This Sunday, we celebrate two major holidays: Easter and Marijuana Day. Though, personally, I mourn this time of year as the end of Fish Fry Season.
Tuesday, April 15
Rock Melon with Fiona Hayes & Despondent @ Amsterdam
International Reggae Allstars @ Bunker’s
Circuit des Yeux with Leya @ Cedar Cultural Center
St. Dominic’s Trio @ Driftwood
Karaoke with On Call Entertainment @ Eagles 34
- James McMurtry with BettySoo @ Fine Line—Lord, do I hope that no one over 20 really believes that reactionary leaders inspire great music anymore, not after the years following 9/11 spewed up American Idiot, "Mosh," and an Enya revival. But the swing toward permanent war and social neglect did tone up James McMurtry’s lyrics. After a decade-plus as a fair-to-good singer-songwriter (and yes, his dad is novelist Larry, if you were wondering), McMurty dug in and came up with “We Can’t Make It Here Anymore,” an unsparing look at the U.S. in decline. He’s kept in that vein since, mixing acute social realism with songs of unrooted, aging love. On “Canola Fields,” the standout track from his 2021 album, The Horses and the Hounds, he hooks up with a woman he’s had a crush on for three decades and observes, “You can’t be young and do that.” Something to look forward to!
Taylor Robert (CD Release) with Jared McCloud, Roz Prickel, Wain McFarlane @ Green Room
Marijuana Death Squads @ Icehouse
MN Guitar Society Monthly Concert @ Metronome Brewery
River City Jazz Orchestra @ Minnesota Music Cafe
Annual Saint Paul Public Schools Honors Concert & Art Exhibition @ Ordway
Artist Showcase @ Sociable CIder Werks
April Conspiracy Series featuring Eldest Daughter, Anything You Want, wolfbabycup @ 331 Club
Worker’s Playtime with Rebecca Lake Fritz @ 331 Club
Improvement Movement with Ryan Gebhardt @ Turf Club
Danielle Durack, Blair Borax, and the Penny Peaches @ Underground Music Venue
The New Havoline Supremes @ White Squirrel
Unattractive Giant Monster (Residency) with Chris Cashin Band, Sparrowhawk @ White Squirrel
Wednesday, April 16
Shady Babies Open Mic @ Acadia
MN Songwriter Showcase @ Aster Cafe
A/V Excursions with Altruit & Jump Loop @ Berlin
AJ Stone, Blame The Witness, In The Distance @ Can Can Wonderland
Cheryl Wheeler and Kenny Wright @ Cedar Cultural Center
KP&J (Kitchen Patrol and Joe) @ Day Block Brewing
The Outcats, the Fogarty Brothers @ Driftwood
Miss Shannon’s Swing Night @ Eagles 34
Vincent Mason with Cole Goodwin @ First Avenue
Open Mic With Host Neal Dimick @ Ginkgo Coffee
Nim Vind, Evelyn’s Casket, They Live, Die Ghost @ Hook and Ladder
Songbird Singer-Songwriter Spotlight Series @ Metronome Brewery
Karaoke with Chazz Reed @ Minnesota Music Cafe
Mortiholics, Prairie Clamor @ Mortimer’s
The Swamp Poppas @ Schooner Tavern
SOFIA ISELLA with Brendan Abernathy @ 7th St Entry
St. Anthony Mann, Jackson Atkins, taylor james donskey @ 331 Club
Harold’s House Party on KFAI with Triple Fiddle @ 331 Club
Big Richard with Caleb Caudle @ Turf Club
Kerosene Heights,The Casper Fight Club,Tiny Voices @ Underground Music Venue
James Lenfestey & Bassist Larry Dalton @ Woman’s Club
St. Paul Mudsteppers @ White Squirrel
