To tackle the tunes, Ranaldo assembled a backing band of past art-rock collaborators and Sonic Youth alumni featuring Steve Shelley, Jim O'Rourke, Nels Cline, John Medski, Alan Licht and Bob Bert. On its first ever tour, the Lee Ranaldo Band comes to Nashville fresh and raw, with only a handful of shows under its belt. In a recent phone interview, Ranaldo tells the Scene about that and more.

OK, people, this show is tonight at Mercy Lounge. Wooden Wand and PUJOL are opening, and you should really go. Already planning on going? Great. Don't let that deter you from reading the full Q&A I did with Ranaldo for this week's Scene feature. He talks about the Sonic Youth breakup, his new record (which rules) and his new band. And after that he gives an epic history of Sonic Youth's career and how it was affected by the music industry's changing tides in the '80s, '90s and Aughts. He also offers an excellent, absolutely on-target defense for why a band can still be considered an indie-rock band even if they're on a major label. Peep it.

Nashville Cream: Have you guys done much touring for this record yet?

Lee Ranaldo: Hardly at all. A couple of weeks ago we did just a trio of shows. We did Mexico City, Los Angeles and San Francisco. And those were, like, I don’t know, for the band, shows six, seven and eight or something like that. We haven’t even played 10 shows together yet. We’re really just getting started as far as touring. Starting tomorrow, we’ve got a pretty good run of dates going on all through the summer.

Lambert will headline Bridgestone Arena this Saturday, May 19, with an appearance from Pistol Annies. See my Critic's Pick on that here, and have a look at my interview with Presley below.

Nashville Cream: The last female trio in country music that was feisty, had traditional leanings and spoke their minds was the Dixie Chicks. When Pistol Annies got going, did you think of them and the mixed response they got later in their career? Did it give you pause?

Angaleena Presley: Well, I don’t really think so. I mean, we love the Dixie Chicks. We love their music, and we’re obviously inspired by them. But, you know, I think we’re just gonna push on through and keep being honest, [laughs] and hopefully there won’t be any fallout like there was with them. It’s sad what happened to them. I don’t know. It’s a weird thing in country music. We’re just gonna do what we do, and just hope that people can attach to it or relate to it.

But I do have to say that everybody at the Sheriff's Office was really helpful and accommodating in making this interview happen, and overall it was a far more relaxed and pleasant experience than I had expected — if they were normal music publicists I would always try to get interviews with their artists. That said, I wouldn't interview just any rapper in lock-up. Struggle has one of the most interesting stories in all of Music City. From getting thrown in jail the same day that he released his last single — the Shooter-produced, Waylon-sampling “Outlaw Shit” — to spending his summers on tour with his grandfather to his happenstance meeting with a then-unknown Yelawolf and their subsequent bonding over the movie Gummo, Struggle has had a pretty wild life. And that life isn't on hold just because he's incarcerated — there are enough projects in the pipeline to keep him in the public eye for years to come.

So join us deep in the heart of the Davidson County Correctional Center for the Nashville Cream's first-ever prison interview.

As you'll see, King Buzzo is a candid, eccentric jokester. He has no problem pulling legs, shit-talking Tool fans and disregarding criticism. He also digs Nashville. He recounts a memory of once passing out onstage during a Music City show held at an Indian restaurant. Anyone else know this story? WERE ANY OF YOU OLD TIMERS ACTUALLY THERE?! If so, do tell.

Tonight's Melvins show at Exit/In (with a reunited Unsane opening!) is sold out. But it'll probably be pretty loud, so ticketless poor-planners among you can go down to Elliston, listen in on the show from outside the club and still git yer socks rocked sidewalk style, or whatever the kids call it these days. Anyway ...

Nashville Cream: Were you guys at all hesitant to get involved with a company like Scion?

Buzz Osborne: Well, you've gotta remember, in 1992 we signed with one of the biggest record labels in the entire world. I would venture to guess that they have more fingers in more pies than Scion does, and we clearly had no problem with that, doing three albums with them.

