Backed by a killer band, the San Francisco rock ‘n’ roll veteran grabbed tightly to the packed-in audience for a 70-plus minute set, and didn’t let go until that last sweaty chord had faded out. Prophet focused on his latest album, “Temple Beautiful,” a collection of songs paying tribute to San Francisco.

Prophet was at once amped-up and easygoing, bopping around the tight stage as he alternated between microphones (one clean, one dirty) and strummed away on a cream-colored Telecaster. His Bay-area homage extended beyond his own repertoire with a cover of the Flamin’ Groovies “Take Some Action.” Prophet followed that with “You Could Make a Doubter Out of Jesus,” a song jammed with ripples of tremolo guitar and layers of wary vocals.

His conversational asides were as engaging as the songs. Looking out over the crowd at one point, he remarked on the salt-of-the-earth tableau.

“Last night was a little bourgeois for me,” he said. “Tonight I see a lot of roofers. And lovers.”

All those lovers loved him right back, clamoring for more after the main set ended. Prophet and the band obliged with a two-song encore that include a fired-up version of the dark, sultry “You Did (Bomp Shooby Dooby Bomp),” which appeared on an episode of HBO’s vampire bodice-ripper show “True Blood.”

The Paul Collins Beat opened the show.

Shinedown plays with Papa Roach July 3 at Toyota Presents Oakdale Theatre.

Van Halen has canceled most of its summer tour, which included a stop July 7 at Mohegan Sun. There’s been no official word why, but there’s talk the family Van Halen and singer David Lee Roth are at each other’s throats again. Roth has said the group is merely trying to stave off exhaustion and will reschedule. For now, refunds are available at point of purchase.

Florida nu-metal band Shinedown performs with Papa Roach (remember them?) July 3 at Toyota Presents Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford; tickets go on sale Thursday, May 24, at 10 a.m. for $35 via www.livenation.com.

Hootie frontman-turned-country singer Darius Rucker performs Sept. 14 at Mountain Park in Holyoke; tickets go on sale Friday, May 25, at 10 a.m. for $55, $45 and $35 via www.nbotickets.com.

Mercies plays with Spanish Prisoners and Connecticut’s Echo & Drake June 30 at Pearl Street in Northampton; tickets are $10. Sebadoh is there Aug. 9; tickets are $15. Tickets are available via www.nbotickets.com.

Irish band Clannad returns to the U.S. after 18 years for a tour that includes a stop Sept. 30 at the Warner Theatre in Torrington; tickets go on sale Friday, May 25, at 10 a.m. for $49.50 and $42.50 via www.warnertheatre.org.

Fuel plays June 23 at Toad’s Place in New Haven; tickets are $20. Cosmic Dust Bunnies are there June 30; tickets are $8.50. Grace Potter & the Nocturnals perform Aug. 9; tickets go on sale June 1 at noon for $25. Tickets are available via www.toadsplace.com.

Jared McCloud performs June 8 in the Webster Underground in Hartford; tickets are $10. The Departures are there June 9 with Comeback of the Year and the Exposure; tickets are $10. Pop This! headlines June 15 with Stand Tall and Life on the Sidelines; tickets are $10. The Prozacs perform June 22 with Meet Emily and A.D.D. 123; tickets are $10. Tickets are available via www.tickets.com.

Steve Kimock plays with Bernie Worrell, Wally Ingram and Andy Hess Aug. 3 at Infinity Music Hall in Norfolk; tickets go on Thursday, May 24, for $50 and $35. The Cowboy Junkies headline Aug. 10 at Infinity Music Hall in Norfolk; tickets are $75 and $55. Big Brother and the Holding Company is there Aug. 12; tickets are $60 and $45. Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels perform Aug. 24; tickets are $80 and $60. The Cowsills play Sept. 15; tickets are $55 and $40. Tickets are available via www.infinityhall.com/events.

Black-Eyed Sally’s in Hartford hosts the Black Eyed & Blues Fest June 1 in Bushnell Park. The free show features Lefty Foster & the Shaboo All-Stars, Ray Shinnery Band, Chris Bergson Band and Petey Hop & the Bluetones. Sally’s hosts Connecticut guitarist John Fries June 9, with Matt Zeiner sitting in on B3.

Newington's 1974 releases a new EP, "The Return," in June.

Recent efforts by Newington band 1974 to fund a vinyl pressing of last year’s album “1974 & the Battle for the Lazer Fortress” didn’t pan out, but you can take solace in this: the group returns next month with a new 5-song EP, “The Return.”

The first three songs, “The Stirring,” “A Sickening Silence” and “Jubilation,” are part of a prog mini-epic, before 1974 veers into what it describes as the “pop sensibilities” of “Walk in Place” and the “indie-folk intensity” of closer “The Outline.”

The band plays a CD release party June 9 at Zen Bar in Farmington, a show that will feature all five songs from the EP, and a performance in its entirety of “1974 & the Battle for the Lazer Fortress.” Various Seagulls and Little Ugly open.

The cost is $10, which includes your very own copy of “The Return.”

John Mayer's latest, "Born and Raised," is his first grown-up album.

It’s been a humbling few years for John Mayer, the singer, guitarist and Fairfield native.

First he blew up his personal life in 2010 with a crass interview in Playboy that included a racial epithet and dished a little too deeply on ex-girlfriends Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Aniston. Then doctors last year found granulomas near his vocal cords, requiring surgery and vocal rest that delayed the release of his fifth studio album, “Born and Raised” (Columbia), and forced Mayer to cancel summer tour plans when the condition recurred earlier this year.

Together, those tumults have sanded down Mayer’s cockier edges on “Born and Raised,” which is in many ways a penitent album. Mayer’s done thoughtful before, notably on 2009’s “Battle Studies,” but here he sounds chastened, too, on songs that are less about having all the answers than trying to ask the right questions.

Many of his lyrics are about trying to do the right thing, or live a purposeful life, and there are flashes of autobiography in references to his parents’ divorce on the title track and his own trials on “Shadow Days,” when he sings, “I’m a good man with a good heart/Had a tough time, got a rough start/But I finally learned to let it go.”

Mayer is one of the few acts of his stature willing to alter the pop formula that made him a success in the first place on his 2001 debut “Room for Squares,” and he’s dabbled in blues, soul and rock ’n’ roll on subsequent albums. The songs on “Born and Raised” are low-key and tuneful folk-pop tunes, full of acoustic guitars and understated accompaniment from guests including trumpeter Chris Botti, violinist Sara Watkins, and David Crosby and Graham Nash, who add vocals to the title track.

