Entertainment

"I graduated high school in Buffalo, N.Y., and then the day after I graduated, my family moved to Spokane. My dad got called to serve as the dean of the Episcopal cathedral, St. John the Evangelist. And at that point, my mom was really ill, so I opted to take time off before going to college and just moved here with my family. "During that year that I spent here, I really didn't get to know the city at all. I just primarily took care of my mom who passed away that year. So I lived here for a year, and then I moved back east to go to school (at Brown University) in Providence, R.I., which is where I had originally intended to go to school. I went there for a couple of years and then left there on a medical leave and opted to come back to Spokane to regroup, because this is where my dad and my brother were.

LOS ANGELES – The tour bus where B.B. King is sitting has parked right outside the artists' entrance so the walk to the stage will be short and painless. The venerated guitarist, singer and songwriter is balancing his lifelong yearning to get onstage against offstage life with diabetes. The illness has given him a latter-day second career as a spokesman for a glucose monitoring device, and he mentions those ads for comic relief once he's in front of an audience again.

Black March is a relatively new band in town, but its members are no strangers to the local scene. The band members – drummer Chris Barr, bassist Rick Eyre, guitarist Dave Brezinski, guitarist Jason Anderson and vocalist Eli Bickerton – were once all-ages scenesters who have become 20-something dads and day-jobbers.