another Planet Entertainment. Another Planet is largely responsible for putting on the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival at Golden Gate Park, (Aug. 9 through 11). As you’ll see in my story, I was lucky…

The Avett Brothers may get bumped up to headline the opening night of BottleRock Napa Valley on Thursday, following Furthur’s cancellation. Yesterday I chatted with Seth Avett about his band, the Americana movement (Is it on the decline? He thinks it might be) and how the Avetts try to…