Welcome to the soundtrack for your St. Patty's Day. Boston's own masters of Celt-punk mayhem the Dropkick Murphys (www.dropkickmurphys.com) already have one live album under their kilts, 2002's Live on St. Patrick's Day From Boston, MA.

It's not a slight to say that contained within Modena's (www.myspace.com/modenamusic) self-titled debut EP is the sound of a beginning band. While there's nothing abnormal about fledgling rockers wanting to rock out the same way their icons did, the Raleigh hard-rock quartet so clearly displays their influences that the eight-track offering flirts with obsolescence.

The problem with the blues these days is that too many of its practitioners take themselves and their trade a little too seriously sometimes. Contemporary blues often lacks the permissiveness to just have a little fun from time to time out of concern for upsetting convention.

For a chance to have your bands CD reviewed, mail it to: YES! Weekly, 5500 Adams Farm Lane, Suite 204, Greensboro, NC 27407. ATTN: Ryan Snyder..

After more than a year in the making, the debut album for Sam Robinsons Five Gallon Groove is finally available and its been well worth the wait. Though its a bit abbreviated at eight tracks, the star-studded, self-titled disc is a tour of Southern rock, jazz and blues through the sweltering guitar of one of Winston-Salems most unsung talents.

The four-year journey of the Carolina Chocolate Drops (www.carolinachocolatedrops.com) saw them inherently begin as a kind of novelty an old-time folk string band with a mind to reshape our consciousness of traditional folk music. The release of their third studio album Genuine Negro Jig.

If you watched any football at all over this past Thanksgiving weekend, you undoubtedly saw nonstop airings of a Radio Shack commercial that featured a song that reminded one of a gauzier, less self-aggrandizing version of Time to Pretend.

It wasn't long ago that Doug Williams was handed a talented young roots act with a highly emotive collections of songs that needed production, and he came out with arguably the two best albums by the Avett Brothers, Mignonette.

With a decades-long career that has inserted him as a staple of the NC- and Va. roots-music communities, Greensboro resident David Via (www.davidvia.com) has surely made an indelible impression on fans of bluegrass, old-time and country music here and beyond.

You probably don't need comedian-banjoist Steve Martin's endorsement to know that the Steep Canyon Rangers are one of the most gifted acts in all of bluegrass, but it does help when one of the most recognizable faces in entertainment gives the nod.