Cleveland Sessions to highlight Cleveland music at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert series

by John Soeder / Plain Dealer Pop Music Critic

Tuesday April 29, 2008, 3:44 PM

The new "Cleveland Sessions" concert series aims to give Northeast Ohio musicians a chance to shine not only onstage, but online, too. The series is sponsored by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. Performers representing a range of musical styles - including alt-rock, blues and punkabilly - have been lined up to do free shows every other Wednesday evening on the Rock Hall's main stage, starting May 7 with a concert by Bears and The Twilight. The concerts will be shown live at 7 p.m. at www.cleveland.com/sessions, where fans of the local music scene also can avail themselves of blogs and podcasts.

• Bears Podcast and Video

• Sessions Schedule/Band Links

Ready for your close-up, local musicians? The new "Cleveland Sessions" concert series aims to give Northeast Ohio artists a chance to shine not only onstage, but online, too. The series is sponsored by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. (Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer are owned by Advance Publications.)

Performers representing a range of musical styles -- including alt-rock, blues and punkabilly -- have been lined up to do free shows every other Wednesday evening on the Rock Hall's main stage, starting May 7 with a doubleheader featuring Bears and the Twilight. The series is set to run through early November.

Artists were handpicked by Lisa Vinciquerra, the Rock Hall's production manager, who is still looking to fill a few slots.

"Northeast Ohio is definitely a hot spot for new bands," Vinciquerra says. "We have a lot of diverse talent here, and it keeps getting better year after year."

The concerts will be shown live at www.cleveland.com/sessions, where the Webcasts also will be archived for at least four weeks afterwards.

The ultimate goal is to elevate the local music scene, says Denise Polverine, editor in chief of Cleveland.com.

"We're really trying to bring the concert series into this century by thinking about how people access music right now," Polverine says. "They want music on demand and immediately, and they want to talk about it, which is exactly what we're offering."

Performers will be able to blog on the Web site, which hopes to post comments and concert photos from fans, too. You also can go there for podcast interviews with "Cleveland Sessions" artists, conducted by Michael Norman, The Plain Dealer's online arts and entertainment editor.

"We definitely want to make a bigger impact," says C. Ryan Kearney, bass player for the Twilight. Rounded out with Tony Bunce on vocals, guitar and keyboards and Greg Hyland on drums, the indie trio put a fresh spin on classic-rock influences on "Tempest in a Teapot," its 2007 debut album.

"We've been told over and over we should probably relocate," Kearney says. "But with the right people and events like this, we hope we can stay here and be successful."