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Under the watchful eye of the Johnny Cash poster tacked above her dorm room bed, Jamie Grace Harper quietly strums her guitar. She’s singing Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” in a hushed voice, but 30 minutes earlier she led a chapel full students in a gutsy, heartfelt rendition of David Crowder’s “How He Loves” at Point University, a Christian college in East Point.

A northwestern Georgia county has bought the garden where folk artist Howard Finster held court for tourists and art lovers from around the world. The bicycle repairman and preacher turned to art to spread the word of God and was considered the grandfather of the American folk art movement.

With her youthful appearance and unblemished voice, it’s hard to fathom that Martina McBride has cranked out hits for 20 years. But the singer-songwriter, 45, has indeed perched at the top of the charts with hits ranging from her 1994 anthem “Independence Day” to last year’s “I’m Gonna Love You Through It,” a tender, yet uplifting, declaration about surviving cancer from McBride’s “Eleven” album.

Musicians connected to R.E.M., the Drive-By Truckers and other Georgia bands have joined forces to perform live and in a video as part of an effort to stop a planned Walmart store from being built in Athens. The song "After It's Gone" was recorded by a group of Athens musicians known as the Downtown 13.

This week’s Atlanta Symphony Orchestra performance of Beethoven’s Third Symphony was supposed to be one of the last times Donald Runnicles would direct the ASO as its principal guest conductor, a position he’s held for just over a decade. But after months of negotiations, the orchestra and its audiences will see Runnicles at the conductor’s podium a little bit longer.

Unfiltered isn’t an unusual description of Shelby Lynne. The country-pop singer-songwriter has always been guileless, both in her music and public life. Her songs -- which most people started paying attention to with her breakthrough 1999 release “I Am Shelby Lynne” -- shudder and ache with insights about love, loss and redemption.

In the first quarter of 2011, the No. 1 tour in the world – not nation, world – wasn’t Bon Jovi or Lady Gaga or Brad Paisley. It wasn’t even Justin Bieber. Nope, the tour that drew a record total audience of more than 500,000 people in 46 markets was The Winter Jam 2011 Tour Spectacular, the Christian music merry-go-round of acts that is clearly tapping into a spectrum of generations.

For 20 years, one of the highlights of Atlanta’s music season has been “A King Celebration,” a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. featuring the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Morehouse College Glee Club, the Spelman College Glee Club and guest artists.

All of the downloaded songs on the planet can’t compare to a live concert, from the second the lights snap off to the final encore. Of the 40-plus concerts I attended this year in the Atlanta area, here are my top 10-ish favorites. Let the arguing commence.

It’s been a knotty couple of years for Gregg Allman. In June 2010 he received a liver transplant, the result of hepatitis C gone untreated too long. Last summer brought a month-long hospitalization for lung surgery and a season of canceled tour dates while the mellow rocker recovered.

The man accused of killing Atlanta rapper Slim Dunkin turned himself in to police Monday. Vinson Hardimon, 28, also known as Young Vito, is being held at the Fulton County jail on murder and gun possession charges pending a bond hearing. According to witnesses, while at a video shoot in a Memorial Drive studio, Slim Dunkin, whose real name was Mario Hamilton, was shot in the chest on the evening of Dec.

James Brown told his children he wanted his Beech Island home to one day become a museum. “He wanted kids that came up dirt poor like he did to know that you can, at some point, achieve so much, if you keep on trying and trusting in God and believing in yourself,” said his daughter Dr.

For 18 years, the Atlanta Celtic Christmas Concert has been a local mainstay, a blending of music, dance, poetry and stories. Last year’s show at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts at Emory University was filmed live and will air this weekend on Georgia Public Broadcasting – the first time the concert is being televised and a possible gateway to national PBS distribution next year.

As Atlanta police on Friday continued to search for a suspect in the slaying of rapper Slim Dunkin, several hundred people gathered at a church in Stone Mountain for the young music artist's funeral. Mourners, some wearing T-shirts and sweatshirts with "R.

Authorities working to turn an old railroad right-of-way into a trail say they will bypass a landmark train trestle made famous by Georgia rock group R.E.M., which featured a photo of the bridge on its "Murmur" album. Officials tell the Athens Banner-Herald that they decided to reroute the rail-trail around the trestle due to the high cost of restoring it and its dilapidated condition.

It took six years for Cake to release its latest studio CD of new material, “Showroom Of Compassion.” Singer/guitarist John McCrea realizes that gap in time wasn’t ideal. But he and his bandmates had bigger issues to resolve before the group could resume the creative side of its career.

The bottles of high-end whiskey and other fancy liquors arranged on a small office bar bear a “do not disturb” sign. But disturbing them isn’t a problem because Joel Katz doesn’t drink. They’re gifts. Maybe one is from Lionel Richie. Another from Jimmy Buffet or perhaps Justin Timberlake.

When the Zac Brown Band returns to Philips Arena for its second consecutive New Year’s Eve gig, it won’t be a typical concert. No, these guys are more interested in promoting the theme that seems to permeate the ZBB camp: unity. Of course, since they’re headliners, the Cumming-born Brown and cohorts Clay Cook (guitar, keyboards), Chris Fryar (drums), John Hopkins (bass), Coy Bowles (guitar, keyboards) and Jimmy De Martini (fiddle) will steal the spotlight for a portion of the night.

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on Wednesday announced a star-studded lineup for the 2012 event, April 27-29 and May 3-6, including Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Foo Fighters, the Eagles, Zac Brown Band, Florence + the Machine, Feist, John Mayer, Herbie Hancock, Ne-Yo, Al Green, My Morning Jacket, Jill Scott, Bon Iver, Janelle Monae and Paulina Rubio.

The lady-killer with a penchant for jazzy outfits and the cowboy content to hide under his hat lead Georgia’s nominees for the 54th Annual Grammy Awards. Atlanta’s Cee Lo Green, the funky-fresh soul man whose ubiquitous “(Expletive) You” – renamed “Forget You” for radio -- jolted him into public consciousness last fall, and Macon native Jason Aldean, the low-key country singer enjoying a career benchmark with “My Kinda Party,” each tallied three nominations.

With Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Paul O’Neill, has already achieved several notable firsts for a touring musical act. To O’Neill’s knowledge, Trans-Siberian Orchestra is the first rock act to never have an opening act or open a show for any other act. It’s the first band to have more than 80 members and the first act to go straight to arenas for its first tour.

Dave Koz recently released “Ultimate Christmas,” a CD that compiles 16 tracks from his three previous holiday albums, plus a couple of new instrumentals. He admits the obvious, that releasing this collection made sense because it coincides with this year’s edition of his Dave Koz and Friends Christmas tour.

The 2011 Soul Train Awards chugged into the Fox Theatre last week with an assortment of star power and nostalgia, led by host Cedric the Entertainer. The two-hour show (which took about three-and-half to tape) airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on BET and Centric.

Tony Bennett is an anomaly. Few artists experience his level of career longevity. Even fewer do it with multiple resurgences that seem to attract new generations of fans. Most of his peers are gone –- Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin – but the 85-year-old Bennett is not only hearty and happily touring (he stops at the Fox on Friday ), but he's enjoying some of the biggest successes of his career.

The Athens-based band Widespread Panic has donated more than $80,000 worth of new instruments, equipment and uniforms to students at a south Georgia middle school. The Valdosta Daily Times reports that the band donated the equipment to students at Newbern Middle School after learning of a recent effort for residents to donate old instruments to the school's band program.