Opener “Queen of California” has a golden, hazy charm that sounds like sunset in Laurel Canyon, while the plaintive “Whiskey, Whiskey, Whiskey,” with mournful harmonica between verses, captures the feel of New York City on a rainy night. Mayer layers smooth electric guitar licks over piano on “Shadow Days” and takes a subtly whimsical turn on the lilting “Walt Grace’s Submarine Test, January 1967.”

Although Mayer has from the start displayed musical skill far beyond his years, “Born and Raised” is his first grown-up album, instead of an album that’s merely trying to sound grown up. Mayer came by his new maturity the hard way, but it suits him well.

Storrs native Evan Rogers, right, has co-written songs for 'N Sync and Donny Osmond, and discovered Rihanna. He's shown here with singer Kandace Springs.

As professional accomplishments go, discovering Rihanna certainly ranks among the biggest achievements of Evan Rogers’ career. But it’s far from the only one.

In fact, the list is rather long. Rogers, 53, has built a remarkable resume riding the ebb-and-flow cycle of the music industry, on stage and behind the scenes. The Storrs native got started locally, performing in R&B and funk bands, before helping to revive Donny Osmond’s career in the ’80s. He toured the world with R&B act Rhythm Syndicate in the early ’90s, then played a key role in the boy-band craze that followed.

With his business partner Carl Sturken, Rogers has written and produced songs for ’N Sync, Christina Aguilera and Kelly Clarkson. Before Rihanna — and long before “The Voice” — Rogers and Sturken found Stratford native Javier Colon and got him signed to Capitol Records.

“There have been so many chapters to this journey that sometimes it’s hard to believe,” Rogers says. “It’s like watching a movie or something: you forget that you lived through every one of them. Each one was a journey in itself. The great part about it is, it just keeps on going.”

Over the past 35 years, Rogers has shown a knack for being in the right place at the right time. That’s how he found Rihanna, starting in 1978.

She wasn’t born until a decade later, but 1978 is when Rogers traveled to Barbados on a cultural exchange program with Too Much Too Soon, the Connecticut R&B group he joined after graduating from E.O. Smith High School the previous year. Though the band eventually broke up, Rogers met Jackie Jordan, the women he would marry, which has made him a frequent return visitor to Barbados.

“I’m always there, and people know I’m a record producer and a songwriter, so everyone knows someone who wants to audition for me,” he says.

In 2004, he scheduled an audition with a group of three teen girls.

“One of them is Robyn Fenty, and she stood out,” Rogers says, referring to Rihanna as she was known then. “She had this incredible presence when she walked in.”

He asked her to return the next day without the others, and was so impressed he invited her and her mother to return with him to Stamford, where he and his wife live, with the intention of turning her into a star.

“People say, ‘Did you know she would be this big?’” Rogers says. “And I always say, ‘I knew she had something really special and I thought if we could get her a record deal, she could do something.’”

After moving her to Connecticut, Rogers and Sturken spent a year honing her sound, her look and her songs — including her first single, “Pon de Replay,” which reached No. 2 — before getting Rihanna an audition with Jay-Z and music executive L.A. Reid. They signed her to Def Jam Records the same day.

“That’s a rare, almost unheard-of thing,” Rogers says.

Rihanna (whose publicist didn’t respond to requests for comment) has released six albums since, selling more than 25 million copies worldwide — not a bad discovery for a kid from Storrs whose musical taste was always a little out of step with his peers’.

“My tastes were in a different lane,” Rogers says. “Everyone else was into Elton John and I was obsessed with Stevie Wonder.”

That obsession with Wonder, and with R&B in general, is what got him started in music. Raised by a college professor father and elementary school teacher mother, both of whom loved music, Rogers began playing percussion, then singing, as a teen. After graduating from high school, his most immediate goal was joining Too Much Too Soon, a sort of local version of Tower of Power or Earth, Wind & Fire.

“For me, that was it, getting into that band,” Rogers says. “From there, I just convinced my parents that I wasn’t going to go to college. ‘Give me a year to experiment.’ I never looked back.”

When the band fizzled in 1981, Rogers landed gigs first with the Ohio funk band Dayton, which had a hit with a version of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” and then fronted another Ohio band, Heatwave, on a European tour. Those stints led to a solo deal with RCA Records, and to Rogers reconnecting with Sturken, who had played guitar in Too Much Too Soon. They became business partners at SRP, the production company they continue to run.

“We have a very strong partnership, and one of the reasons is that, I would say that 50 percent of us is absolutely identical, and the other 50 percent is totally opposite,” says Sturken, 56, who graduated from Wesleyan in 1978. “In terms of music, we see eye-to-eye pretty much all the time. In terms of how we do stuff, we have different methods. My weaknesses are his strengths, and his weaknesses are my strengths.”

When RCA asked them for a song for Evelyn “Champagne” King, the pair was ready with “Heartbreaker,” which ended up on the singer’s 1984 album “So Romantic.”

That led to other writing and producing gigs, for Jennifer Holiday, Cheryl Lynn and Stephanie Mills. Soon they had an even bigger client in Donny Osmond, the ’70s teen heartthrob whose career had stalled by the late ’80s.

“We got approached by Virgin Records and they said, ‘If you can bring this guy back, you’ll be heroes at Virgin,’” Rogers says.

The song they wrote for Osmond, “Soldier of Love,” was originally intended for a solo record Rogers was making. Osmond recorded it instead, taking it to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart and crediting the song with reviving his career.

“I’m very fortunate to be able to say that I’ve released over 60 albums in my career and have enjoyed much success in the recording industry,” Osmond said through his publicist. “However, among all of the songs in those 60-plus albums, the one that probably means the most to me is one that Evan Rogers co-wrote called ‘Soldier of Love.’ It was considered my ‘comeback’ record. In fact, it was that record that put me back at the top of the charts when everyone said it couldn’t be done and was referred to it as the ‘Comeback of the ’80s.’”

After working for years in the studio, Rogers and Sturken were ready for another stint on stage. They formed Rhythm Syndicate (the misspelling was intentional) with other members of Too Much Too Soon, released a pair of albums and went on tour.

“It was a lot of fun, but we were staying in Holiday Inns, bunking up, as opposed to staying in West Hollywood in these nice suites, getting paid a lot of money to write and produce songs,” Rogers says.

When Rhythm Syndicate fell apart after its second album, Rogers and Sturken returned to a behind-the-scenes role, writing for the likes of Debbie Gibson in the United States and various groups in Europe, including England’s Brand New Heavies and Irish boy-band Boyzone. They came home in 1997, landing a monster hit when ’N Sync made their song “(God Must Have Spent) A Little More Time on You” into a top-10 hit.

That led to work with Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, Mandy Moore in her teen-pop incarnation and others, including early “American Idol” finalists.

“That was a great little run there,” Rogers says.

