I've been a fan of Lucinda Williams since my college days, and never was there a purer exponent of American blues, honky-tonk, folk and poetry. She's let me down before with her ruminations on pain and addiction, but with Little Honey she throws everything in her stylistic repertoire onto the canvas, and loosens up, besides.

The architecture of the First Baptist Church on 5th Street in Winston-Salem inspires a variety of emotions, chiefly awe. Enormous marble columns reach toward the heavens, supporting a tremendous dome adorned with frescoes reminiscent of the Sistine Chapel.

In what other city in the United States can you drop into a neighborhood bar, buy a round of chilled domestic beers for $2.50 a piece, grab a table front and center, and listen to a scintillating Latin rock band whose players approach their instruments with verve and originality, tossing in a couple Santana covers, a free-flight John Coltrane tune and several of their own compositions? Greensboro, of course. The faded textile city and renewed transportation hub is at once an international crossroads and a parochial backwater steeped in regional wrestling mania.

The ramp descends from the parking lot behind Fantacity, the international shopping mall on Greensboros West Market Street that was refashioned from the idled Guilford Mills. The building below might have once served as a warehouse to store the fabric before shipping it out by rail.

Larry Johnson, better known to his fans as Larry J, perched on a stool beneath a flat-screen displaying Carolina basketball prowess and wrung the delicate notes of Willie Nelson;s jazz-inflected standard, "Crazy", from his acoustic guitar, caressed the lyric with a weathered voice that balanced stoicism and hurt.

Velvet Truckstop believes in rock and roll. Lead guitar player Dorsey Parker describes it with religious sincerity: "Music can look at human experiences, like love and loss. When you listen to it, you realize, 'Hey, we all experience together.'" Parker looks like Garth from "Wayne's World."

The music never stopped, at least not for Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir. Along with Dead bassist Phil Lesh's ongoing project, Phil Lesh Friends, Weir's touring band RatDog (www.rat-dog.com) has sought to perpetuate the music of the band that has shaped American music like few others.

The marching band complete with baton twirlers, flag wavers, flag runners and acrobatic drum majors formed an impressive phalanx on the practice field as dusk descended around 5 p.m. on a recent Wednesday.

Linford Detweiler slips out the side door of Dana Auditorium after being excused from the sound check. Piano player and part of the songwriting and musical core of Over the Rhine with wife Karin Bergquist, Detweiler owns a lanky frame like Abraham Lincoln, heavyframed glasses and an overgrown mop-top reminiscent of the Surrealistic Pillow-era.

Ken Mickeys chardonnay glass rests on the piano cover, the instrument itself balanced on a four-wheeled dolly in the living room of Jack Gorhams house on the outskirts of High Points tony Emerywood section. Used paint trays and rollers stack on the porch, and strips of blue tape line the inside window frames.