Against Me! has been selling out for the better part of a decade, so complaints about the polish of the band's forthcoming record are already tired to songwriter/vocalist/guitarist Tom Gabel.

Because Gabel is a punk icon and an anarchist, it was little surprise that there were negative reactions when the band jumped to a major label. But as it prepares to release White Crosses in June -- the group will play a Daytrotter.com show at RIBCO on May 4 -- Gabel talked about the challenge of being an ever-changing person in a world of rigid expectations.

Over the past few years, Jesse Malin found himself displaced, although not exactly because of the economy.

Now 42, Malin has lived in the (literal) spotlight since he was 13, fronting the hardcore band Heart Attack in the early 1980s and then the glam band D Generation throughout the '90s before going solo. It might have been a midlife crisis, but after three well-received solo albums and seven years of touring behind them, Malin wasn't sure that music was his proper path, he said.

"Somehow, after the third record, I found myself doing a covers record [in 2008], and then going off on some weird tours in the States, and back in New York, and I was kind of confused what the next thing to do was," he said in a phone interview last week. "I was laying around, I was trying to think what else I could do for a living."

Some of this was undoubtedly financial. Although he's been in music for nearly three decades, it's been an album-to-album existence. "I found myself living on my sister's couch, hanging out back down at the Bowery, DJ-ing at a club, taking the bus with old ladies," he said. "Where's this money coming from? The covers record really didn't pay much publishing, because I didn't write on it. I was just starving for something. ... I'm broke, and I've got nothing else to say. What else can I do?"

Malin has found his way back to music -- his vital Love It to Life album with his new band the St. Marks Social will be released April 27, and he'll be performing at the Redstone Room on April 22 -- but over two years he experimented outside of music. He tried his hand at stand-up comedy, DJ-ed some weddings in Las Vegas, conducted interviews for a documentary on Bad Brains, and supervised music for a documentary on the legendary club CBGB. (There's also an unreleased album by ATM, featuring Malin, pal Ryan Adams, and Johnny T. Yerington, who previously, collectively, somewhat secretly released a punk record as The Finger.)

It would be incorrect to say that Scott Miller gloated, but he sounded genuinely pleased with his good fortune. He decided to self-release his 2009 album For Crying Out Loud, and that allowed the Tennessee-based singer/songwriter to do the proverbial more with less.

"It's not about making more money; it's about keeping your money," Miller said in a phone interview last week. "Before, you're making these records, and you're making 12 percent on the dollar on those. And now I make it all. I can sell half as much and make twice as much, as dumb as that sounds."

And here's that which borders on gloating: "I'm sorry it was such a hard year for everybody else; it was a good year for Scott Miller."

The 42-year-old Miller -- a respected roots singer, songwriter, and guitarist who also fronted the similarly respected V-Roys (championed and signed by Steve Earle) -- will be performing a solo acoustic show on Tuesday, March 30, at the Uptown Neighborhood Bar & Grill in Bettendorf. And he seems comfortable in his "top of the middle" status -- a phrase he borrowed from drummer Jimmy Lester that means "you're not selling millions, but you're not selling paltry amounts. And you can live here."

On the song "Superstar," Regan sings that "I'll pay the price for fame / I'll even change my name" and "I've worked really hard and I've paid my dues."

Regan performs using her middle name, so that's already done. But the senior at Bettendorf's Pleasant Valley High School is (and sounds) 18 years old, which is too young to have paid many dues in the music industry.

Yet the biggest irony is that Regan -- who will perform at the Redstone Room on March 11 -- has had a charmed path in her burgeoning music career. She was selected -- based on songs on her MySpace page -- for the Crash Course to Stardom program in which she spent a week in Los Angeles learning the ropes of the music business; that's the kind of experience and advice that most singers would kill for at the start of their careers. Her debut EP was shaped by established producers and has songs with the hooks and attention to musical detail that would sound right at home on mainstream country or pop radio.