One Be Lo (a.k.a. One Man Army) has been a Michigan hip-hop fixture since he started getting noticed for his storytelling rhymes in 1998. That was also when he co-founded the rap duo Binary Star. This Thursday he performs at The Loft along with openers Ricky Rucker, Goodman Brown, GWiz and DJ Ruckus.

Commuters along Michigan Avenue have noticed a change in scenery in the Frandor area: a steady succession of sad faces holding cardboard placards pleading for cash. "Anything helps," the signs often say. That's just one of the hitches local street entertainers come across while performing on the city's sidewalks.

Typically the Ten Pound Fiddle concert series is reserved for veteran folk performers from across the globe, but occasionally a local group or performer is asked to play. This Friday, that honor goes to the Lansing Unionized Vaudeville Spectacle, an "Americana, gypsy-jazz, blues and vaudeville" band that plays a Fiddle show at Old Town's Creole Gallery.

After an hour-long conversation with punk legend Henry Rollins, one thing is clear: The guy is intensely patriotic and socially aware. For those who've followed his 30-year career, it should come as no surprise. He's passionate and vocal about virtually everything.

Taproot, a four-piece hard-rock band that formed in 1997 in Ann Arbor, performs Wednesday at The Loft along with co-headliners Nonpoint. Taproot started to gain national attention as the nü-metal phase was sputtering out, even scoring a national hit with "Poem" in 2002.

If you're plugged into the Lansing music scene, you may have noticed a flurry of bitter posts in your Facebook newsfeed last month from the Zeppelin's Music Hall page. The posts were mostly directed at City Pulse's local music coverage, specifically wondering why we weren’t covering Zeppelin's events.

Jim Finkley, better known by his stage name Joe Buck, is a hard-stomping one-man band. With a kick drum at his feet and a beat-up acoustic in his hands, Buck viciously mixes classic hillbilly music with snarling gutter-punk vocals and distortion.

In Lansing, there are two key fixtures that support the area's vibrant blues scene, keeping that 12-bar chord progression within two degrees of separation at any time: The Green Door, which has become a hallowed institution for the blues, attracting national and international acts with its electric atmosphere, and the annual Old Town BluesFest, which rolls into town like a storm once a year, shaking north Lansing to the quick.

When a business proprietor experiences three disasters in as many years, finding a willing insurance company gets to be a thorny state of affairs. Perhaps that's why bar owner Craig Banwell keeps his insurance agent, Ganesh Reddy, by his side — at least during interviews with local media.

Breathe Owl Breathe, an East Jordan, Mich. folk group, blends guitar, banjo, cello and vocals into an earthy indie folk sound. The trio's original songs are subtle and heartfelt, but sometimes come with a touch of humor. The band headlines a night of indie-folk Friday at (SCENE) Metrospace.