While Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band is traversing America with his stable of olden goldie hitmakers, Steely Dan frontman Donald Fagen and his soulful rock comrades-in-arms Michael McDonald and Boz Scaggs

Meet the Ripe, a Texas band, whose debut album Into Your Ears affirms they are a serious force to be reckoned with. The band’s music reminds me of a stew pot.

< >> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** “Green Flower Street” always reminds me of the similarly titled “Green Dolphin Street,” a song from the 1947 Lana Turner movie of the same name that Miles Davis turned in into a jazz standard when he first recorded it in the late 50s.

Perhaps best known as the leader of the now-defunct band Squirrel Nut Zippers, Jimbo Mathus is returns with a raw, ambitious six-song EP.

Fallon Cush takes a darker, more contemplative turn with April, after the fizzy power pop of its self-titled 2011 debut. That difference in tone is readily apparent from the first, as the opener “It’s a Line” jangles out with a classically Lennon-ish whine

One of the characteristics shared by most of my favorite jazz musicians is versatility. They have “big ears” in their musical interests as well as in their playing environments.