Tea Doggy with Ghosting Merit & Yellow Ostrich @ White Squirrel
Hometeam Quarterback & Friends @ Zhora Darling
Thursday, April 17
Wayside (Album Release) with Consolation Champ, Phantom Fields, and Brynn Arens @ Amsterdam
Samuel John Band & John Swardson @ Aster Cafe
Ruth Mascelli/Mary Hanson Scott with Starflower @ Berlin
Rosie Daze Band (Album Release) @ Bryant Lake Bowl
Jay Bee & the Routine @ Bunker’s
Emo Night: Taylor’s Version! @ Cabooze
Farah Siraj with Genet Abate @ Cedar Cultural Center
Cindy Lawson, Bruiser Queen, the Reach Outs @ Cloudland
The Latin Soul Vibe Quartet @ Crooners
Big Band Renaissance with ACME @ Crooners
Basement Heroes with Deep Fortune and Sunnbather @ Day Block Brewing
Blank Slate, Mill City Caravan @ Driftwood
LGBTQ+ Twin Cities Latin Dance @ Eagles 34
Karaoke with On Call Entertainment @ Eagles 34
Goldie with Submotive @ Fine Line
Elderbrook with Jerro and Tonez @ First Avenue
Tanzklub. Vol. 6 @ Hook and Ladder
Ghost Wagon (Single Release) with Pat Lenertz and Friends @ Icehouse
Peter Kogan Jazz Presents @ Metronome Brewery
Dark Click with Curtiss A @ Minnesota Music Cafe
Mary Elias’s Young Relics @ Minnesota Music Cafe
2.4.2.8, Stat @ Schooner Tavern
Cross Pollination: Knife Emoji, Greater Goods @ 331 Club
Beneath Green with Matcha Fever, Tarias and the Sound and Self Titled @ Turf Club
Phase Meridian, Onlytime, Thundergoat, As Bullets Baptize @ Underground Music Venue
Party 101 with DJ Matt Bennett @ Varsity
Devaney & Friends @ White Squirrel
Nikki Minerva with Sylvia Dieken, Willem Dafoe Fan Club @ White Squirrel
Song to the Moon @ Woman’s Club
Constant Insult with Dauber, Christy Costello, & Step Sister @ Zhora Darling
Friday, April 18
Evernoir, Queen of Dreams, & Witch Syndicate @ Amsterdam
Zacc Harris’s American Reverie @ Berlin
Lenard Simpson Quartet @ Berlin
Local Dope $H%T @ Can Can Wonderland
Corb Lund + Hayes Carll @ Cedar Cultural Center
Lake, Babytooth, Lake Davi @ Cloudland
Jearlyn Steele & Fred Steele @ Crooners
Topher’s Friends, the Record Club @ Driftwood
Larry Wish (Album Release) with D'Lakes, Bryan and the Haggards, Embahn @ Eagles 34
Tropidelic and Ballyhoo! with Joey Harkum @ Fine Line
Dawes with Michigander @ First Avenue
Christopher Jurewitsch @ Ginkgo Coffee
Latin Nights Festival Salsa Del Sol, Charanga Tropical, DJ William El Buenon @ Granada
Jonah Marais & Friends @ Green Room
Stage Fright: A Tribute to Bob Dylan & the Band @ Hook and Ladder
Hipshaker MPLS @ Hook and Ladder
420 Eve Bash with Muun Bato, Honeymoon Madness, Lumari @ Hook and Ladder
Olive Klug with Pine & Fire @ Icehouse
Adolfo Mendonça Quartet feat. Dean Sorenson, UMN Morris Jazz Combos @ Jazz Central
Cadenza All Stars @ Metronome Brewery
Kalliah & Blackwater & the Pearl Brothers @ Minnesota Music Cafe
St. Olaf Band & St. Olaf Jazz Band @ Orchestra Hall
Rad Owl, Powerdam, Couch Potato Massacre, and Dingus @ Palmer’s
Hunny Bear with Fuchsia, Heliocene @ Pilllar Forum
Liquid Dreams (Robotic) @ Red Sea
Trailer Trash @ Schooner Tavern
Sam MacPherson with Abby Powledge @ 7th St Entry
Sweet Amanita, Dave’s Manual @ Terminal Bar
Red Lovely, Time Room, The Dregs @ 331 Club
Malachite, Mvrrow, Shotgun Facelift @ Underground Music Venue