The influence of Kool and the Gang upon the '70s generation — kids who lived out their formative teenage years in the early part of that decade — is incalculable, and that impact has something to do with the down-home but futuristic quality of the group's music and the super-populist temper of the era. The premise of the band's 1973 track "Hollywood Swinging" is that a guy goes to see Kool and the Gang and becomes a "bad piano-playing man" with the very jazz-funk ensemble he has idolized. Newly successful, the band goes to Hollywood, where they take a realistic view of the possibilities of the big city and foresee nothing but a party ahead: "So here I am in this Hollywood city / The city of the stars, movies, women and cars," they sing.

• Image by Shaun Mahoney

OK, maybe not that last one, but pretty damn close. As you may have read in this week's dead-tree edition, I'm a life long Gwar fan, so when I was offered an interview, I jumped at the chance to speak with frontman (front-alien?) Oderus Urungus. I took the opportunity to ask some really stupid questions. (You try interviewing an evil space alien intent on destroying the human race. It's intimidating! And I've even done an interview in lock-up! Only Biz Markie was more intimidating, but then again, nobody beats the Biz.) Oderus was kind enough not to exterminate me for my insolence. It was a good chat.

Tonight, Gwar will play Marathon Music Works with Kylessa, Ghoul and Legacy of Disorder. You can get tickets here. Witness the journalistic carnage after the jump.

• Eric England

Here, the brass-wielding Texas-to-Tennessee transplant candidly and hilariously opens up about his storied musical history, his storied history of debauched excesses while playing foil to best friend Keith Richards, his 20 years living in Nashville, his new band The Suffering Bastards — an ensemble including Nashville notables like Dan Baird, Mike Webb, Steve Gorman, Dean Tomasek and Mercy Lounge co-proprietor Chark Kinsolving, which plays the best cuts of the Keys-contributed canon — and his new autobiography Every Night's a Saturday Night: The Rock 'n' Roll Life of Legendary Sax Man Bobby Keys. Parnassus Books will host Keys for a signing on March 19. After that you can catch the band play a reception at Mercy Lounge.

Bobby Keys: [My book] is just about music. This is about nobody else but music.

Nashville Cream: Is it easy to understand why people are interested in that other stuff — the party stories?

• JACKIE ROMAN

In case it's not immediately obvious, Hamburger — a comedic alter ego constructed by the quite-friendly-in-person Gregg Turkington — conducts interviews in character, though he does tend to answer questions in the first-person plural. Anyway, below you can read Hamburger's riffs and reflections on the Bruise Cruise, the bland food on board, Bow Wow Wow, alcoholism, Axl Rose, his own contributions to country music with the help of Nashville's Dave Gleason, the death of Whitney Houston and how it should have been Britney Spears and more.

Nashville Cream: OK, first off, you're a bit of a food critic. What did you think of the food on the cruise?

Neil Hamburger: Well, I mean there were two or three ingredients: salt, Sweet'N Low and food coloring. To make the drinks they would add water to those, and to make the food they would add either a cheap spackle left over from some of the interior design or, in some cases, flour, white flour, or sometimes just powder. I guess people do go on these cruises to eat, but I'm here to entertain and hopefully help people forget about the problems they have, such as indigestion, food poisoning or disappointment with having such a bland food experience. But of course bland is better than food poisoning, and I'm afraid that — I recently read last week that one of these ships had two-hundred-and-something cases of food poisoning, and that's always a fear.

• Photo: Jackie Roman

Perhaps it's his just his personality — or perhaps it was the Bahama Mama he was sipping — but Abraham was extremely good-natured and forthcoming, chatting with us for roughly an hour about all sorts of things. We talked about Abraham's initial reticence at being on a cruise ship, and his "responsibilities" as cruise director. Then he spilled his Bahama Mama and we ordered him another. Then we talked about his relationship with Jello Biafra, the nature of these high-seas cruises, Fucked Up touring with Foo Fighters, The Desperate Bicycles putting out their DIY 7-inch, how quickly folks turn on new artists, the "MP3 revolution" (or lack thereof), old Nashville new wave and hardcore bands, JEFF the Brotherhood, Thee Oh Sees and more. Read our well-lubricated, 7,000-word chat with Mr. Abraham after the jump. It's a doozy.