After four years of road-dogging with Dwight Yoakam's band, multi-instrumental utility man Brian Whelan has quit and struck out on his own. He rolls into McGonigel's Mucky Duck Saturday for a song swap with old Los Angeles running buddy and local songwriter extraordinaire Mike Stinson.

Whelan has a new album that he'll unveil later this year that rocks hard and occasionally opens a can of whup-ass on the Americana genre on a hard-charging tune called (...drum roll...) "Americana." In the lyrics, Whelan tells someone "you look great but you sound like shit."