Friday Cheers lineup announced, Elvis Costello: Late Night Pick of the Night

The lineup for Friday Cheers, Richmond's best ongoing music series at the best venue in Richmond (Brown's Island) was announced today.  Looks like another good one.  It'll be $5 to get in for most shows, $10 for some others. You can buy a season pass for $35 before April 1 and then that goes up to $40. 

Here's the lineup along with my level of excitement in parentheses, 1 being the highest:
May 4 - Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears with The Preservation - $5 - (2) - great, up and coming funk/r&b/blues band.  A fine start to the season.
May 11 - Carolina Chocolate Drops with The Inflatables - $5 - (3) - bluegrass, traditional old-time music. Should be fun.

May 18-20 – Dominion Riverrock, featuring Galactic, Travelin’ McCourys feat. Keller Williams, and JJ Grey and Mofro. - FREE - not part of Friday Cheers technically so I didn't rank it but will be there with bells on or at least cool, glow in the dark stuff.  For more info, see THIS blog entry.

May 25 - RVA Music Night with Three Sheets to the Wind, The Trillions and Photosynthesizers - $5 - (7) - the ranking is not a slight to the bands, it's just that they play in town all the time. Will be a good night to see some great local music all in one place, especially if the weather is nice.

June 1- Chris Young with Honky Tonk Heroes - $10 - (8) - the obligatory pop country band. Will take a week off.

June 8 - ALO with Former Champions - $5 - (6) - ALO is a good jam band and I like local jammers Former Champions, too.  ALO just not good enough for me to be super excited about.  Will go if weather is nice.

June 15 - Dawes with Sara Watkins - $5 - (4) - Folk rock.  I am really liking their song "Time Spent in Los Angeles" lately.

June 22 – Alabama Shakes with Robert Ellis - $5 - (1) - If you only go to one Cheers, make it this one, rain or shine.  Alabama Shakes has gathered a huge buzz before they even have an album out (their first comes out soon) based on their live shows and Muscle Shoals blues/Southern rock sound.

June 29 - Trampled by Turtles with Goldrush  - $10 - (5) - Progressive Bluegrass or Newgrass, if you will.

We will have more on these bands as we hit the week of their show.

For tonight's Late Night Pick of the Night, we're back to Jimmy Fallon's Bruce Week where Elvis Costello will perform Springsteen's "Brilliant Disguise" with Jimmy's house band, The Roots, backing him up. Late Night with Jimmy Fallon is on at 12:35 AM on NBC.