Weekend Picks: Richard Thompson, Eric Krasno Band, Shemekia Copeland, Rickie Lee Jones, Merchandise, Balance & Composure, DJ Williams Projekt, Taters

The weekend begins on Thursday night at Modlin Center with the incomparable Richard Thompson. The English singer-songwriter was a founding member of seminal folk-rock group Fairport Convention, made one of the best albums of the 80's with this then-almost-ex-wife, "Shoot Out The Lights", and then has had a consistently excellent solo career. He doesn't come to Richmond too often so don't miss your chance to see him. He recently opened for Bonnie Raitt on her tour and sat in with Neil Finn (Crowded House, Finn Brothers). The show starts at 7:30 and tix range from $10 to $50 depending upon your demographic, though will be $50 for most of us. Here's Richard performing "Beatnik Walking" last month:

Emo/indie rockers Balance & Composure are at The Broadberry Thursday night. Tix are $17 advance, $19 day of show. Doors open at 7, show starts at 8 with openers Foxing and Mercury Girls. This show is the first night of their fall tour to promote their new album, "Light We Made". Rock Sound said of the album, "Eschewing their hard-edged, rockier side, the Pennsylvania five-piece have cultivated 40-plus minutes of intense but dreamy atmosphere". From that album, here's "Afterparty":

Merchandise will be playing at Gallery5 Friday night with Public Memory and Flasher. Doors open at 7, show starts at 8. $10 advance. Here's the press blurb on Merchandise:

Merchandise is a band fighting against the easy categorization reserved for abbreviated biographies. The project is equal parts punk misanthropy, maudlin balladeering, fine art, low humor, classical study, psychedelic spacecasing, mad science and pop genius.

Formed as a trio in Tampa, Florida in 2008, the band has undergone ceaseless revision and reinvention. After putting out numerous records and tapes on independent punk labels and touring the underground, the band truly hit its stride with the release of their second LP Children of Desire in April 2012. In addition to a very warm reception from fans, the record received praise from the likes of Pitchfork, NME, Spin, and numerous other critics and journals.

2013 saw the band releasing Totale Nite on Iowa City’s Night People label and touring extensively throughout America and Europe. Their new album, "A Corpse..." came out on 9/23/16.

 From their new album, here's "End of the Week":



The Taters are at Max's Positive Vibe Cafe Friday evening from 7:30 to 9:30 PM. Expect to hear some songs from their Halloween album, "Don't Scream! (Songs to Keep You Up At Night)". Though this one wasn't from that album, it could have been. This is "Wolfman Told Me Tonight":



Beatles, blues, Grateful Dead cover (and a few originals) band Long Strange Night plays at Keagan's Saturday night. Show starts at 9 and I don't think it costs a thing to get in. Here's a little taste of the band doing the GD's "They Love Each Other":



Speaking of the Grateful Dead, guitarist/singer Bob Weir has got a free webcast for you from The Capital Theater on Sunday at 8 PM. You can find that on nugs.tv. His new album, "Blue Mountain", has been getting excellent reviews. He got help on the album from members of The National and Josh Ritter. Bob will be with a band on Sunday night but here he is solo a few weeks ago at Amoeba Records in Hollywood:



Blues singer extraordinaire Shemekia Copeland will be at The Tin Pan Sunday night. Some of you may have seen her at last year's Richmond Folk Festival and she put on a terrific show. Doors open at 5, show at 7, tix are $40 advance, $45 at the door. Shemekia has a new album out called "Outskirts of Love". Guests include ZZ Top’s Billy F Gibbons (guitar on a smoldering version of “Jesus Just Left Chicago”), Robert Randolph & the Family Band, Alvin Youngblood Hart and Will Kimbrough. Not a bad group of friends. Here she is at the New Bedford Whaling Blues Festival in August:



DJ Williams returns from LA, tanned and rested, and pulls the Projekt back together for a night on Sunday night at The Broadberry, Doors at 8, show at 9, $12 advance, $15 at the door. There will be a whole bunch of peeps dropping in from many RVA bands and it should be quite the fun night. One of the last times the Projekt played together was on a slightly bigger stage. Here they are opening the festivities at Lockn' on Saturday, 8/27. Well, here's the link. Embedding is disabled for this one. https://youtu.be/Wk9LntXr05A

Tuesday night, it's a jam band dream show at The Broadberry. Eric Krasno Band and Marco Benevento will perform, seperately and (I'm sure) together. Doors open at 7, show starts at 8, $20 advance, $25 day of show. Eric Krasno Band just got done playing 2 nights with The Grateful Dead's Phil Lesh as Phil's Terrapin Crossroads club in San Rafael CA. Eric also jammed with Tedeschi-Trucks Band earlier this month. He is becoming one of the go-to guitarists in the jam band world, a guy who everyone wants to play with. Speaking of Derek Trucks, here's the trippy video from the track "Curse Lifter" from Eric Krasno's new album, "Blood From a Stone" with Derek sitting in:

Rickie Lee Jones is at Capital Ale House Downtown Tuesday night. Doors open at 7, show starts at 8, tix are $55 advance, $65 day of show. There is no opener listed. Here's the press blurb for Rickie:

Two-time Grammy winner Rickie Lee Jones exploded onto the pop scene in 1978 and has made a career of fearlessly experimenting with her sound and persona over 15 critically acclaimed albums. A cultural phenomenon, Rolling Stone magazine put her on its cover twice in two years, and Saturday Night Live gave her an unprecedented three songs for her second appearance. Rickie is both a character in the songs and the songwriter singing, defying convention with her sometimes brazen sexuality and the mixed bag of jazz, rock and what has come to be known as 'confessional' songwriter performances. 

Her latest album The Other Side of Desire was written, recorded and rooted in the city of New Orleans, where Jones lives on the opposite side of the street made famous by Tennessee Williams. Produced by John Porter (of Roxy Music) and Mark Howard, this is the first new music Jones has written in over a decade.

"This work is inspired by many years of sitting with all the events of my life until I had something to paint with," says Rickie. "I came to New Orleans to write and to live a different way than what I have known in on the west coast…. Here is another record then, made of my imagination, and whatever else that has no words, using the clay of this place and the shapes of my eyes to form some kind of picture of my life, or my heart, that I alone can understand, and hopefully that others can enjoy."

 From her latest album, this is "Jimmy Choos":



That'll do it! Have a great weekend. I'll see you at Richard Thompson.

I'll leave you with this one from Death Cab for Cutie. This is part of the 30 Days, 30 Songs project in which 30 songs will be released over the next 30 days by 30 different artists for a Trump-free America.



Tony Jordan