The New American Music Union festival will begin Friday evening with Tiny Masters of Today, an upstart punk duo from Brooklyn made up of siblings who are a mere 12 and 14, and end late Saturday with one of the Towering Figures in Music History, Bob Dylan.

In between will be a handful of Anthony Keidis' favorite bands, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers singer has pretty good taste. While American Eagle's inaugural festival doesn't have the scope of a Lollapalooza or Bonnaroo, there's a "more killer than filler" sense to this event. Not only that, the acts seem to be woven together in interesting ways.

For Friday's bill, Keidis landed The Black Keys, a dirty blues-rock-garage duo from Akron who took their game up a notch this year with "Attack & Release," an album that was meant to be collaboration with Ike Turner, produced by Danger Mouse of Gnarls Barkley (playing the festival on Saturday). When Turner died, it became a more soulful brand of Black Keys album. The band's other connection here is that it covered Dylan's "Wicked Messenger" for the "I'm Not There" soundtrack.

The tight, gritty Keys will be a perfect set-up for the more expansive jams of The Roots, a Philly hip-hop/funk ensemble that showed ridiculous range playing the CMU Spring Carnival in April. That show was just prior to the release of the band's eighth studio album, "Rising Down," so it played only a cut or two from the new one. Among the highlights of that show were a medley of classic hip-hop and a tripped-out 20-minute version of Dylan's "Masters of War."

On Saturday, as the free college band contest is winding down, the main stage will launch with two bands from outside the States: The Duke Spirit, a UK band fronted by the cool-voiced Liela Moss that draws comparisons to the Raveonettes and Blondie; and Black Mountain, a Canadian indie-rock band that's a little like Pavement meets Black Sabbath.

As the day rolls on, we get two bands making their Pittsburgh debuts. The first is the Grammy-winning Gnarls Barkley, pairing beat master Danger Mouse with Cee-Lo, one of the few contemporary singers who summons the soul of a James Brown or Al Green.

The other first-timer here is The Raconteurs, led by Jack White, who's been here three or four times with that other band -- The White Stripes. The Raconteurs, which just released a second album, "Consolers of the Lonely," plays frantic blues-rock complete with bass and two guitars, the other one in the hands of Brendan Benson, an acclaimed singer-songwriter in his own right. This might be a good night for the band to pull out its cover of Gnarls' "Crazy."

Between those two will be Spoon, an indie darling from Austin, Texas/Portland, Ore., that would probably be huge if commercial radio had a clue and discovered songs like "Don't Make Me a Target" and "Cherry Bomb." Spoon recently played the Carnegie Library of Homestead's Music Hall and the CMU carnival not long before that, so most of the NAMU-goers will know what they're getting from Spoon.

It will all build to Dylan, who at 67 is notoriously hit-and-miss. The band is always on its game, then you wait for those one or two magical moments from the man himself. The good news is, he finished a European tour on July 11 and has had almost a month off before the gig in Philadelphia last night. He'll probably rise to the occasion knowing that he was Keidis' top choice and that his buddy Jack White is in the house. On the other hand, Dylan will be Dylan.

If all goes well, this will be the beginning of a new friendship between American Eagle and Pittsburgh music fans.

"We're seeing this as the inaugural event," says Kathy Savitt, American Eagle's chief marketing officer. "We haven't announced year two, but it's certainly our hope that this will be an annual event."