Through a bluegrass career spanning nearly four decades, Tim O’Brien has played on many stages and with numerous players, but RockyGrass holds a special place in his heart. Hell, he’s performed there 28 times, which is why organizers asked him to fill the final slot of the festival’s 40th year.

It’s hard not to become introspective when listening to mewithoutYou’s albums. Vocalist Aaron Weiss puts layer upon layer of philosophical, religious and spiritual overtones in his lyrics, and his brother, guitarist Mike Weiss, says he still finds himself exploring those lyrics daily.

Langhorne Slim had a good thing going. The nomadic roots rocker spent almost his entire adult life peddling his scuffling folk-blues odes to wastrels, scoundrels and lovelorn wanderers. In all that time since college, he’d managed to avoid ever paying rent.

Central City’s 2012 season offers an emotionally varied program. With the final opening night of the season Saturday, the ghosts of Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw joined the starving artists of Puccini’s La Bohème and the homespun Americans of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! on the bill.

The word ‘planet’ means wanderer,” the narrator says, explaining the captivating, wandering harmonies of Gustav Holst’s popular orchestral piece The Planets. “To the ancient world, the planets were the stars that changed position, that wandered from one place to another. In The Planets, the music wanders from harmony to harmony.”

Victor Wooten likens playing his bass guitar to a child jamming out on an air guitar—it’s all about emotion.

Porter Robinson almost forgets to pick up his phone as he wakes up groggy from a nap after a long night of DJing. “I hate it, dude,” he says. “I’d much rather wake up at 6 a.m. than 6 p.m., but it’s just not an option when you’re on tour.”

When String Cheese Incident announced their summer tour plans a few months back, it was hard not to notice all the three-nighters they had on the bill. Red Rocks Amphitheatre (of course), Horning’s Hideout, Electric Forest. SCI has landed and kept itself near the top of the jam-madness world long enough to sustain these nearly stretch-weekend sieges, and just about any working franchise prowling the interstate highways these days would mortgage its soul to have that luxury, but we asked keys player Kyle Hollingsworth how the band approached these gigs.

When Martin Sexton sings these days, he’s trying to make a difference, bringing attention to pervasive social and political issues while bringing a diverse audience together.

The next time Mark Foster has a chance to skip out of his work writing songs to go to the beach, don’t be surprised if he decides to stay inside and write. Another time he chose work over play, things worked out pretty well for Foster and his band, Foster The People.