Phil Elam figures he’s been acting since he was 6 years old, in a church holiday production.

Now he’s making his feature film debut in “Bob Trevino Likes It,” opening in metro area theaters this weekend after winning two dozen awards on the festival circuit, including two top prizes at last year’s South By Southwest Film & TV Festival.

Elam, a Ferndale resident who also performs music under the name Coco Bean, considers the role an arrival, but is quick to note that “so much of it is all (from) the training and classes and studying. I couldn’t have gotten here without it.”

The Florida-born Elam, who moved to Detroit when he was 4 years old, has a number of independent film credits, including his own “Swing Low.” He’s been studying at the 1st Team Actors Studio in Cleveland and filmed his audition for “Bob Trevino” with his partner, in the basement of their house. Director-writer Tracie Laymon chose him from more than 50 finalists and was happy enough with his performance — as “an office manager who’s having a really, really bad day” — that she added another scene for him in the film.

“It was a great experience,” Elam says of his one-day shoot in Kentucky. “The energy and sincerity and the loving vibe on the set was great. You didn’t feel like you were working at all. It felt like you were creating a piece of art.”

The film, based on Laymon’s own life, stars Barbie Ferreira as a woman trying to connect with a distant father (French Stewart) who, in her search for him connects with another Bob Trevino (John Leguizamo) for a relationship that’s more genuinely loving and rewarding.

“Bring your Kleenex,” Elam advises.

As the film opens, however, Elam is on to his next project, another feature called “Last Shop on Walnut” that’s starring Peter Lawson Jones (“A Man Called Otto,” “Detroit 1-8-7”), who’s one of his instructors in Cleveland.

The Midnight Lamp is burning for the Experience Hendrix Tour again.

The all-star package, paying tribute to the music of Jimi Hendrix, returned to the road last fall for the first time since the pandemic pause and is back on the road this spring. According to John McDermott, catalog manager for the family-owned Experience Hendrix LLC, the break gave the outing a chance to refresh itself after 15 years of mostly annual touring.

“It’s been fun,” says McDermott, who curates the lineup and set lists for the tour. “I missed the camaraderie and the hang. It’s a lot of work logistically, but I do enjoy it. I think after the five years off, there was a demand from promoters and interest from the artists and the audience, and we finally said: ‘OK, sure. Let’s give it a go.”

This year’s Experience Hendrix features longtime regulars such as Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Eric Johnson, Dweezil Zappa, Mato Nanji, Ally Venable and Detroit sacred slide pioneer Calvin Cooke with newcomers such as Marcus King, Devon Allman and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram. It also features a fresh set of drummers (Tony Beard and Sam Bryant) as well as some fresh songs in the repertoire such as “One Rainy Wish,” Burning of the Midnight Lamp” and “Love or Confusion” alongside well-worn favorites such as “Stone Free,” “Foxy Lady,” “Purple Haze” and the Shepherd showcase “Voodoo Chile.”

“Some of these songs, Jimi didn’t ever play live,” McDermott notes, “so that’s really part of the fun, to sneak that stuff in there, too. So you’re hearing what we hope is a full representation of his legacy.”

Experience Hendrix’s main other project recently was “Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision,” a documentary and box set chronicling what was the first artist-owned recording studio and Hendrix’s work there. The film is headed to PBS, according to McDermott, while the company is starting to consider its next projects.

“Going forward, we just have to look at the remaining music we have and say, ‘OK, how does this add to the story?’ or ‘What does this bring to a fan in terms of understanding why it’s important?'” he says. “I think we’re grateful that we’ve been able to put out all the music we have. I can’t say we’ve got anything immediately on the runway to say, “OK, this’ll be in stores in June,’ but we have a few things we’re looking at now.”

The Experience Hendrix Tour, featuring Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Marcus King, Eric Johnson, Devon Allman and more, plays at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 22 at the Fox Theatre, 2211 Woodward Ave., Detroit. 313-471-7000 or 313Presents.com. For more Hendrix, the Kris Kurzawa Group plays a tribute show at 8:30 p.m. Saturday at the Cadieux Cafe, 4300 Cadieux Road, Detroit. 313-882-8560 or cadieuxcafe.com.