That run was another factor in the discovery of Rihanna.

“We said, we’ve worked with Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, all these stars, we know what a star is, we know what it takes, we need to find our own,” Rogers says. “That opened up a new chapter for us, a new hat: record executives signing artists.”

Rihanna is still signed to SRP, which works with other young artists including Vita Chambers, another Barbadian singer; and Kandace Springs, a Nashville pianist and singer. Both acts are working on their debuts.

“I signed with him probably about a year ago, and it’s been nothing but good,” Springs says by phone from Los Angeles, during a break from writing with the producer Tricky Stewart. “He totally understands my sound. He stands up for it, he wouldn’t change it or anything, and that’s what he does for all the artists on SRP. He lets them be who they are.”

Not all of Rogers’ finds have panned out: a rock band called Urgency never took off, and neither of Colon’s two albums with Capitol attracted much attention, though Colon remains grateful to Rogers.

“He’s like a brother to me,” the singer said through his publicist. “He was one of the few people who believed in me when no one wanted to give me a chance.”

Even singers who get a chance may not wind up in the right situation, a lesson Rogers has taken to heart.

“There is a certain amount of chance to it when you come in with a new artist,” he says. “The one thing that I always notice is that as much as it changes, it still comes down to a star, a great voice, a great song. You still can’t get around for the most part that you’ve got to have that something really special.”

Phil Cutler loves his customers, is on great terms with his landlord and has a healthy business — and he’s shutting it all down.

Cutler’s Record Shop, the New Haven store his family has owned and operated since 1948, closes for good June 30, or earlier, if the store sells out of inventory.

“This is the time,” Cutler said Thursday afternoon. “It’s just the time.”

The shop has been a Broadway institution for decades. Tony Bennett, Tom Jones, the Everly Brothers and generations of local music fans have all browsed in Cutler’s, which has occupied three different storefronts over the years, including its current home, a 2,000-square-foot space at 25-27 Broadway. Cutler started working at the family’s business in 1971 when he was 13, and later dropped out of the University of Hartford to help his father, Jayson, run the place.

“It’s my whole life,” he said. “This store financially, emotionally and whatever else has done wonders for my family.”

The shop is on solid financial footing, Cutler says, and he’s tight enough with his landlord, Yale University, that he hasn’t had a lease in years. He’s certain Yale is charging him far less in rent than the space is probably worth.

So why close?

Two reasons. One is that he’s keen to get out before the ongoing upheaval in the music industry comes any closer. His concerns are real: Overall music sales increased in 2011 for the first time in seven years, but most of the growth was digital, according a year-end report by Nielsen SoundScan. Sales of compact discs continued their years-long decline, falling 5.7 percent to 223 million units.

Cutler’s also sells new and used vinyl, and though new-LP sales have been resurgent in recent years — 2.8 million units in 2011 — they represent too small a fraction of overall sales to make much difference.

“It hasn’t quite filled the gap the CD is leaving,” Cutler said.

Also, though, he’s been working at Cutler’s for 40 years, often seven days a week. After “80 million days in a row,” he says, he’s ready for a break.

“It’s exhausting,” Cutler said. He currently splits his time between the record store and Campus Customs, a screenprinting and embroidery business up the street, where he plans to be more involved once Cutler’s closes.

Customers in the store Thursday were saddened by the news that Cutler’s is closing.

“It’s touching me just being here,” said Ramon Delgado, 35, of Hamden, who started coming to Cutler’s with his parents as a kid. “One of the greatest things I loved about being here was you couldn’t go to Strawberry’s or Coconuts and find some of the stuff you could find here.”

Like other customers, Delgado praised the staff for being friendly as well as knowledgeable.

“Everybody knew their stuff, from hip-hop to classical to punk to heavy metal,” he said.

That’s what drew Susan Fowler back repeatedly over the past 30 years.

“It’s that personal touch,” said the North Haven resident, a classical and jazz fan who described herself as “middle aged.” “Everything has its time and its season, and to be part of that is a blessing.”

Jennifer Lopez and Enrique Iglesias co-headline July 26 at Mohegan Sun; tickets go on sale Friday, May 18, at 10 a.m. for $135 and $95. The Wanted performs Aug. 24; tickets go on sale Saturday, May 19, at 10 a.m. for $30. Jethro Tull leader Ian Anderson is there Oct. 4, performing Tull’s 1972 album “Thick as a Brick” in its entirety, then following it with “Thick as a Brick 2.” Tickets go on sale Friday, May 18, at 10 a.m. for $35. This year’s American Idol Live! tour, featuring finalists from the TV singing competition, hits Mohegan Sept. 2; tickets are $71 and $61. Tickets are available via www.ticketmaster.com.

Duran Duran performs Aug. 24 at MGM Grand at Foxwoods; tickets go on sale Friday, May 18, at 10 a.m. for $75, $65 and $55 via www.foxwoods.com.

Girl Talk headlines Aug. 18 at Mountain Park in Holyoke; tickets go on sale Friday, May 18, for $25 via www.nbotickets.com.

Dethklok and Lamb of God share the bill Aug. 31 at Toyota Presents Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford; tickets go on sale Friday, May 18, at 10 a.m. for $36.50 via www.livenation.com.

Little Anthony & the Imperials perform June 8 at the Warner Theatre in Torrington; tickets are $60, $45.50 and $35.50 via www.warnertheatre.org.

Citizen Cope returns Oct. 30 to Toad’s Place in New Haven; tickets go on sale Friday, May 18, at noon for $25 via www.toadsplace.com.

Taproot performs with Hurt and the Charm City Devils June 1 at the Webster Theatre in Hartford; tickets are $16. Saving Abel is there July 11; tickets are $16. Tickets are available via www.webstertheatre.com.

The Hold Steady plays an intimate show July 18 at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton; tickets go on sale Friday, May 18, for $25 via www.nbotickets.com. The band also plays July 19 at Heirloom Arts Theatre in Danbury; tickets go on sale Friday, May 18, for $18 via heirloomarts.org.

The Honeycutters perform June 2 at the Outer Space in Hamden; tickets are $8. Jill Sobule is there June 14 with Chrissy Gardner and Daphne Lee Martin; tickets are $15 via www.thespacect.com.

With a haunting new album out May 29, Marissa Nadler performs with Danbury’s Lys Guillorn June 2 at Café Nine in New Haven; tickets are $10 via www.cafenine.com. The Sadies are there June 28 with local band Elison Jackson; tickets are $10.

The Oak Ridge Boys perform July 28 at Infinity Music Hall; tickets go on sale Thursday, May 17, for $95 and $75. California Transit Authority plays Aug. 4; tickets are The Yardbirds (minus Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page) play Sept. 8; tickets are $65 and $45. Young Dubliners headline Sept. 20; tickets are $45, $30 and $25. The BoDeans are there Oct. 6; tickets are $75 and $55. Tickets are available via www.infinityhall.com/events.