Rosegarden Funeral Party with Summore, & The Rope @ Uptown VFW
DISCO + BASS Dance Fever: Sci-Fi, Zenos, Saxon, mangabookguy, OPTNS @ Uptown VFW
Thor Leseman with Ida Metsberg @ White Squirrel
Waterdog with Deer Skin, Valors @ White Squirrel
Ginger Commodore @ Woman’s Club
Look@Me, Poison Ivy & the People, Linus @ Zhora Darling
Saturday, April 19
The Skinny Lovers & Joey Bonner @ Aster Cafe
Garrett Jones Quartet @ Berlin
Kinetic with Haute Carl @ Berlin
The Good, the Bad, and the Funky @ Bunker’s
Dashed, Lutheran Heat, Tight Whips @ Cloudland
The Harry Scott Trio @ Crooners
Time After Time, In the City @ Driftwood
The Bill Patten Trio @ Dusty’s
LGBTQ Women’s Dance @ Eagles 34
BRENN! with asiris @ Fine Line
No Guard, Chopping Block @ Flying V
Rolling Clones with Heartless @ Green Room
Mae Simpson, Hot Like Mars @ Hook and Ladder
420 Eve Reggae Sunsplash with IRAS @ Icehouse
Steven Hobert n Sirclesound @ Jazz Central
B2B Night: Local Showcase @ The Loft
Fuzzy Math @ Metronome Brewery
Wain McFarlane and Cole Allen @ Minnesota Music Cafe
The Assortment with DJ Michael Grey @ Mortimer’s
Hollywood Undead, Tech N9ne @ Myth Live
St. Olaf Choir and St. Olaf Orchestra @ Orchestra Hall
Bob Mould Band with Poster Children @ Palace Theatre
Planned Parenthood Benefit with Blood Cookie, Not Your Baby, and Darkling I Listen @ Palmer’s
The Shabby Road Orchestra plays The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band @ Parkway
Maiden King with Robot Slide and Squinny @ Pilllar Forum
The De’Lindas, Just Luv Inc. @ Schooner Tavern
Catalogue Issue:006 @ Solsta Records
Your Neighbors with dreamfone @ 7th St Entry
Nectarous, Fine Dials, Smell My Pillow @ Terminal Bar
SON/BOY, Pyrrhic Victories, League Two @ 331 Club
Ben Nichols & Rick Steff with Colin Campbell (of the Shackletons) @ Turf Club
Max Muscato @ Underground Music Venue
Miss Georgia Peach, Kinda Fonda Wanda @ Uptown VFW
glitterdark R3:lease @ Uptown VFW
- Kendrick Lamar, SZA @ U.S. Bank Stadium—“If he’s the greatest rapper alive, why can’t he find something more to rap about besides the fact that he’s the greatest rapper alive?” my critical superego asks whenever I bump Kendrick’s latest, GNX. To which my fanboy id replies “MUSTAAAAARRRD!” Kendrick has always indulged in more grandiose Big Man fantasies than we pop egalitarians would like, and until “Not Like Us” became a much more unlikely Black protest anthem than “Alright,” the whole Celebrity Deathmatch vibe of the Drake feud bummed me out. But I dig GNX’s candied Antonoff synths, how SZA and Luther Van sweeten the mood, and all the weird noises the hardheaded MC makes as he never stops going in. Plus, as Kendrick showed 133.5 million viewers in February, he knows how to work a stadium crowd. As for SZA, she doubled the length of her 2022 landmark SOS with last December’s deluxe reissue, aka Lana, and if I’d only keep 2/3 of the newbies, tops, my rejects might be your keepers, who knows? Maybe she’ll never release another album—she’ll just keep adding to SOS, like Whitman with Leaves of Grass. P.S. No, I didn’t get a review ticket. Insert appropriate emoji reaction here.