Being down with “The Sickness” has been a healthy endeavor for Disturbed during the past 25 years.

The Chicago-formed heavy rock quartet is on the road celebrate its five-times platinum debut’s anniversary, a rare feat that few 21st century albums are likely to achieve in a world of song-oriented streaming. But, as Disturbed proved on Monday night, March 10 at Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena, “The Sickness” — played in its entirety during the first part of the show — sounds every bit as potent now as it did during 2000, an entirely individualistic display of nu rock established by frontman David Draiman’s jungle creature scats and the instrumentalists’ textured whomp.

The band celebrated in theatrical fashion, too, on Monday. Following tight opening sets by Sevendust and Three Days Grace (reunited with original frontman Adam Gontier after an 11-year break), Disturbed played in front of a tiered metallic backdrop laden with pyrotechnics. Its portion of the evening began with a historical video shown on a white curtain, which rose to reveal a straightjacketed Draiman being wheeled on, Hannibal Lechter-style (a throwback to early Disturbed concerts), and deposited at the end of a ramp that jutted into the arena floor.

After he took of the jacket and mask the group then exploded into “The Sickness'” opening track “Voices” and didn’t take its foot off the pedal as it ran through the album’s hits — “Stupify” and “Down With the Sickness,” usually saved for the end of the night — and brought deep cuts such as “Numb,” “Violence Festish,” “Conflict” and a lumbering cover of Tears For Fears’ “Shout” back into the set for the first time in more than two decades in some cases. For the closing “Meaning of Life,” meanwhile, Draiman and company — guitarist Dan Donegan, drummer Mike Wengren and bassist John Moyer (who joined in 2004) — changed into orange prison inmate outfits and staged a mock electrocution of the frontman, who sang with faux blood dripping from his forehead.

A 20-minute break — accompanied by more historic, though largely inaudible, video footage — allowed the crew to set up a new drum kit for Wengren. The eight-song “greatest hits” set that followed included Disturbed’s new single, “I Will Not Break,” while a giant inflatable figure of the band’s mascot, The Guy, hovered at the back of the stage during “Bad Man,” Genesis’ “Land of Confusion” and “Indestructible.” But Disturbed’s massive hit rendition of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” — accompanied by two guest string players — was hampered by technical problems that rendered all but Draiman and one of the acoustic guitars inaudible.

“That was interesting,” Draiman quipped afterwards, acknowledging in comically graphic terms how unsettled he became during the mishap. He filled some time by speaking (correctly) about how rock concerts now provide an antidote to the bitter divisions sweeping the country, and he brought up two young fans — 11-year-old Chase and seven-year-old Hunter, with a parent each — to sit on stage during “The Light.”

“Into the Fire” finished the night with more — duh — fire, a solid close to a show that showed Disturbed is still in top form 25 years later, even when it wasn’t entirely indestructible.

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater comes to town with special intent this weekend.

The troupe will, for starters, celebrate the 25th anniversary of Ronald K. Brown’s “Grace,” which depicts a journey to the promised land accompanied by Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday.” Also on the docket are three world premiere pieces: “Sacred Songs” by Matthew Rushing, “Finding Free” by Hope Boykin” and “Many Angels” by Lar Lubovitch.

Rounding out the program will be a new production of Elisa Monte’s “Treading” and the company’s signature piece, “Revelations.”

Performances take place at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 14; 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 15; and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, March 16 at the Detroit Opera House, 1526 Broadway St. 313-237-7464 or detroitopera.org.

It was just about 25 years ago (March 7, in fact), that Disturbed released its first album, “The Sickness.” And the rest was a kind of hard rock history.

“The Sickness” was a breakthrough success thanks to Top 10 rock hits such as “Stupify” and “Down With the Sickness” which, along with touring that included a slot on OZZFest in 2000, drove the album to five-times platinum sales. It also launched a career of more than 17 million records sold worldwide and 27 Top 10 Mainstream Rock chart tracks — a dozen of which hit No. 1, including remakes of Genesis’ “Land of Confusion” and Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.”

Disturbed is celebrating “The Sickness'” 25th with a tour this year, playing all 12 tracks, including a cover of Tears For Fears’ “Shout,” in its entirety, then visiting a selection of favorites from the rest of the Chicago-formed quartet’s catalog during the rest of the show. The band is also releasing anniversary edition of the album on March 7, with 11 demos and rarities live recordings from 2000 and 2001.

