Weekend Picks: Best Coast, The Shack Up festival, Elvis Depressedly, Motion City Soundtrack, Lady God, Dark Star Orchestra, Rock For Ricky, Diamond Heist, The Kind Eye

Atmospheric Southern California indie pop band Best Coast is at The National Thursday night. Tix are $19.50 advance, $23 day of show. Doors open at 7, show starts at 6 with openers Sunflower Bean and make sure you get in early to see them. Best Coast will be heading out on tour with The Go-Go's soon for the Go-Go's farewell tour. Kind of the past and the future of LA female pop. This is Best Coast's "Our Deal" from 2011 in a video directed by Drew Barrymore:



Dark Star Orchestra is in town (well, Chesterfield, technically) for a show at Pocahontas State Park Thursday evening. Doors open at 5:30. Dark Star Orchestra will start around 6 PM and will play until 10 PM. Tix are $21.50 advance, $25 at the door. If you don't know DSO, they are the biggest and one of the longest lasting Grateful Dead tribute bands. They will often recreate a setlist from a classic Dead show. Here they are playing "Bertha" last year at Frontier Field in Rochester NY:

Friday and Saturday at The Camel and The Broadberry, it's The Shack Band's The Shack Up festival. You can get tickets for both days both venues ($35), both venues just Saturday ($20) or single day one venue ($10 - $20). The full lineup and schedule is in the poster above. It's a whole lot of good bands. Be sure to catch The London Souls. The Shack Band (natch) and Southern Belles (there's a choice to make on Friday night). Here's The Shack Band playing in Charlotte NC in June:

Lo-fi indie rock band Elvis Depressedly plays an early show at Strange Matter Friday night. It's $12 in advance, $15 day of show. Doors open at 5 PM. Teen Suicide, Nicole Dollanganger and Cat Be Damned open. Here's Elvis Depressedly's "Up In the Air":



Classic rock/jam cover band The Kind Eye is at I Don't Know Sports Grille in Chester Friday night. Show starts at 8 and there is no cover. Here they are doing "Crossroads" acoustic:



Saturday at Cary St. Cafe, there is a benefit (Rock for Ricky) to help Ricky Tubbs with his medical bills after suffering a heel fracture. Bands playing include The Taters, ,The Dimmer Twins (Horsehead fellers),Hershel Stratego, Calvin Stewart, The Lucky Stiff's Light, Diamond Heist, and more! It will run from 2 to 6 PM and there is a $5 suggested donation. Here's The Taters doing the reggae classic, "Rivers of Babylon":



Sunday, spend an evening in the park with Neil Diamond. Well, not exactly Neil Diamond, but a Neil Diamond cover band, Diamond Heist, as part of the Music in the Park concert series in Forest Hill Park. Show will run from 6 - 8 PM, it's FREE and quite family friendly. Here they are performing "Cherry Cherry" at Cary St. Cafe a few months ago:



Power poppers Motion City Soundtrack rev into The National Sunday night. Tix are $23 advance, $28 day of show. Doors open at 6:30, show starts at 7:30 with openers A Great Big Pile of Leaves and Rozwell Kid. If you've ever wanted to see Motion City Soundtrack you better get to the show. The band are saying this will be their final tour. Here's "True Romance" from their 2012 album, "Go":



Tuesday night, RVA band Lady God call you to worship at their rock n' roll altar Strange Matter Tuesday night. It's $8 to get in. Doors open at 8. Queen of Jeans, Heaters, and The Wimps open. Here's Lady God at The Camel in May:



That'll do it. Have a great weekend! MTV Classic kicked off this week. It used to be VH1 Classic. They will concentrate on '90's MTV which is not classic. We all know the only true classic MTV is '81 - '91 when the original four MTV VJs  were on. But they did kick off MTV Classic by showing the very first hour of MTV, which featured this very prescient first video. And if you are looking for a great and fun book on early MTV and music videos, I highly recommend "I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution".



Tony Jordan

Weekend Picks: Richmond Jazz Festival, The Shack Up, Brandon Flowers, Rich Robinson, Fool's Errand, Best Behavior

Gypsy folk band, Fool's Errand, is at Crossroads Coffee & Ice Cream in Forest Hill Friday evening. They'll play from 8 - 10:30 PM and it's FREE to get in. Here's the band doing "A Paper Face":

The Shack Up, The Shack Band's mini festival, goes down on Friday and Saturday at the Broadberry and The Camel. Broadberry will even have an outdoor stage during the day on Saturday. The music will be of your Americana and jam band type and there are lots of great bands playin' throughout the weekend such as Rockn' to Lockn' winner Southern Belles (congratulations!), Trongone Band, Butcher Brown, Shack Band (of course), Jackass Flats, Big Payback, Love Canon and more. You can check out the schedule on the poster above or look at the Facebook page for more info. You can pay to get into the individual shows for about $10 - $15 each; get a day pass for one of the days for $20 (advance), $25 (day of); or get a weekend pass for $35. Here's the preview video for the festival. Some language NSFW:



More festivals this weekend with the Richmond Jazz Festival taking over Maymont Saturday and Sunday. There a some FREE events Thursday evening at the VA Museum of Fine Arts and Hardywood. Friday night, there is an event for $30 at the Hippodrome. Check the web site there for those. But the main gig on Saturday and Sunday is $85 to get in daily. Gates open at 11 AM each day. The lineup on Saturday includes Richmond's own Sam Reed, Spanish Harlem Orchestra, Rebirth Brass Band, David Sanborn, Pat Martino, New Edition and more. Sunday's lineup features Butcher Brown, Pat Martino, Sweet Honey In the Rock, Joshua Redman, Macy Gray, Natalie Cole, Ms. Lauryn Hill and others. If you go on Saturday, be sure to catch acclaimed newcomer, saxophonist Kamasi Washington, at 4:30 on the West Rock Stage. Here's Kamasi with his eight piece band performing at KCRW last month:



Saturday at Hardywood, just in time for Carytown Watermelon Fest, they'll debut their Watermelon Gose which "is tart, with added salt, which accentuates the watermelon flavor and aroma." That gets tapped at 2 when the party begins. Music starts at 5:00 with J. Flax & The Heart Attacks (surf rock out of DC), Peace Beast (dreamy psych pop), Lady God (out of RVA playing rock n' roll), and Best Behavior (out of NYC, surf-garage rock) will close the night. Food trucks will be there all day too, if'n you get hungry! Here's Best Behavior's latest single, "Star Signs":



Rich Robinson, guitarist from The Black Crowes, does a solo acoustic gig at Tin Pan Saturday night. Tix are $30 in advance, $35 at the door. Show starts at 8 and there is no opener. With the Black Crowes not defunct, for reals this time, Rich is out doing his own thing, releasing his third solo album, The Ceaseless Sight. Rich will do songs from his solo albums, and cover some Dylan, Buffalo Springfield, and traditional folk blues classics. Here's Rich doing "One Road Hill" a few nights ago in Indy.



Tuesday at The National, lead singer of The Killers, Brandon Flowers, does his solo thing. Doors open at 7, show starts at 8, tix are $25. Here's Brandon latest single"I Can Change".



That'll do it. Have a great weekend! I'll leave you with some vintage Bowie.


Tony Jordan