Gary Clark Jr. plays June 25 at the Ridgefield Playhouse in Ridgefield; tickets are $55. John Mayall is there July 7; tickets are $50. Tickets are available via www.ridgefieldplayhouse.org.

The Russian Lady in Hartford holds a “reunion party” Friday, May 18, featuring live music from the Daily Planet, the cover band that played there frequently in the early ’80s. Buying a $5 tickets gets you a plate for the buffet. Information: therussianladyhartford.com or 860-247-5239.

Racing Heart performs May 17 at The Space in Hamden. (Photo by Michelle Arcila)

Got plans yet for Thursday night, May 17? Want to see Racing Heart at The Space in Hamden? I suddenly have a pair of tickets to give away — details below.

The New York group plays folky baroque pop music on its debut, “To Walk Beside That Ghost,” which came out last month. Singer and songwriter Mathias Tjønn moved to New York from Oslo, via stops in Europe, South America and New England, a nomadic sojourn that informed the songs on the record. The music is pretty, sometimes sprightly, and understated, and Racing Heart had help in the studio from musicians who play with Sufjan Stevens and St. Vincent.

To win tickets, let’s hear in the comments what makes your heart race, in 50 words or fewer. The deadline is 11 a.m. Thursday, May 17. I’ll pick a winner at random from the comments, and notify you by e-mail if you win. (You don’t have you use your real name in the comments, but make sure you enter your real e-mail address in the appropriate field so I can get in touch.)

Ready? Have it at!

(Photo by Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

Last time Jennifer Lopez played Connecticut, she reaped a huge publicity windfall after a “tearful breakdown” that didn’t really happen that way. Now she’s coming back, co-headlining with Enrique Iglesias July 26 at Mohegan Sun. Tickets go on sale Friday, May 18, at 10 a.m. for $135 and $95.

Lopez, a singer, actor and “American Idol” judge, released a new album last year called “Love?” Iglesias’ most recent album is 2010′s “Euphoria.”

Their performance is just a couple weeks before Lopez’s ex-husband, Marc Anthony, plays Mohegan Sun Aug. 11 on the “Gigantes” tour with Chayanne and Marco Antonio Solis.

Baltimore duo Beach House releases its fourth LP, "Bloom." (Photo by Liz Flyntz)

Every record Beach House has made is slightly more immediate than the one before it, and “Bloom” (Sub Pop) is no exception.

The Baltimore duo’s fourth album solidifies some of the gauzier textures that drifted past on 2010′s “Teen Dream.” Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally steer more purposefully through these 11 new songs (including the hidden track), which come with more emphatic rhythms and a cleaner balance between her ethereal keyboards and his ringing guitar parts.

There are still plenty of atmospherics on “Bloom,” thanks in large part to Legrand’s languorous vocals. She intones the lyrics over a gently propulsive beat on “Wild,” and wraps her voice around a dreamy melody blanketed by layers of synthesizers and bass on the chorus to “Other People.” Lagrand and Scally dial in a noirish sound saturated with reverb on “Troublemaker,” and layer flickering swirls of electric guitar over a bobbing piano part that merits the title of “On the Sea.”

Strong though it is throughout, “Bloom” reaches its pinnacle on “Irene,” the last listed song. It opens simply, with pulses of guitar over the low hum of a synthesizer, then builds into a heart-fluttering upward spiral of piano and keyboards that’s as magical as spinning around beneath a pure blue sky on a summer’s day. “It’s a strange paradise,” Legrand sighs, and she’s exactly right.

Jim Koplik, left, head of Live Nation CT, has launched a new performance space at Comcast Theatre, seen in the far background. His son, Jeremy, right, is booking it. (RICK HARTFORD/rhartford@courant.com)

The outdoor stage rising just inside the fence at Comcast Theatre in Hartford is more than a new venue within a venue. It represents the beginning of a succession plan as veteran concert promoter Jim Koplik trains his son Jeremy to one day take over the business.

Koplik, 62, has been promoting shows in Connecticut for 40 years, starting with Traffic at the New Haven Arena in January 1972. When he recently signed a new five-year contract with Live Nation, the international concert conglomerate suggested that Jeremy Koplik — who had already worked for the company in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and New York — go to work for his father.

“It’s an interesting passing of the torch, because I had not expected Jeremy to even work in Connecticut,” Jim Koplik said in an interview. “It was always my expectation that I would do this, and he would find his spot and be a more major-market guy than I was.”

Jeremy Koplik, 31, had most recently booked acts at the Gramercy Theatre in New York, turning a profit with a venue that had been losing money. Now back in his home state, the younger Koplik proposed adding an outdoor stage at Comcast Theatre.

The new Scion Festival Stage will host a half-dozen or so shows this summer, starting with the electronic act Kaskade June 23. (The new platform, located near the long staircase up to the amphitheater lawn, will also serve as a second stage for larger shows, including the WCCC-FM, 106.9, “Big Gig” May 19 with Staind and Godsmack.)

“It’s for an active crowd,” said Jeremy Koplik, who also books acts in the lobby space known as the Dome at Toyota Presents Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford. “Bands like Five Finger [Death Punch], they don’t really want to play venues with seats, and the crowd doesn’t want to sit in the seats. Kaskade, it’s kind of the same thing. Dance acts, some of them won’t even play a place that has seats.”

The Festival Stage is 50 feet wide and 40 feet deep, with standing-room space for 6,000 people, making it the largest venue of its kind in the area. The stage itself is a rental costing Live Nation $200,000 for the summer. If shows there do well over the next few years, Jim Koplik said, they’ll consider building a more permanent structure.

“We’re putting every act in here that we think wants a different type of venue than we can normally offer,” Jim Koplik says.

The other bands slated to play the Festival Stage so far are Gov’t Mule and moe. June 24;

O.A.R. Aug 2; and Five Finger Death Punch with Springfield band Killswitch Engage Aug. 15.

Additional changes at Comcast Theatre this summer include new food options from the Lucky Taco food truck and steamed hamburgers from Ted’s Restaurant in Meriden, and 12-ounce cups of Natural Light beer for $4.

Although Jim Koplik says he’s ready to slow down a little, he has no plans to retire anytime soon.

“I might hand him the reins on a day-to-day basis, but I have a promise from the company that I’ll always have an office,” Jim Koplik says. “I love going to work. I might not go to work 24/7 like I do now, but I don’t see stopping.”

As for Jeremy Koplik, though he didn’t envision himself returning to Connecticut, he’s always wanted to work in the concert industry.

