Last night’s performance by Nick Lowe at La Zona Rosa was his first appearance in Austin with a band in almost 20 years. Nevertheless, it was the opening and closing tunes – when he graced the stage solo – that stand out most.

Early in the Austin City Limits taping last night, Punch Brothers frontman Chris Thile mentioned an episode of the landmark PBS program from 1990 featuring Strength in Numbers, a supergroup once composed of Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Mark O’Connor, Edgar Meyer, and Jerry Douglas.

It figures. I spoke to Mickey Hart yesterday and learned something. The former Grateful Dead drummer, who's appearing with his band at La Zona Rosa Thursday night, used the word “sonification” to describe the music he’s making. Turns out he’s taking light waves and turning them into sound. And these aren't just any light waves.

Friday headliner at this weekend’s Old Settler’s Music Festival is Philadelphia native Amos Lee. Discovered by Norah Jones, the young soul-folk singer-songwriter surprised everybody when his fourth release, 2011’s Mission Bell, debuted at No. 1 on Billboard album chart.

How much is too much? On the heels of last year’s 73-CD box set of every show on the band's infamous 1972 European tour, Shout! Factory is releasing the Grateful Dead's All the Years Combine, a 14-DVD set with a running time of nearly 38 hours. Deadheads, are we screaming “enough” yet? Probably not.

If the music thing doesn’t work out, the Atomic Duo should consider becoming a comedy act. At the Cactus Cafe Wednesday night there were several belly laughs in reaction to the stories and onstage antics of Mark Rubin and Silas Lowe. There were also a couple of noticeable groans.

The name Donovan suddenly appeared among the acts playing South By Southwest just before the music part of the festival began. When I contacted his publicist wondering if it was really the psychedelic Sixties folk-poet, they assured me it was and asked if I’d like an interview. Hell yes I told them.

I’m pretty sure I wasn’t dreaming when I saw Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, and Steve Earle all on the ACL Live stage Sunday night. There are photographs so it must have happened. As far as dreams go, however, it was a pretty good one.

Revered Australian songsmith Paul Kelly brings his inventive A-Z show (he says “A to Zed”) to the Cactus Cafe next Tuesday and Wednesday, Feb. 28-29. Excerpted for this week's print edition of the Chronicle, in Music Listings, is part of an interview we did last week. Here's the whole enchilada – on A-Z, the resulting box set, and his new biography.