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It is City Stages week here in Birmingham. The annual music festival kicks off this Friday with an Unplugged mini-concert before swining into full gear Friday night. This year has a great line-up, with everything from big names like Snoop Dogg, The Allman Brothers Band and Hank Williams, Jr. to up-and-coming artists on the verge of making it big like Joshua Radin, Brandi Carlisle and others.

There are lots of familiar faces in the line-up this year. John Hiatt has been here before, but usually as a solo act. This year he is backed up by the North Mississippi Allstars, who will also be performing their own set. Los Lonely Boys were in town for City Stages 2004, getting things started with an uplugged set and then turning up the heat later that night. They will be back on Saturday night with their awesome blend of Tex-Mex jams.

City Stages has been podcasting this year, featuring Guy McCollugh sitting down to talk with local music insiders about many of the acts coming this year, giving us a preview of what to expect.

They have also just launched the City Stages 2006 PodSite, a feature that was started last year which gives you the full weekend schedule on your iPod, organized by day and by stage. Any 3G iPod or later or iPod Nano will support this PodSite.

If you want to sample the sounds of some of the artists that are playing this year, Birmingham blogger Wade Kwon has put together a mix of songs from most of those that are appearing.

Who am I looking forward to seeing? The North Mississippi Allstars are always a treat, and to see them play with John Hiatt would be a huge bonus. I missed the Los Lonely Boys when they were here in 2004, so I may try to catch them. Bocephus always puts on a good show, but it will probably be a very crowded night with Snoop playing at the same time on a different stage. Sunday afternoon is looking like a killer line-up at the Miller Lite stage, with Oteil and the Peacemakers, The Derek Trucks Band and The Allman Brothers Band.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 12th, 2006 at June 12,2006 @ 11:42 am and is filed under Birmingham, Linkage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.