“At my bar mitzvah, everybody who asked, ‘What do you want to do?’ I told them, ‘I want to take over my dad’s business, and fire him,’” Jeremy Koplik says, and both men laugh.

“Turns out Pearl Street was built on an Indian burial ground,” he cracked early in the power-pop band’s set.

Actually, the switch had more to do with putting the band in a crowded small room instead of a sparsely populated larger room. Sound reasoning: with a comfortably packed-in audience, Fountains of Wayne got to play an intimate show as it mixed tunes from its latest album, last year’s “Sky Full of Holes,” with earlier songs during a 70-minute performance.

The foursome’s catalog consists of one catchy song after another, often featuring misguided or sadsack characters trying alternately to get by, to get over, or to reconcile a certain sense of workaday futility.

Singer Chris Collingwood, a Northampton resident, does cocky as well as he does wistful, and the arch yearning of a tune like opener “Little Red Light” or new song “Richie and Ruben” can quickly turn earnest, as on the gentle, acoustic “Valley Winter Song” or the long-distance love song “I-95.”

Schlesinger and lead guitarist Jody Porter sang plaintive backing vocals on another new song, “Cold Comfort Flowers,” and Schlesinger sang close harmonies on the absurd statement of affection “Red Dragon Tattoo.”

The band invited three women from the audience up to help with percussion on the lilting, wry “Hey Julie,” and took a detour on set-closer “Radiation Vibe” with a medley of classic-rock tunes — calling them “favorites” is probably overstatement — by Billy Squier, Foreigner, Billy Idol, Yes, Peter Frampton and Paul McCartney.

Fountains of Wayne returned for a six-song encore that included the band’s biggest hit, “Stacy’s Mom,” before ending with “Sink to the Bottom” from the band’s 1996 debut.

Northampton band Winterpills opened the show with 45 minutes of songs drawn mostly from the band’s gorgeous new album, “All My Lovely Goners.” Singers Philip Price and Flora Reed swapped low and high harmonies on the rollicking “Rogue Highway,” while lead guitarist Dennis Crommett added elegant electric guitar lines to “Amazing Sky” and peeled off a stinging solo on “Dying Star.”

Welch and her eight-piece band swept through 70 minutes of songs from their two albums, emphasizing tunes from last year’s “Ceremonials.” Their music is ornate and dramatic, with quiet passages giving way to lush crescendos swelling beneath Welch’s voice.

She appeared first in silhouette behind an art deco-style screen on a platform at the back of the stage, then drifted down a staircase to the microphone.  With her red hair worn up, and clad in a flowing cape ruffled by the breeze from fans positioned on either side of her, she sometimes resembled a Victorian ghost. The effect carried over to her singing, though she could dispel it in an instant, shifting from breathy, gossamer tones to full-throated power on “Cosmic Love” and raising her voice above intertwining backing harmonies over a propulsive beat on “All This and Heaven Too.”

If she seemed shy to start, Welch shed her demure restraint as the show went on, skipping from one side of the stage to the other on “Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)” and projecting her voice to the rafters on “Spectrum,” a fluid cascade of harp at the start yielding to a wash of drums and keyboards.

Welch conducted the crowd in singing the wordless vocals on the soaring, melodic “Heartlines,” though the audience needed no encouragement to help out on the atmospheric “Shake It Out” or “Dog Days Are Over,” the epic breakthrough single from 2008 that established Florence & the Machine as a potent new musical force.

That was the last song of the main set, though she and the band returned to perform “Never Let Me Go” and “No Light, No Light,” for an encore.

Blood Orange, a new one-man project from Lightspeed Champion leader (and Florence & the Machine collaborator) Devonté Hynes, opened the show.

Florence & the Machine’s set list, via Spotify:

Lewis, the western Massachusetts native and resident, digs deeper into the latter with a new solo deal with Blaster Entertainment in Nashville, which will release Lewis’ forthcoming solo LP, “The Road.” It’s the follow-up to his 2011 country EP, “Town Line,” reviewed here.

“Country music was the first music I ever listened to,” Lewis says in a press release. “I sat on my grandfather’s lap listening to his country records and I grew to love them. The country audience has been so accepting of my music and I’m excited about working with the Blaster team to put out the new record this summer.”

A video for the singer’s new single, “Endless Summer,” recently debuted on CMT, and he performed last month at the country-centric Stagecoach Festival in California.

“The Road” is due this summer.

Refunds are available via point of purchase.

Korn performs June 17 in the Dome at Toyota Presents Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford.

Heavy metal band Korn performs with Sluggo and J Devil June 17 in the Dome at Toyota Presents Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford; tickets go on sale Friday, May 11, at 10 a.m. for $39.50. The Wiggles play the main room there Aug. 14; tickets go on sale Friday, May 11, at 10 a.m. for $45, $31 and $21. Tickets are available via www.livenation.com.

Iron & Wine performs July 27 at the Calvin Theatre in Northampton; tickets go on sale Friday, May 11, at 10 a.m. for $35 and $25 via www.nbotickets.com.

Halestorm plays June 26 at Pearl Street in Northampton; tickets are $16. G. Love & Special Sauce is there June 27; tickets are $20. Foxy Shazam plays the Club Room July 7; tickets are $9.93. Tickets are available via www.nbotickets.com.

Skeletonwitch performs with Barn Burner July 15 at the Webster Underground in Hartford; tickets are $12 in advance.

Bridgeport’s Alternate Routes headline Infinity Music Hall with Jen Lowe June 28; tickets go on sale Thursday, May 10, for $30 and $20. Jo Dee Messina comes July 6; tickets are $90 and $70. The Left Banke plays July 7; tickets are $55 and $40. Albert Lee plays with Kate Taylor Aug. 16; tickets are $55 and $35. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band is there Sept. 7; tickets are $75 and $55. Tickets are available via www.infinityhall.com/events.

River City Extension performs May 29 at The Space in Hamden with the Drowning Men and the Proud Flesh; tickets are $10. Ceremony and Screaming Females are there June 13; tickets are $10. The Skatalites perform June 20 with Distance No Object and Steady Habits; tickets are $15. Wye Oak performs July 5; tickets are $12. Tickets are available via www.thespacect.com.

Shaggy and local artist Ardie “Cuban Cohiba” perform with High Octane, Ding Dong, Christopher Martin, Nookie Man and more June 17 at the Connecticut Father’s Day Reggae Festival and Car and Bike Expo, held at 410 Market Street, Hartford. Tickets are $35 via Dunn’s River Jamaican Restaurant in Hartford or Rootsman Kitchen in Bridgeport.