And it’s not all past tense for Disturbed, either; the just before the tour began the group released a new single, “I Will Not Break,” the first taste of its follow-up to 2022’s “Divisive.”

* Frontman David Draiman says via phone that “none of us” in the band expected Disturbed to last as long or be as successful as it’s been. “We used to say, ‘I hope we get to the point where we can fill the Riviera Theaters of the world, maybe 2,000 seats. Now we’re playing arenas and packing them with 10, 15, 20,000 at a time. It’s very surreal. It never looses its luster. And it’s still amazing to experience the gradual ascent that we’ve been able to have over the course of our career. I think all of us are better at doing what we do now. We’re all better musicians at this point, all better at our individual crafts.”

* Draiman, 51, adds that “The Sickness” can be “a little cringey, parts of it, when you listen to it now. We were so raw and so green.” But guitarist Dan Donegan, 56, feels “The Sickness” clicked with audiences because it offered an original sound within the hard rock and heavy metal world at the time. “It’s all those years of playing in local bands with different musicians and trying to find the right pieces of the puzzle and finally finding the right group of guys, and writing and trying to get our own identity. We weren’t reinventing the wheel, but we weren’t trying to emulate a certain band, either. We took all of our influences and improvised and wrote the songs. We weren’t chasing anything. We weren’t writing for radio. We were just writing the music we wanted to write, and it started becoming something that was unique.”

* Draiman unwittingly gave Disturbed a sonic calling card with the animalistic scat he performed at the beginning of “Down With the Sickness.” “We were working up the music for it,” Donegan recalls, “and it had a little bit of this tribal beat and David’s listening to what we’re doing. There’s a little pause in the music after the initial drum beat and guitar and out of nowhere he goes, “wa-ka-ka-ka!” And we’re all taken aback, like ‘What the hell?’ It was just an instinct, just a reaction to this tribal beat and the riff. I remember at the time thinking it was like a Steven Tyler meets Jonathan Davis of Korn, this whole Korn twist to it. We thought it was just a scat and he’d go in and turn it into words, but it just stuck and we got used to it, and then everyone loved it.”

* Playing “The Sickness” in its entirety is also giving Disturbed a chance to dig back into some of the album’s less-celebrated tracks, playing “Conflict” for the first time since 2003, for example, or “Numb” for the first time since 2005. “We’ve played them all, but some obviously not for a long time so we really looked forward to that,” Donegan notes. “When I was rehearsing at my home and re-learning some of the one we haven’t played in years, some of the deeper tracks, it was really fun. It brought me back in time to when we were writing and recording them.”

* Draiman calls the defiant “I Will Not Break” “definitely a song I think is very needed right now. Definitely I needed it.” More, meanwhile, is coming; in fact, Disturbed plans to release a series of songs it’s working on for the next album during the rest of the year before releasing the full package most likely during 2026. “We have so many strong songs in this collection of material, so many singles contenders, we’re just gonna push ’em out bit by bit,” the frontman explains. “This body of work was so inspiring it made us want to change our strategy. We have some incredible surprises, too — not all meat and potatoes, stereotypical Disturbed, either, definitely a lot of different, left turns for us. We’ll see when those actually get to see the light of day. We can’t wait for all of it to be out.”

Disturbed, Three Days Grace and Sevendust perform at 6:30 p.m. Monday, March 10 at Little Caesars Arena, 2645 Woodward Ave., Detroit. 313-471-7000 or 313Presents.com.

To call her new album, “Space,” a debut is a bit of a misnomer for Kendall Jane Meade.

The Grosse Pointe native, who’s been in Los Angeles the past seven or so years after a long tenure in New York, has been making music for most of her life — while growing up in the metro area, during her time at Boston University, in the band Juicy and under the moniker Mascott, whose three albums during the 2000s garnered critical acclaim.

Meade had “taken a pause” from active music-making after moving west, but the aftermath of a divorce led to “Space,” and to finally billing under her own name.

