WILLIE NELSON

If ever the words "living legend" were more than just public relations bluster, the application would be to Willie Hugh Nelson.  The iconic Texan is the creative genius behind historic recordings like "Crazy," "Hello Walls," ’ "Red Headed Stranger," and ’ "Stardust."  His career has spanned six decades.  His catalog boasts more than 200 albums.  He's earned every conceivable award and honor to be bestowed a person in his profession.  He has also amassed reputable credentials as an author, actor and activist.  In many ways, however, the weighty distinction "living legend" does Nelson a disservice, for it discounts the extent to which he is a thriving, relevant and progressive musical and cultural force.  In the year 2008 alone he delivered two new studio albums and a career-spanning box set, released his debut novel and again headlined Farm Aid, an event he co-founded in 1985, all the while continuing to lobby against horse slaughter and produce his own blend of biodiesel fuel.

As ever, Nelson tours tirelessly, climbing aboard Honeysuckle Rose III (he rode his first two buses into the ground), taking his music and fans on a seemingly endless journey to places that were well worth the ride.

STEVE MILLER BAND

Steve Miller started out as an underground FM radio sensation.  After years touring small theatres and not selling many records his break through hit,"The Joker," began his rise to super stardom.  He followed "The Joker" with  six consecutive smashes - "Take the Money and Run," "Rock 'n Me," "Fly Like an Eagle," "Jet Airliner," "Jungle Love," "Swingtown" -- that would keep the Steve Miller Band in the Top Ten beyond the next two years. He began the "Fly Like an Eagle" tour at the same small theaters he played as the hitless wonder and king of FM underground rock. By the next summer, he was playing football stadiums. At the height of the classic rock movement, the Steve Miller Band was one of the defining figures.  Following last year's No. one blues album, "Bingo!," recently nominated as blues rock album of the year by the Blues Foundation, the Steve Miller Band follows that success with another new album, "Let Your Hair Down," released April 19 from Space Cowboy/Roadrunner/Loud & Proud Records.  "Let Your Hair Down" features the last recordings by harmonica virtuoso Norton Buffalo, Miller's "partner in harmony" for thirty-three years. Noted Pink Floyd album cover artist Storm Thorgerson, who also did the wonderfully whimsical cover to "Bingo!," returns to "Let Your Hair Down" with one of the great album covers of his career.  The Steve Miller Band has become one of the centerpiece attractions of the summer rock concert season, playing sixty or more shows every year. He is the Gangster of Love. Some people call him Maurice, the Midnight Toker or the Space Cowboy. And with "Let Your Hair Down," a masterpiece album by one of the greats, Steve Miller shows he still speaks of the pompitus of love.

ALAN JACKSON

He's back to support his new album, Freight Train.  Having recently passed his 20-year mark in the business, Jackson's still got it.  He's sold more than 50 million albums and had 34 No. 1 hits-three of those off his last album, 2008's Good Time. As superstars go, he's one of only a handful of artists who've been around for two decades who still regularly top the country chart. And unlike the other veteran smashmakers who can make that claim, he's the only one who is a true singer/songwriter, penning most of his own material.   "I wouldn't want to compare myself to anybody," Jackson says. "But if I was going to say somebody I wanted to be like, of course, the two singer/songwriters in country music that stick out to me are Hank Williams Sr. and Merle Haggard. I don't know that there are two any better. I just don't put myself in that category."

Others might beg to differ, since Jackson's considerable catalog clearly positions him as a successor to these greats. He may be the only extant country superstar whose honky-tonk poetry can lead you to answer the eternal question, "Are you sure Hank done it this way?," with an unblinking, "Yup."

SHOOTER JENNINGS

The only son of country legends Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, Shooter Jennings literally spent his childhood on a tour bus. Born Shooter was playing drums by the time he was five years old and had already begun taking piano lessons. He discovered guitar at 14 and rock & roll (particularly Southern rock and the loose-limbed hard rock of Guns N' Roses) at 16. Soon he moved from Nashville to L.A., where he assembled a rock band called Stargunn. Stargunn earned a reputation for its strong live shows before Jennings rediscovered his outlaw country roots and dissolved the band.  Following in his father's footsteps, but with his own feisty, scrappy sense of country, Jennings placed himself in a fine position to both explore that legacy and to carve out his own.  His fourth studio album, Black Ribbons, produced by Dave Cobb, was released in 2010 and received great critical acclaim and solid sales.

Shooter is currently working on a new country album scheduled for release by Savoy Label Group's 429 Records/Black Country Rock in late August 2011.

SAMMY HAGAR

He is the multi-platinum Red Rocker, the outgoing, bombastic front man of hard rock champions Van Halen, the man who won't drive 55, member in good standing of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, recently embarked on his fourth platinum career with his supergroup, Chickenfoot - the one and only Sammy Hagar.  The son of a steel worker and onetime professional boxer, raised in hard scrabble Fontana, California, Hagar burst on the scene from San Francisco as the lead vocalist of Montrose, whose "Rock Candy" has gone on to become a certified rock classic. After a string of eight solo albums, culminating with the million-sellers "Standing Hampton," "Three Lock Box" and "V.O.A.," and hundreds of sold out concert appearances across the country, Hagar joined Van Halen in 1985 and took the band to unprecedented heights, including four consecutive No. 1 albums, before he was unceremoniously fired.

He has thrived as a solo artist with his band, the Waboritas, named after the Mexican resort he founded, the Cabo Wabo Cantina, home of the handmade, premium Cabo Wabo Tequila that Hagar oversaw from the first spoonful.


JOE SATRIANI

Joe Satriani has been a worldwide guitar hero since his 1987 breakthrough album, Surfing With The Alien.  Over 10-million albums and CD's later, in addition to 14 Grammy nominations and numerous accolades Joe continues to push the envelope of modern rock guitar playing.  He originally started his career by teaching some of the top rock guitar players of the '80s and '90s like Metallica's Kirk Hammet and virtuoso Steve Vai.  Joe Satriani is universally hailed as one of the most technically accomplished and respected guitar players in the history of rock music.  Since the release of Surfing With The Alien in '87, Satriani has continually been voted the best guitarist in leading guitar magazine readers' polls.  After releasing several critically acclaimed solo albums, in 1996, Satriani embarked on the first G3showcase tour, which became  an instant success. G3 tours have performed sold out shows in the US, Europe, South America, Japan and Australia and there have been 3 Live G3 DVDs.   In 2009 Joe teamed up with Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony of Van Halen plus Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers to form Tthe supergroup Chickenfoot.