America performs July 15 at the Ridgefield Playhouse; tickets rae $85. War is there July 18; tickets are $65. Rickie Lee Jones headlines July 27; tickets are $55. Little Feat is there Aug. 15; tickets are $65. K.D. Lang and the Sis Boom Bang plays Aug. 14; tickets are $110 and $90. The Chris Robinson Brotherhood, the current project for the former Black Crowes singer, headlines Aug. 23; tickets are $55.

Livingston Taylor performs June 2 at First Congregational Church of Madison; tickets are $45, $35 and $25 via www.fccmadison.org/music.

Brian Wilson, center, rejoins the Beach Boys for a 50th-anniversary tour coming to Mohegan Sun. (Photo by Robert Matheu)

There were two sides to the Beach Boys: the sunny, pop half that contributed to a vision of white-capped waves and beach parties in the early ’60s, and an experimental side that helped define psychedelia and landed the band in neck-in-neck competition with the Beatles — and yielded “Pet Sounds” — later in the decade.

Fans will hear some of each when all the surviving 1960s members of the Beach Boys celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary on a tour that stops Saturday and Sunday at Mohegan Sun.

The outing marks the first time that Brian Wilson has toured with the Beach Boys since the late ’70s. So why now?

“I think it’s a natural thing,” singer Mike Love says by phone from California, with Wilson. “It’s 50 years.”

They haven’t always been peaceable years. Wilson has been in and out of the Beach Boys several times while dealing with addiction and mental illness, and there have been various legal disputes over use of the Beach Boys name and songwriting credits. There has been outright tragedy, too: Drummer Dennis Wilson drowned in 1983, and guitarist Carl Wilson died of cancer in 1998.

Yet starting late in 2010, rumors began circulating that Wilson would rejoin the others for a 50th-anniversary tour. (The actual anniversary was last year — the Beach Boys formed in 1961.) Ultimately, it was a record deal that helped cement the reunion.

“One of the things that precipitated us getting together is Capitol Records has offered us a really nice recording deal and we’re in the studio right now,” Love says.

By “we,” he means himself, Brian Wilson, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and David Marks, all of whom were part of the seminal 1960s lineups of the band. Those Beach Boys charted 27 top-40 singles between 1962-69, including enduring the classics “Surfin’ USA,” “Surfer Girl,” “I Get Around,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” “California Girls” and, of course, “Good Vibrations.”

Various incarnations of the Beach Boys have also released 30 studio albums over the years, including “Pet Sounds” in 1966, which Paul McCartney has said was a key influence on the Beatles as they recorded their 1967 release “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

Not bad for a group of middle-class kids from the suburbs.

“We’re all proud, of course,” Wilson says of the band’s legacy.

“We’ve had the blessing of music all of our lives, basically since we were children,” Love says. “Music has been an integral part of our lives, and we’ve been blessed enough and fortunate enough to have that become a career rather than just a hobby. The music has been appreciated by millions of people, but we appreciate it tremendously, too.”

Versions of the Beach Boys have been touring without Wilson for decades, and Wilson has in recent years gone on solo tours to perform classic songs and tunes from more recent albums, including his long-delayed “Smile,” originally intended as the follow-up to “Pet Sounds,” which he released in 2004.

Overall, then, the band is in great shape vocally, Love says, and musicians from Wilson’s touring band will augment the lineup.

“The band that you’re going to be seeing on stage is going to sound pretty phenomenal,” Love says. “We’ve been practicing. For 50 years.”

Wilson puts it another way.

“We’re pushing 70 here, so it’s not as easy to sing as it used to be,” he says. “But for guys our age, we’re still kicking ass.”

The Beach Boys perform Saturday and Sunday, May 12-13, at Mohegan Sun, 1 Mohegan Sun Blvd., Uncasville. Tickets for the 8 p.m. shows are $75 and $55. Information: 860-862-7163 or www.mohegansun.com/entertainment.

Anthrax (from left, Scott Ian, Charlie Benante, Frank Bello, Joey Belladonna and Rob Caggiano), shown here at a 2010 show in Warsaw, performs Aug. 5 in Hartford.

Anthrax fans are in for a particular treat this summer at the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival, which stops Aug. 5 at Comcast Theatre in Hartford.

Instead of performing on the somewhat sterile (for a metal concert, anyway) main stage, the seminal band has opted to play its set on a more intimate side stage dubbed, for the sake of sponsorship dollars, the Jagermeister Stage.

“We decided to pattern the Mayhem set on the kind of shows the Ramones used to do: a high-energy, non-stop barrage of hit, hit, hit, hit, hit,” drummer Charlie Benante says in a press release. “No lulls, no filler, totally in your face. We’re going to be playing a supersonic-paced set loaded with the best of our best.”

If that’s not enough for you, consider this: Motörhead and Slayer play the festival, too.

Cake performs May 9 in Waterbury. (Photo by Tim Jackson)

John McCrea was delighted when his band Cake’s most recent album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart in 2011, but not for the reasons you’d expect.

“We don’t really fetishize victory so much,” he says by phone from California, before starting a tour that comes to Waterbury Wednesday, May 8. “We’re all about our process and all about our work. That said, it was great, and it was fleeting, and it was followed up the the realization that it was the lowest No. 1 in history, which was perfect for us.”

“Showroom of Compassion” topped the chart with sales of just 44,000 copies, at the time the lowest total to reach No. 1 since Billboard adapted a more accurate means of trackign sales in 1991. (By contrast, ’N Sync set the record for most sales in a week with 2.4 million copies of “No Strings Attached” in 2000.) Cake’s turn at No. 1 sparked dire talk about how the record industry is something akin to a jet plane spurting flames from its engines as it spirals into the side of a mountain. Frankly, that doesn’t disappoint McCrea either, though he drew a different lesson from the release of Cake’s first album since “Pressure Chief” in 2004.

“For me, the meaning of it was more about how, after seven years of precipitous decline in the music business, how we had maintained a relationship with our audience that they trusted us enough to buy as many albums the first week as they did seven years earlier,” McCrea says. “Given that incredible decline in music sales, I felt like it was a salutory thing for the band to even have people remember who we were, let alone buy recorded music.”

Cake has been wary of the record industry from the start. The band self-released its first album, 1994’s “Motorcade of Generosity,” before signing with Capricorn Records for its biggest selling releases, 1996’s “Fashion Nugget” and 1998’s “Prolonging the Magic,” which have each sold more than 1 million copies. When Capricorn went bust in 1999, Cake jumped to the major label Columbia for two albums, then regained its independence in time for “Showroom of Compassion.”

“Extricating ourselves from our label deal was a salutory feeling for us, and being able to do things for ourselves felt a lot safer,” McCrea says.

“Safer” is a relative term in an age of digital and economic upheaval, a point McCrea makes with employment statistics.

