Music

Last summer, before an inch of film was ever shot on the set in Mississippi, the actor who played Jackie Robinson in 42 met up with the director of The Help in Atlanta, they rented a car and road tripped it together to Augusta. Getting the most minute details of James Brown’s life right was a top priority for Get on Up director Tate Taylor and actor Chadwick Boseman, who plays The Godfather of Soul in the new biopic opening in theaters today. With the tsunami of lawsuits and arguments that swirled after the soul pioneer’s 2006 Christmas Day death in Atlanta, it probably didn’t hurt to have the support of the Brown estate either.

When the bearded white dude introduced himself, AJ Ghent was nonplussed. “I didn’t have a clue who Zac Brown was,” recalls Ghent, whose band was rolling into a midnight set when Grammy winner Brown entered the almost empty Dixie Tavern one evening last summer.

As any eastside commuter can attest, one rarely drives through the Krog Street tunnel—the graffiti gallery/underpass connecting Cabbagetown and Old Fourth Ward—without spying an aspiring musician or model posing for a photo shoot.

This band’s sweet jams really jell around the hickory fires of a barbecue pit—or in the cigarette haze of a juke joint—so the handle Blackberry Smoke fits the Atlanta-based Southern rockers just fine.

It takes a special kind of singer to be able to belt out an opera, but Philadelphia-based soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams, thirty-three, feels she was built for it. “I’m six feet tall, I’m a big woman—I make a lot of sound.” The rising diva will be performing with the Atlanta Opera—which celebrates its thirtieth anniversary this season—in the title role of Verdi’s Aida at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre (February 27 and March 2, 5, and 7).

Tony Rehagen is our senior editor. Learn more about him | Follow him on Twitter | Contact him

As The Seed & Feed Marching Abominable, Atlanta’s iconic kooky community marching band struts into its 40th anniversary today at the Inman Park Festival parade, the act has a souvenir for fans. To celebrate four decades of silliness, the band’s fundraising arm, the Seed & Feed Marching Abominable Endowment, Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit, is selling the act’s brand new 2015 "Naughty Bits" calendar.

On any given day it can be difficult to find a parking spot near the Urban Outfitters at the corner of North Highland and Ponce de Leon avenues, but a concert inside the store by one of Atlanta’s most talked about up-and-coming artists just about triples the amount of time you will spend circling the lot and asking yourself if Publix would really tow your car if you parked there for a few hours.

Along with recording artists Lady Antebellum, Wet Willie, Jeff Foxworthy, Francine Reed, and Collective Soul’s Ed Roland, Wax ‘n’ Facts and DB Records owner Danny Beard was inducted at the 36th annual Georgia Music Hall of Fame ceremonies.