Three Guys Who Used to Work Together @ White Squirrel
Hot Jupiters with Skeleton Crew, Third Date, Greater Goods @ 331 Club
Social Animals (duo) & Creeping Charlie (solo) @ Zhora Darling
Sunday, April 20
My Morning Jacket with Grace Cummings @ Armory
Patty and the Buttons @ Aster Cafe
StoLyette Sundays feat. nectar AKA Tekk Nikk @ Berlin
420 Easter Madness Adult Nug Hunt @ Cabooze
The Spine Stealers, Harlow, Walker Rider @ Cloudland
Easter with Tina Schlieske & Friends @ Dakota
Phine & Friends, Shotgun Ragtime @ Driftwood
Twin Cities Country Dancers @ Eagles 34
Karaoke with Reina Starr @ Eagles 34
Knox with The Wldlfe @ Fine Line
The Big Zen20! @ Hook and Ladder
“Soul Sanctuary” Easter Brunch with DJ Willie Adams @ Icehouse
Night Shift Dance Party @ Icehouse
Ghost Kitchen, Minor Mischief, Bridal Style @ Mortimer’s
- Paul Simon @ Orpheum Theatre—Simon’s farewell tour ended seven years ago, but some guys just don’t settle into retirement so easily. This tour is dubbed “A Quiet Celebration,” and the 83-year-old bard has suffered severe hearing loss so he’s chosen “intimate venues with optimal acoustics”—hence the Orpheum. Since his premature finale, Simon has released Seven Psalms, a song cycle that will take up a half hour or so of this show; depending on my mood, I find it unobtrusively slight, pretentiously overdone, or gently moving. As for the rest of his set, if you doubt what he can do with his catalog (or could within the past decade), check out 2018’s In the Blue Light, which cannily revisits some oldies and not-so-oldies. While I love the romantic realist Simon was in the ‘70s, the reborn middle-aged tourist who made Graceland, and (even, begrudgingly) the better half of & Garfunkel, I hope Simon reminds fans how vital he remained on later albums like 2016’s Stranger to Stranger and, especially, 2011’s So Beautiful or So What.
Church of Cornbread @ Palmer’s
West Bank Social Club @ Palmer’s
Bury Em Deep with Aaron James, Shoveler @ White Squirrel
Karaoke with Ally @ White Squirrel
Monday, April 21
Queen Cumbia Dance Party Night @ Black Hart
- Ana Tijoux with TaliaKnight and BooScapes @ Cedar Cultural Center—Chilean rapper and activist Tijoux is my kind of chin-up revolutionary. On 2024’s Vida, her first solo album in a decade, the creator of "Antifa Dance" tells “Niñx” (“Little Girlx”) that every asshole's secret weakness is that “life scares them.” And if you didn't come to party and you're thinking of knocking on her door, be warned that she closes the album with this suggestion: “If the end of the world is coming, let’s dance naked together.” She's so upbeat some doomers might even find her corny. Vida reminds me of a Raymond Williams quote I'd love to own a cross-stitch of someday: "To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing."
Tango Desperados Practilonga @ Eagles 34
Other Country Ensemble @ Eagles 34
James Bay with Hunter Metts @ First Avenue
MN Hard Bop Collective @ Metronome Brewery
Cowaoke with Ben Moooker @ Palmer’s
Open Mic Mpls @ Sociable Cider Werks
“Womenfolk Presents” Rachel Bearinger @ 331 Club
Christopher Vondracek with Tony Cuchetti @ White Squirrel
Francis Avenue with A Sunken Ship Irony, J-Mo & The J-Lighters @ White Squirrel