“According to the Department of Labor, we have 17 percent fewer working musicians in the United States than we did 10 years ago,” he says. “I think we probably still have a lot of musicians, they’re not just not able to support themselves doing it.”

They’re not the only ones. Expectations of free content extend beyond music and so far, McCrea says, the “huge Internet pipeline” companies like Google and Yahoo are the only ones who are making money from it.

“There’s all this advertising that’s being sold, but none of it is going to artists. There’s this weird cognitive dissonance,” McCrea says.

Although the singer can foresee a day when it won’t make economic sense to continue making music on the scale Cake has made it for the past 20 years, he’s not ready to quit quite yet.

“I don’t really know if listeners are really going to be supporting musicians to record for very much longer, but as long as there’s a few people still willing to help us pay for studio time, we’ll keep doing it,” he says.

Cake performs Wednesday, May 9, at the Palace Theater, 100 East Main St., Waterbury. Tickets for the 8 p.m. show are $50, $40 and $35. Information: www.palacetheaterct.org or 203-755-4700.

Adam Yauch speaks at the Apple Soho store on May 2, 2008, in New York City. (Photo by Bryan Bedder / Getty Images)

As news spreads via social media this afternoon about the death of Beastie Boys co-founder Adam Yauch, a tweet from the screenwriter Josh A. Cagan, West Hartford native and son of my colleague Korky Vann, stood out: “Ow,” he wrote. “My childhood hurts. #RIPMCA”

I can relate: the Beastie Boys headlined the first concert I ever saw, in July 1987, at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colo., outside Denver. Run D.M.C. opened. I was 11.

Mostly I remember them jumping around on stage, spraying each other with beer and dropping f-bombs, to the chagrin of my father, who had no idea what he was getting himself in to. I knew all the words to “Fight for Your Right” and “Paul Revere,” even if I was too young to know what they actually meant.

It was clearly a formative experience, though, and one that undoubtedly played a role in steering me toward a career writing about music. I never met Yauch, or spoke with him — in fact, that show at Red Rocks was the only time I ever saw the Beastie Boys live — but I’m grateful to him for planting a seed all those years ago. My childhood hurts, too.

Adam Yauch, right, died Friday at 47.

Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys died Friday after a three-year battle with cancer, RollingStone.com is reporting. He was 47.

Yauch, known as MCA, was diagnosed with cancer in 2009 after doctors discovered a tumor in his salivary gland. He co-founded the Beastie Boys in 1981 with Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) and Mike Diamond (Mike D.), a friend from a previous incarnation of the group that began in 1979. The trio last month was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, though Yauch did not attend the induction ceremony in Cleveland.

The Beastie Boys started as a hardcore punk band with Yauch on bass, releasing a handful of singles before the trio evolved into a rap act known for repurposed Led Zeppelin samples and wisecracking rhymes on its debut album, 1986′s “License to Ill.” It was the first of eight studio albums that have collectively sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, including “Paul’s Boutique” in 1989, “Ill Communication” in 1994 and last year’s “Hot Sauce Committee, Part 2,” the release of which was delayed after Yauch’s cancer diagnosis.

Those early albums especially were transformational, helping to spread hip-hop from the streets of New York, where it originated in the 1970s, to the cassette players of suburban teens everywhere via singles like “Fight For Your Right” and “Hey Ladies,” and videos that featured the trio goofing around.

Yauch directed many of those clips videos under the pseudonym Nathaniel Hornblower (and wrote a letter under that name to The New York Times in 2004 — third one down), though Spike Jonze directed the band’s most famous video, “Sabotage,” a send-up/homage to 1970s cop shows.

In addition to his musical activities, Yauch, a New York native, was a Buddhist and high-profile proponent of the Free Tibet movement. He helped organize — and headlined with the Beastie Boys — a series of Tibetan Freedom music festivals between 1996-2001.

Yauch is survived by his wife Dechen and his daughter Tenzin Losel, and his parents Frances and Noel Yauch.

Rubblebucket performed Thursday at Pearl Street in Northampton.

Spending years on the road has honed Rubblebucket into a super-efficient party machine on stage.

The eight-piece Brooklyn band, formerly of Vermont, returned Thursday to Pearl Street in Northampton with a set full of high-energy songs, a sense of gleeful abandon and even a pair of giant metallic-looking puppets that wandered through the audience during the band’s set.

Rubblebucket’s music is an eclectic mix of styles that takes elements of indie-rock, funk and even electronic music and sloshes them all together into what’s best described as “dance music” on uptempo, horn-laced songs that make it impossible to stand still.

The band’s shifted from song to song, with deep, thick low end topped with chiming guitars and fluid horns here, and ripples of bass beneath bright keyboards there. Rubblebucket punctuated a rumbling, percussive version of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” with a psychedelic freakout that was electrifying without ever seeming self-indulgent.

The horn section — trombone, trumpet and saxophone — expanded to include a tuba on “Came Out of a Lady,” the band’s joyfully chaotic breakthrough single, which ended the main set as trombone and trumpet players crowd surfed while they played.

Rochester, N.Y., band Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad was on before Rubblebucket, playing an hour-long set of tight, deep reggae jams. The Ryan Howard Band opened the show.

The Allman Brothers Band coheadlines with Santana July 28 at Comcast Theatre in Hartford.

The summer schedule is filling up.

For starters, the Allman Brothers Band and Santana coheadline July 28 at Comcast Theatre in Hartford, one of just six dates nationwide the groups are playing. Tickets go on sale Friday, May 4, at 10 a.m. for $93.50, $63.50, $53.50, $43.50, $33.50 and $23.50 for reserved seats and $21.50 for the lawn. Tickets are available via www.livenation.com.

One Direction opens a U.S. tour May 22 at Mohegan Sun; tickets are $59.50, $49.50, $39.50 and $29.50. Demi Lovato performs with Hot Chelle Rae June 30 at Mohegan Sun; tickets go on sale Friday, May 4, at 10 a.m. for $34.50. Linkin Park headlines this year’s Honda Civic Tour with Mute Math Aug. 12 at Mohegan Sun; tickets go on sale Friday, May 4, at 10 a.m. for $69.50 and $49.50. The Zac Brown Band plays a pair of dates Aug. 31 and Sept. 1; tickets go on sale Saturday, May 5, at 10 a.m. for $97 and $77. Tickets are available via www.ticketmaster.com.

They’re not summer shows, but Carrie Underwood plays a pair of Connecticut dates later this year: Sept. 15 at Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport and Nov. 10 at XL Center in Hartford. Tickets for both shows go on sale May 24 at 10 a.m. via www.ticketmaster.com. No word on Bridgeport prices, but Hartford tickets are $65, $55 and $45.