“I came back to it really out of necessity in a way,” Meade, 53, explains via Zoom from Culver City, where she also works in advertising brand management. “I didn’t realize it until (the divorce) that music was truly a tool for me to process my emotions. When something like that happens to you, you go through your toolbox of how you’re going to get through it — therapy, life coaches, psychics, walking … everything.

“I realized during that time I was feeling the best when I was making music. So music brought me back to me. It brought me back to the center of who I was. It was important for me to really reclaim myself, and (music) was the best and most honest way I had.”

That was something Meade got a sense of early on, actually. As the youngest of four — “The mascot of the family,” she notes — Meade “was kind of shy because my brother and older sisters were all boisterous and running around.” Her mother, noticing Meade “was kind of retreating a little bit,” enrolled her in a children’s theater program at the Grosse Pointe War Memorial around the time she was in second grade. “I had a comfort on stage from an early age,” Meade recalls, which led to school choirs and a cappella groups and an obsession with music that included publishing a fanzine, Buzz Magazine Boston, while she was in college.

It was there she also formed Juicy, which subsequently moved to New York. “I just always loved being around musicians, and it was also such an exciting time, ’cause there were so many female musicians,” says Meade, who also worked with Sparklehorse, Lloyd Cole, the Spinanes and others. “I had an amazing musical community. … Especially in New York, there was just an embarrassment of riches all around me. If I wasn’t promoting an album, I was collaborating, popping over to a club, jumping up and singing backup.

“I was continually fed by music. It was a really inspiring, really fun time in my life.”

Meade didn’t abandon music entirely when she and her then-husband moved to Los Angeles. “I was doing covers and things,” she notes, “but I had really taken a pause from writing and recording full bodies of work for almost 12, 13 years.” It was her longtime collaborator Charles Newman, who had also moved to Los Angeles, who encouraged her to get back to music by bringing her into the studio to sing backup on projects he was working on. That, in turn, prodded her back into her own creativity.

“(Newman) didn’t realize he was actually helping me heal,” Meade remembers. “I started using my voice memo and then I started writing notes down, melodies and things. My friend, Anders Parker, would be like: ‘Hey, I wrote this piano part. Write melody over it. I was sort of quietly making music.”

The track with Parker became “How to Do Nothing” on “Space,” while Kris Gruen, who co-wrote the album’s cathartic closing track “Heaven On a Car Ride,” took Meade on tour with him in Europe, which helped clear the creative pipes as well. “Getting back to that version of me felt amazing,” says Meade, who played a weekly residency at Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles in October. “When I got off the tour, I was inspired and kept writing. I made a promise to myself I would play as many shows as possible to get comfortable again.”

Also impactful was a holiday trip back to Detroit to visit her father. Meade reached out to local musician and longtime friend Matt Van, who lined up and accompanied Meade for a show at the Polka Dot in Hamtramck. Hearing her new songs, Van suggested doing some recording at Electric Six veteran Zack Shipps’ studio, where they recorded demos that laid the foundation for “Space’s” title track and “The Garden.” Van co-wrote the latter, as well as the song “Temporary.”

The result is an album different from anything Meade has done before. Its organic, often spacious arrangements informed by 90s indie rock and a confessed new “obsession” with classic singer-songwriter motifs. “I’d Like to Know Myself,” meanwhile, starts with a classic Rolling Stones-style riff played by another expatriate Detroiter, Eli Wulfmeier (aka Leroy From The North), who’s on five other tracks. “It’s sort of a theme for the album — friends helping,” Meade acknowledges. “Everything felt like a hug, total support and elevation for what I was trying to do with the album, which was to express myself and encourage others to do the same.”

Part of that expression, of course, dealt with her divorce, but “Space” — inspired by her ex’s declaration that he needed more of it — is significantly more gentle and affirming than more vitriolic breakup albums such as Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” or Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill.”

“I wasn’t doing this to trash my ex or have an anger release,” Meade explains. “To me it’s honoring the marriage, every part of it. I just didn’t want to close that chapter without having closure. It’s very much my personality to do it in this way.”

Now, Meade has opened, or re-opened and certainly re-embraced, her muse. She filmed a video for the Madonna-referencing “Stereo” in Detroit with director Mitch McCabe and another clip for “The Garden.” She’s looking forward to playing live in support of the album and especially to making more music in the near future.

