The sublime vastness of a rugged land unfurled under a panoramic sky may be etched across the moniker for husband and wife duet Jonathan and Jennifer Adams, but they actually claim Lawrenceville, a small city about 30 miles outside of Atlanta, as base of operations; they met at nearby University of Georgia in Athens.

The three guys from Asheville are about to make their move. Bassist Dan Pederson and guitarist Luke Wood confer at the bar with fan Lindsay Harris while drummer Billy Owens runs over some details with the sound technician. The trio does business under the moniker Makia Groove, and it’s their first time in town.

The musicians and female backup singers have taken positions onstage in statuesque postures as the crowd jostles at the Greene Street club on a recent Thursday morning, just after midnight. The comedian assigned to emcee the show is going a little long.

This summer flower is wilting, says Kelly Cranford, showing just the slightest hint of a pout as she cradles her instrument in the back corner of one of the corrugated metal boxes that comprise at Secure Care Self Storage on Greensboro’s West Wendover Avenue.

Ailyne takes the stage at Greene Street dressed in headbands, skimpy, Day-Glo athletic shorts and tank tops. Their backs to the audience, the band members take shadowy forms as blinding lights beam into the audience and a recording of Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” blares from the speakers.

It stood shoulder to shoulder with anything out of New York — or Manchester, England, for that matter — and spawned a focus on local scenes. First Athens. Then Minneapolis, Seattle and Chapel Hill.

Mark Kano caresses the vocal from the stage at the Blind Tiger on a recent Thursday evening, his voice holding a pleasant gravelly keen, his skin tan and hair nicely tousled with the look of a mature actor who can still play a 17 year-old heartthrob. “You better slow down,” he sings.

Bryan Smith remembers meeting Lee Tyler Post sometime around 2004 when Smith and his brother performed security detail for a concert to benefit the Victory Junction Gang, a charity organization set up by car racing legend Richard Petty. There wasn't much need for security, Smith recalls, because the audience numbered maybe four people.

Bass player Brian Johnson slips through the corner door at the Mellow Mushroom on Winston-Salem's Fourth Street with a white sack of food for Louis, a homeless friend. It's part of a deal, bandmate Austin Pheiffer says: They provide him with food, and in exchange he refrains from asking them for money for alcohol.

The Radials have been on a tear recently, and good fortune threatens to overtake the pathos of their sad and twisted honky-tonk universe. Stephen Corbett and Shawn Patch, respectively the band's singer and electric guitar player, began composing songs together last year, attracting the exquisite steel talents of relocated Ohioan Tom Beardslee and, subsequently, the rhythm section of Rodney Owen and Aaron Cummings. They've been in the studio with Doug Williams, who put himself on the map by recording the Avett Brothers, and have practically wrapped their debut album. They recently played their first all-acoustic set over the airwaves on 90.9 WQFS. They're opening for their friends the Carter Brothers, a Nashville act with local roots, at the Blind Tiger for the 4th of July holiday.