Speaking of Bridgeport, Rush brings its “Clockwork Angels” tour to Webster Bank Arena Oct. 10; tickets go on sale Friday, May 4, at 10 a.m. for $140.75, $102.65 and $56.60, including fees, via www.ticketmaster.com.

Death Cab for Cutie plays July 20 at Mountain Park in Holyoke; tickets go on sale Friday, May 4, at 10 a.m. for $35. Josh Turner is there Aug. 3; tickets go on sale Friday, May 4, at 10 a.m. for $57.50, $47.50 and $37.50. Tickets are available via www.nbotickets.com.

Country singer George Jones has postponed until Aug. 31 a performance that had been scheduled for July 17 at the Calvin Theatre in Northampton; tickets will be honored, and refunds are available if you can’t make the new date.

Counting Crows comes June 12 to Ives Concert Park in Danbury; tickets go on sale Friday, May 4, at 10 a.m. for $60, $50 and $45 for reserved seats and $35 for the lawn. Tickets are available via www.premierboxoffice.com.

Jason Isbell performs with Amanda Shires June 8 at the Wadsworth Atheneum; tickets go on sale Friday, May 4, at 10 a.m. for $20 via www.thewadsworth.org.

Lyle Lovett performs Aug. 12 at the Warner Theatre in Torrington; tickets go on sale Friday, May 4, for $75.50, $57.50 and $47.50. Montgomery Gentry plays Sept. 28. Tickets are available now to members for $100, $59.50 and $49.50, though a public on-sale date hasn’t been announced. LeAnn Rimes plays Nov. 17; ticket information wasn’t available. Tickets are available via www.warnertheatre.org.

Slide guitar master Sonny Landreth performs June 20 at Infinity Music Hall in Norfolk; tickets go on sale Thursday, May 3, for $50 and $35. The Malone Brothers stop in July 21; tickets are $50 and $35. Marc Cohn is there July 26; tickets are $75 and $50. Los Lonely Boys return for a pair of shows Oct. 3-4; tickets are $95 and $65. Tickets are available via www.infinityhall.com/events.

Seth Glier performs May 11 at the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center in Old Saybrook; tickets are $20. California Transit Authority is there May 12; tickets are $45. The Atlanta Rhythm Section plays May 17; tickets are $55 and $50. Tickets are available via www.katharinehepburntheater.org.

Max Creek’s annual “Strange Creek Campout” happens May 25-28 at Camp KeeWanee in Greenfield, Mass. Along with Max Creek, performers include Strangefolk, Donna the Buffalo, Ryan Montbleau Band, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Toubab Krewe, Kung Fu, Jimkata, Dopapod, Adam Ezra Group, Cabinet and the McLovins. Tickets are $95 for the weekend, via strangecreekcampout.com.

Former Fates Warning bandmates Jim Matheos, left, and John Arch have reteamed as Arch/Matheos. (Photo by Jeremy Saffer)

More than two decades after leaving Hartford progressive metal band Fates Warning, original singer John Arch is making music again with guitarist Jim Matheos.

The pair reconvened in 2010 to record “Sympathetic Resonance,” which they released last year as Arch/Matheos. They perform their first American concert Saturday at the Webster Theatre in Hartford.

“We’re really excited about this,” Matheos says by phone. “The last time that John and I played together was the first or second incarnation of Fates Warning, which was back in 1986 or 1987.”

They’ve worked together once since then, recording an EP in 2002, but no live dates followed. Although Fates Warning carried on when Arch left after the band’s third album, 1986’s “Awaken the Guardian,” Matheos says he always kept in touch with Arch and occasionally asked his old friend whether he wanted to collaborate.

“Whenever I have some time or material, I check in with John to see if he’s ready,” Matheos says. “This record took probably a year and a half to put together. It’s not something we take lightly, and John is never sure whether he wants to commit to that kind of time.”

For “Sympathetic Resonance,” Matheos sent Arch, who works now in carpentry, musical ideas. Arch added lyrics, and they spent a considerable amount of time shaping and reshaping the songs.

“What it comes down to is that both of us are kind of perfectionists, and when you put the two of us together, there’s no one there to say, ‘OK, enough, stop,’” Matheos says.

Eventually, they recorded six virtuosic new songs with current Fates Warning members Bobby Jarzombek, Joey Vera and Frank Aresti.

Working with someone once every 10 years makes for an unusual collaborative relationship, but the two quickly find their footing together.

“I think we have a really interesting chemistry,” Matheos says. “When we got together in 2002 to do that EP, it had been a long time. I think the last time we had worked together was maybe 1986. So that went a little odd at first, but it really only took a couple of days to fall right back into that old chemistry. This time around, it had only been 10 years, which didn’t seem that long.”

Although Arch/Matheos plans to focus on “Sympathetic Resonance” on stage, the band will dig into material from Fates Warning’s first three albums with Arch, too.

“I think there’s a lot of Fates Warning fans from the early days who kind of fell out of love with the band when John left, because he has a very unique style of singing and writing melody lines and lyric writing,” Matheos says.

With Arch/Matheos, he says, “I think a lot of those fans have come back, and we’ve maintained a lot of the fans who have been with us from day one.”

Arch/Matheos performs Saturday, May 5, with Freedoms Reign, Magus Beast, Agrippa 93, Kali Ma, Mile Marker Zero, Crossing Rubicon and Enemy Remains at the Webster Theatre, 31 Webster St., Hartford. Tickets are $18 in advance via www.webstertheatre.com. Information: 860-525-5553

Norah Jones' latest, "Little Broken Hearts," is a departure for the singer and songwriter. (Photo by Noah Abrams)

Singer-songwriter Norah Jones today releases “Little Broken Hearts” (Blue Note), her fifth album and her first outright departure.

Co-written and recorded with Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton, the album strays from Jones’ jazzy low-key piano pop in favor of a leaner rock sound: Though there are ballads a-plenty, “Little Broken Hearts” features the punchy bass and offbeat R&B shadings Burton has brought to Gnarls Barkley, Broken Bells and, to a lesser extent, the Black Keys.

The sound suits Jones’ voice on these songs, which were inspired by a relationship that feel apart. Known for sounding drowsy, she turns arch instead on “She’s 22″ and falls somewhere between rueful and royally ticked on “4 Broken Hearts.”

There’s an arid feel to “Out on the Road,” a slightly southwestern song of escape, while lead single “Happy Pills” is as glorious, and biting, a pop song as Jones has recorded so far.

Norah Jones performs July 2 at Toyota Presents Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford. Tickets are $58, $48 and $38 via www.livenation.com.

(She covered this Kris Kristofferson song last week during an appearance on “Later With Jules Holland.”)