Assorted ramblings from the world of entertainment:

• Alison Krauss & Union Station, featuring Leavittsburg native Jerry Douglas, announced its 2026 tour plans this week and has two summer shows not too far away on the schedule.

After playing Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica on its first tour together in a decade, the band will return to Northeast Ohio for a concert at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron on June 24, 2026. AKUS also is one of two acts announced so far for the 2026 Ohio State Fair, performing Aug. 1 at the Celeste Center in Columbus (Weird Al Yankovic is the other announced fair act, on Aug. 5).

Tickets for the Akron show go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday through Ticketmaster. Tickets for the fair concert will go on sale at a date to be announced, according to the fair’s website.

That Jacobs Pavilion show is sure to get a mention later this month in my year-end column of 2025’s highlights. Krauss has one of the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard. And while Douglas’ playing is impressive on the thousands (yes, thousands) of recordings that feature him, it’s even more amazing to watch the sounds he can coax from a dobo live.

• You never know where you might find a Youngstown reference.

My daughter picked up at the library the memoir “Rumors of My Demise” by Evan Dando of The Lemonheads. I grabbed it off the end table one night out of boredom and came across this paragraph in the first few chapters:

“That summer we drove all over the Midwest, but we couldn’t get away from Suzanne Vega’s hit ‘Luka.’ That song was everywhere. During a long drive from Charleston, West Virginia, to Cedars Lounge in Youngstown, Ohio, we heard it so many times we learned the song. We played a version of ‘Luka’ that night at our gig at Cedars as a joke and people went bonkers over it. Thus began the summer of ‘Luka’ and the Lemonheads’ complicated relationship with cover songs.”

He mentions Cedars again when they end up recording the Suzanne Vega song. Cedars must have made an impression. He mentions lots of cities, but he seldom mentions the club / concert hall unless it’s some place that’s iconic.

As for the book itself, it’s … fine. I finished it, which I didn’t expect to do when I picked it up. For someone whose drug use was well-documented in the media (and in this memoir), Dando has a surprisingly good memory when it comes to discussing his excesses and the events in his life.

My favorite story in the book comes early on, when Dando reveals that the one who exposed him to some of the most profane music as a teen was, of all people, Tipper Gore, cofounder of the Parents Music Resource Center, the group that led the movement to get albums with explicit lyrics labeled.

The father of one of Dando’s bandmates was the editor of The New Republic. Gore kept sending him albums in hopes of getting him to write about the PMRC, and those records would get passed to his son, who shared them with Dando.

Tipper Gore is the reason Dando heard The Dead Kennedys’ “Frankenchrist.”

• I was very sad to hear about the death of Raul Malo, lead singer of The Mavericks, on Monday at age 60.

I can’t profess to be a huge Mavericks’ fan, but Malo’s voice was undeniable. And if I’m making a list of my five favorite shows ever at Packard Music Hall, The Mavericks’ 2022 concert would make the list.

It’s very rare to hear someone cover a song by a favorite artist and not instantly believe it pales in comparison to the original. Malo sang songs by two of my favorites that night — Bruce Springsteen’s “All That Heaven Will Allow” and Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” — and if I’m being honest, he surpassed the originals.

Sampling songs from The Mavericks’ catalog as I write, Malo does a version of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” that comes closer than anyone else ever has to Darlene Love’s version with Phil Spector.

Andy Gray is the entertainment editor of Ticket. Write to him at agray@tribtoday.com.