The music of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, says the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, is "yet another reminder that music is the universal language." The trio is in its home state of North Carolina for its first two performances this weekend: Friday at The Grey Eagle in Asheville and Saturday at the City of Morganton Municipal Auditorium (CoMMA). On Sunday, the group head to the Bijou Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The Drops stay on in Tennessee for Tuesday show at The Basement in Nashville. "They're great musicians, and they know how to entertain, too," says the Nashville Scene's Timothy C. Davis in a  preview of this coming Tuesday's show at that city's The Basement. The band, says Davis, "interpret standards and traditionals with the same flair with which they pen their own stuff," and what's most important: "The music, as the cliché goes, speaks for itself."

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The Black Keys drummer Pat Carney has brought his aptly named side project, Drummer, to New York City this week for two shows. The group, comprising Carney and four of his drumming pals from Ohio taking up the other instruments of the band, performed at Brooklyn's Southpaw last night and head into Manhattan for a set at Mercury Lounge Saturday night. Pat tells Paste magazine the story behind the band at pastemagazine.com.

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Shawn Colvin concludes a three-night stint at San Diego's Anthology Jazz Club tonight. At the opening night concert, "Shawn Colvin proved she’s still got it," says San Diego News Room's Katie Browning. "Taking the stage with only her acoustic guitar and that distinctly tranquil voice, Colvin captured the crowd with hits like 'Fill Me Up' and 'Polaroids.'" She heads next to Scottsdale, Arizona, for a show at El Pedregal at the Boulder's Resort on Saturday.

Colvin returns to California for a four-night residency at Yoshi's Jazz Club that begins Monday night. It was from performances during a similar set up at the club in July 2008 from which the tracks on Colvin's latest release, Live, were drawn.

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Christina Courtin began a three-week US tour with fellow New Yorkers Elizabeth & the Catapult last night at Pittsburgh's Thunderbird Cafe. The group heads next to the Beachland Tavern in Cleveland tonight and then to the Beat Kitchen in Chicago on Saturday and Radio Radio in Indianapolis on Sunday.

The Chicago Reader says Christina's self-titled Nonesuch debut is full of "idiosyncratic pop songs that seem to take Joni Mitchell's music as a point of departure." The Reader's Peter Margasak finds that "Courtin relishes melodic variation," such that, "instead of returning to the same melodic shape for each verse, she explores new nooks and crannies every time."

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Phillip Glass offers a solo performance at St. John's UCC in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, in a benefit event for the New Arts Program, which, for 35 years has been bringing cutting-edge visual, performing and literary artists and critics to the region. The audience is invited to remain after the concert for a reception with the composer-pianist.

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Kronos Quartet plays for a hometown crowd this weekend with a performance at San Francisco's Old First Church tonight. The program features works from Kronos's latest Nonesuch release, Floodplain; selections from John Zorn's The Dead Man; and the San Francisco premiere of Aheym, which The National's Bryce Dessner wrote for the Quartet.

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I Bring What I Love, the film documenting the making of Youssou N'Dour's 2004 Nonesuch album, Egypt, continues to expand throughout the United States with another opening this Friday, October 9: at the historic Avalon Theater in Washington, DC. The film "is a stirring, often visually striking film," says Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday. "But by far the most powerful element is N'Dour's lone voice, a thing of high, pure beauty that feels at once ancient and new." It is through his voice that the film becomes "a vehicle of incantatory power."

The film's director, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, will be answer audience questions about the film following the 8:15 PM showings tonight and Saturday.

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Punch Brothers' tour winds its way from the Midwest east this weekend, after a University of Michigan show that Ann Arbor reviewer Will Stewart "a mesmerizing 90-minute show that was full of pleasant surprises." Though the band may be beguilingly uncategorizable, Stewart pegs them as "'chamber bluegrass'—and to say the Punch Brothers do it better than anyone else would be inaccurate, since no one else does what they do."

The group's live performance of The Blind Leaving the Blind, the centerpiece of its 2008 Nonesuch debut, Punch, "left no doubt about the players’ individual mastery of their instruments, nor their ability to play together as fluidly as the finest bebop veterans."

Punch Brothers perform in Finney Chapel at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, tonight, followed by two shows in Pennsyvlania: the Capitol Theatre in York on Saturday and the Sellersville Theatre in Sellersville on Sunday.

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Laura Veirs tour with the Decemberists comes to a close this weekend with a final show at the State Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, tonight.

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Sara Watkins makes it three for three this weekend with tour stops at The Sullivan Center in Rockford, Illinois, tonight; the Cla-Zel Theatre in Bowling Green, Ohio, Saturday; and Southgate House in Newport, Kentucky, on Sunday. Sara spoke with the Cincinnati Enquirer about the upcoming Newport date and about the making of her recent self-titled solo debut on Nonesuch. "This has really reawakened all the possibilities," Sara tells the Enquirer about the solo project. You can read the interview at news.cincinnati.com.

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Wilco recently announced a number of tour dates across Canada for 2010, and all the while the band continues to play sold-out shows in its fall tour of the States, with Liam Finn opening. This weekend is no exception, with two sold-out sets: Friday at The Palladium in Dallas and Saturday at the Orpheum Theatre in Memphis.

The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram recently called the band "endlessly fascinating," and the Cleveland Scene recently placed the band's latest Nonesuch release, Wilco (the album), among the year's best albums so far, describing the band as "a solid music machine."