Back Beat

Forget The Tortoise and the Hare, The Tortoise and The Crow is the hot, faster-paced new duo. That’s the name of The Grouch & Eligh’s latest project, a triple album featuring a solo Grouch disc, a solo Eligh disc and a third disc with both indie rappers. The Grouch & Eligh will drop this expansive collaboration on Eugene with a little help from their friends, Madchild, Pigeon John and DJ Fresh, 9 pm Sunday, Feb. 23, at WOW Hall. The pair released the album in February 2014 with the help of a $90,000 Kickstarter infusion. “We’ve ALWAYS been INDEPENDENT even before it was COOL,” the Kickstarter page says.

If you missed Seattleite and former Amazon employee Shelby Earl when she cruised through Cottage Grove last fall, you might want to catch her this time — because the rising star is rising fast. Rolling Stone has described her as “equal parts Patsy Cline and Phil Spector” with a folksy singer-songwriter sensibility and a big, badass orchestra sound. Touring for her album, 2013’s Swift Arrows, Earl will be joined by Tom Brosseau 8:30 pm Thursday, Feb. 27, at the Axe & Fiddle, Cottage Grove. The ethereal singer-storyteller Brosseau is touring with his 2013 release, Grass Punks.

If you like old-timey music, and we’re talking real Appalachia-born old-timey music, you won’t want to miss veteran fiddler (and singer, banjo player, composer) Erynn Marshall and songwriter and guitarist Carl Jones’ house concert 8 pm Friday, Feb. 21, at 755 River Rd. (For reservations, contact Mike Meyer at mmeyer@efn.org.) Marshall literally wrote the book on fiddling; she published Music in the Air Somewhere: The Shifting Borders of West Virginia’s Fiddle and Song Traditions in 2006. They will also be hosting a fiddle/guitar/mandolin workshop 12:30 to 4:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 22. For more info, call 228-1644 or email melissamandra@yahoo.com.