For many musicians starting out, a day job is a means to support that which they love.

For Adam Shearer, the singer and songwriter for the Portland-based Weinland, his jobs in the mental-health field served that purpose, but they also held him back.

"When I was working as a mental-health counselor ... I could not write anything," Shearer said. "When you spend the day working with kids that have those experiences ... it would just take everything out of me." It was the type of job that provided a wealth of experiences and stories from which to draw songwriting material, but it was also draining.

The Daytrotter hive is in the middle of three heavy weeks of recording sessions and shows. We're welcoming to the studio Margot & the Nuclear So & Sos, Miles Benjamin, Centro-matic, The M's, Cryptacize, Ben Sollee, Nik Freitas, Weinland, Snowblink, and Dan Goodman this week. If anyone would like to purchase any wares from these bands - vinyl, T-shirts, etc. - let us know at (daytrotter@gmail.com) and we can try to coordinate this. Helping these bands out any way possible is always appreciated.

In their song "Old Salt Wells," the honky-tonk musicians of the Alkali Flats - based out of Sacramento, California - perform an up-tempo ode to the titular establishment, described in one of songwriter Tim White's lyrics as "the place where I first fell in love." It begins: "If you ever get the notion / That you'd like to see some motion / And you really wanna have yourself a ball / There's a roadside attraction / That'll give you satisfaction / They let it all hang out and that ain't all."

But if you're unsure about exactly what sort of roadside attraction the band is referring to, a subsequent introduction to its employees might help:

Kent Burnside is the grandson of blues legend R.L. Burnside, the nephew of blues musicians Duwayne and Dan Burnside, and the cousin of blues performer Cedric Burnside. Yet during a recent phone interview, the 36-year-old Kent recalls that when he decided to finally embark on his own professional blues career in 2006, his inspiration for doing so wasn't one of his famed family members.

"What actually inspired me," he says, "was Samuel Jackson."