“Mascott was my band, essentially, but I had that moniker because I wasn’t ready to fully step into putting my name out there,” Meade says. “But now’s the right time, and I’m just excited to keep writing and keep writing and living the life of a musician.”

“Parade” is not a musical that entertains. But it does engage, in an importantly profound and heartbreaking way.

The 1913 trial and conviction of Leo Frank, a Jewish pencil factory manager in Georgia, for raping and murdering a 13-year-old female employee hardly seems a likely subject for song and dance, even. The narrative is bracing; Frank’s death sentence was commuted to life in prison by Georgia Gov. John M. Salon after inconsistencies and outright lies were discovered in a review of the testimony. But Frank was kidnapped and executed by a lynch mob in 1915, during an ongoing appeal of the case. Frank was pardoned in 1986 but pointedly not exonerated.

At Detroit’s Fisher Theatre through March 9, “Parade” is complex, nuanced and emotionally heavy, laced with overtones of anti-Semitism, racism and the cultural politics of the still-new, post-Civil War reconstruction South. Not exactly the prevue of, say, dancing cats. And recent rises in anti-Semitism and other prejudices now only amplify “Parade’s” resonance; the show even ends with visual references to modern times and the words “It is ongoing…” on a video board.

The events depicted make it hard to know when, or whether, to applaud what’s happening on stage — but you will, because of performances and staging that hammer home the sobering message with a sincere and stoic resolve.

This version of the 1998 show — based on the 2023 edition that won a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical — has all the trappings of the big stage, including an inventive, tri-level stage set that covers the width of the Fisher proscenium and is lightly manipulated to convey courtrooms, offices, streets, prisons, the Frank home and the governor’s mansion. A raised platform in the center serves as the focal point for much of the show, but the carefully choreographed side action is important, too, thanks to a cast whose facial expressions and body language provide crucial dimensions.

One good example; during the investigation into the murder, while one suspect is being questioned on stage left, two officers use flashlights to cast suspicions on Frank as they stand on stage right. Those kinds of subtle touches surface throughout “Parade” — especially during the lengthy trial reenactment that ends Act I — and make the storytelling that much richer. And video screens showing photos of the actual people, events and newspaper headlines of the time provide forceful reminders that what we’re seeing really happened.

The songs by Jason Robert Brown, meanwhile — whether aping Aaron Copland in “The Old Red Hills of Home” and “The Dream of Atlanta” or touching on gospel blues in “Rumblin’ and a Rollin'” and poppy flirty in “The Picture Show” — manage to amplify “Parade’s” serious intent without letting it overburden their melodies.

All of those virtues are delivered by a cast that is uniformly exceptional in conveying the many layers that comprise “Parade’s” landscape. It’s led, of course by Max Chernin as the transported New Yorker Leo and Talia Suskauer as his Georgia native wife Lucille; in addition to their excellent singing performances they’re effective and moving in tracking “Parade’s” silver-lining sub-plot about how the trauma strengthens the couple’s relationship, particularly as Lucille steps up to exert her will in pursuing justice for her husband. Their joint performances of “This Is Not Over Yet” and “All the Wasted Time,” especially with our knowledge of what’s to come, are tragically triumphant.

Pinckney actress balances studies and touring with ‘Parade’ musical

Andrew Samonsky as Frankie Epps, the would-be teen paramour of the slain Mary Phagan (played by Pinckney native Olivia Goosman), is another standout, with a playfully robust voice and nimble footwork during "The Picture Show," "Parade's" lightest moment. Ramone Nelson, meanwhile, is powerful and soulful as Jim Conley, the pencil factory janitor who "Parade" intimates was Mary's true killer; his "Blues: Feel the Rain Fall," complete with open-shirted Sam Cooke-style wailing at the end, is a show-stopper.

"Parade" is, then, the kind of show that's appreciated more than enjoyed, and certainly leaves the audience thinking when the final bows are taken. (There's a message from the Michigan Anti-Defamation League included in the program with some resources for additional consideration.) Coming at a time when the issues it raises are, as the show notes, "ongoing," it puts a palpably human touch on issues that are too often merely rhetorical.

"Parade" runs through March 9 at the Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd., Detroit. 313-872-100 or broadwayindetroit.com.

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