Grace Potter tonight, Blind Melon, The Slits

Grace Potter is playing tonight at Toad's Place with Benevento/Russo Duo and The Atkinsons. The doors open at 7:30, The Atkinsons (Local Americana band. Saw them once and they were pretty good.) will start around 8:30. Tickets are $15. This is a co-headlining tour and the Benevento/Russo Duo site reports that Grace will play first and then the Duo. Which should be good for those of us who want to see Grace but may not want to stay up too late because we have to mudlle through work the next day. The Duo is good but I won't feel guilty if I leave a little early.


I highly recommend seeing Grace. The NY Times said "Ms. Potter, the band’s 24-year-old lead singer and songwriter, played a Hammond B-3 organ (one of three keyboards on the stage) as well as guitar. The organ is the most the distinctive element in an instrumental sound that suggests a composite of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Band, Crazy Horse and almost any other meat-and-potatoes rock outfit from the early and mid-1970s. The music defines what is meant by the term classic rock." Here is the article from Style Weekly. Grace is a great blues singer and she's sexy enough so all the boys want to be with her but cool enough that all the girls want to be her friend.

I'll be there tonight. I would gladly have paid to see her but I was lucky enough to win tickets from the Weekly Rant web site. This site tells you everything thats going on in Richmond in music, museums, sports, stage, etc. Its a great site to help you plan your weekend after you read my music picks, of course. The Rant also gives away tickets to Richmond events every week, and not just rock concerts. This week, you can win tickets to The Richmond Jazz Society show on 3/11 at Capital Ale House or the Richmond Symphony. Also, be sure to check out the links to the site owner's blog, River City Rapids.


Blind Melon will be playing tonight at the National. Most of us remember them from their early 90s hit "No Rain" and the video with the Bee Girl. That album was a pretty good album, if I remember. Their lead singer, Shannon Hoon, died in 1995. They stuck together until '99 then called it quits. Then they got themselves a new lead singer in 2006 and have been back ever since. You can check out some of their music on their myspace page, which I linked to above.

Seminal punk band, The Slits, will be at Toad's on Thursday night. Doors open at 8, and tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. The all-female Slits were part of the 70's punk scene in London with The Clash, The Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, etc.

I'll be back with a blog later on the rest of the weekend.

Tony Jordan