Things are looking good for Chris Robinson. He's hitched to The Groupie With A Heart Of Gold from Almost Famous, it appears he's put on a few badly needed pounds, and he's just hit the road with his new solo project, New Earth Mud. Recorded in Paris (in the spring, natch) while the gangly scarecrow was on hiatus from the Black Crowes, NEM's homonymous debut marks something of a departure for him. A small something. The Hotlanta hellraiser seems to have been mellowed some by the passing of time and the growing of beard, and his raucous rasp has given way to a mellow red-eyed soul. But even if most of New Earth Mud finds him stroking his rolling paper more often than shaking his money maker, Robinson retains his affinity for luminous early-'70s production values and, of course, a sacrosanct reverence for Ronnies Wood and Van Zant. He'll be tracking mud all over this week, starting at Lupo's (401-831-4071) in Providence on Friday and then moving on to the State Theatre (207-775-3331) in Portland on Saturday and Higher Ground (800-965-4827) in Winooski, Vermont, on Wednesday.

Closer to home: Boston's bestest mythologist metallurgists, the Medea Connection, are breakin' out all over the damn place. Well, in a couple of places. And in a couple of different guises. Tonight (December 12), Daniel, Tanya, and James take the stage upstairs at the Middle East (617-931-2000) in Cambridge as the Medea Connection. But not before they've taken it flanked by members of excoriating New Bedford hardcore collective Gaskill, who along with the Medea trio make up the new exploding-metal inevitable art-punk supergroup the Hidden; this will be their official, on-the-record live debut. Ex-Lunachick Gina Volpe's band Bantam, the darkly anthemic Black Helicopter, and NYC's co-ed emotallic scrappers Color Guard will join them there, then accompany them to New Bedford on Friday for a towering bill at the New Wave Café (508-984-0080) that'll also include heavy hicks Quintaine Americana and bleak New Bedford bigshots Holy Cow (who will, we're sorry to say, be capping an almost 20-year career with this last blowout).

For the past several months, cellist Matt Haimovitz has been staging a series a engagements he's dubbed the "Bach Listening Room Tour," on which the 32-year-old Israeli travels cross-country and plays the Suites for Unaccompanied Cello in rock clubs, pubs, bars, barns, and other incongruous intimate venues. How J.S. would respond is anyone's guess; ours is that he'd belly up to the bar, order a German import, and listen contentedly as Haimovitz brings his compositions to the people in intimate settings unencumbered by fusty propriety. "Bach did not write for the music hall," the cellist has explained. "Bach wrote for people." Haimovitz gets all populist at Cambridge's august folkie haven Club Passim (617-492-7679) tonight (December 12), then goes to the Crescent Dragon Gallery & Café (978-372-5441) in Haverhill on Friday.