can i get to the information i want using just one statement?

[ioloop]

im relatively new to mysql so go easy ;)

i have a 3 tables:

artists (ID,artistName,linkerID)
releases (ID,releaseName, artistName)
linker (ID,linkerID)

artists may record under many aliases (i.e. the same artist appears in the artists table more than once with a different artistName but each time has the same linkerID)

i want to users to be able to search for releases by a particular artist and be returned all releases for that artist including the releases under different aliases.

the only way i can think of returning this information is by using three sequential statements:


SELECT linkerID FROM artists WHERE artistName = '$userSearchVar'

then using that result in the following statement..

SELECT artistname FROM artists WHERE linkerID = '$queryResult1'

then iterating through the results from the above statement using the following ..

SELECT * FROM releases WHERE artistname = '$queryresult2[]'


is this the most efficient way of doing it? is there something more clever i can do using joins or nested clauses??