We've got a real Marsalis-laden listings installment for ya this week. Wynton brings the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to town tonight. Then on Saturday older brother Branford pays tribute to John Coltrane along with Dianne Reeves at the Ordway, and the youngest sibling, Jason, plays a set a Berlin. Hope they all get a chance to hang out.
There is, of course, plenty of Marsalis-free music below as well.
Tuesday, October 13
Greatest Jam on Earth @ Blues Saloon
International Reggae Allstars @ Bunker’s
Jesse Roper, Mae Simpson @ Cedar Cultural Center
JazzMN Orchestra Presents @ Dakota
St. Dominic’s Trio @ Driftwood Char Bar
Karaoke with On Call Entertainment @ Eagles 34
The Smashing Pumpkins @ Grand Casino Arena
Clyss, Mishi Mega, Bookowski, Sunshine Behavior @ Green Room
Cedar Avenue Big Band @ Jazz Central
Nova Jazz Orchestra @ Minnesota Music Cafe
Pop Up! With Sam Woodman @ Mortimer’s
Jazz at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis @ Orchestra Hall
Lovergirl, Bags Bags Bags, Slut Intent @ Pilllar Forum
Silly Goose, Cheem, Muttlee @ 7th St Entry
October Conspiracy Series feat. ditch pigeon sawtooth witch, astronomy town @ 331 Club
Worker’s Playtime with Jake La Botz @ 331 Club
DJ Dedicated Enemy @ White Squirrel
Wednesday, October 14
MN Songwriter Showcase @ Aster Cafe
The Cherry Pit Open Jam @ Berlin
OCE with Sama Duo @ Bryant Lake Bowl
Elton John’s Captain Fantastic Tribute @ Crooners
Feeling Groovy: Simon & Garfunkel Tribute @ Crooners
Tribute to the Andrews Sisters @ Crooners
Tom Dahill and Ginny Johnson @ Dubliner Pub
Armand Hammer, Quelle Chris @ Fine Line
Paris Paloma, Susannah Joffe @ First Avenue
Kels, Ella Maddux @ Green Room
Chrissa Sparkles @ Hook and Ladder
Hiss Golden Messenger, Sam Amidon @ Icehouse
North Star Jazz Workshops: Michael Ragonese Trio @ Jazz Central
Briand Morrison, Ben Woolman and Mark Keating @ Mainstreet Bar
Pat Donahue and Friends @ Midway Saloon
Smiling Cowboys, Yeah Doggos @ Minnesota Music Cafe
in shining armour, 12th House Sun, Upnow!, Eat Lava @ Pilllar Forum
Rank Strangers, the Boot R&B @ Schooner Tavern
First to Eleven, Keepsake @ 7th St Entry
Robert Plant and Saving Grace feat. Suzi Dian, Rosie Flores @ State Theatre
The Flying T, Bobby J’s West Band Social Club @ 331 Club
- HUG featuring Devendra Banhart, Gyan Riley, and Noah Georgeson @ Walker Art Center—Onetime freak-folk kingpin Devendra Banhart teams up with pals Gyan Riley and Noah Georgeson for what’s billed as a night of “collaborative ambient-folk.” They’ll be soundtracking films from archetypal NYC bohemian Harry Smith: Early Abstractions (1939, 1956) and Heaven and Earth Magic (1962).—Keith Harris
Cole Diamond’s Whiskey Wednesdays @ White Squirrel
Unkle Daddy, VIA, Golden Satellite @ Zhora Darling
Thursday, October 15
Digital Age Rave 2 @ Amsterdam
Honky Tonk Night feat. Cole Diamond @ Animales
Michael Ragonese Trio @ Berlin
Crates: Wede Harer Guzo by Hailu Mergia @ Berlin
Jaybee & the Routine @ Bunker’s
Joshua Burnside @ Cedar Cultural Center
The Secrecy, Autumn, Velour Tomb @ Cloudland
Erica West and Phil Kadidlo @ Crooners
- Rakim with Room3 Collective @ Dakota—Sometimes the tired old conventional wisdom is right: When it comes to MCs, there’s before Rakim and then there’s everything after. He unleashed a proliferation of rhyme styles that immediately made rappers a year his senior sound hopelessly old school. He’s old school himself now, if not prehistoric to today’s hip-hop fans, but when I caught the god in 2018 at the Varsity, he continued to dominate. I saw the local jazz combo Room3 backing Slum Village in this same club, and they’ll provide Ra with the music he deserves.—Keith Harris
Hamil-Griffin Cassidy @ Driftwood Char Bar
LGBTQ+ Twin Cities Latin Dance @ Eagles 34
Karaoke With On Call Entertainment @ Eagles 34
Friko, Nine Perfect Lives @ Fine Line
Zack Fox (DJ Set) @ First Avenue
Egodeath, Frontal Assault, Torrentia, Damage Case @ Flying V
Snapz Live Band Open Mic @ Green Room
Dirty P’s Thirsty 3rd Thursday Club @ Hook and Ladder
My Kid Banana, Jon Q Public, Velvet Ghoul, Dirty930 @ Hook and Ladder
TCC4SLAY 3.0 @ Hook and Ladder
Acoustic Thursdays @ Mainstreet Bar
The Brian Grivna Quartet @ Metronome Brewery
Migueal Vargas and Terrell LaMarr of Radio Pocho @ Mia
Mary Elias’s Young Rebels @ Minnesota Music Cafe
Curtiss A with Dark Click @ Minnesota Music Cafe
SPELLBOUND with DJ Gwiingwans, Coagula, and PRSPHNE @ Mortimer’s
Glam Toyota, lowjoy, Kimi Karako, Onsite, DJ Foxxtrot @ Pilllar Forum
Mubbla Buggs, Rodents @ Schooner Tavern
Emily Bjorke, clovers daughter, anni xo @ 7th St Entry
Josh Teed & High Step Society @ Studio B
Cross Pollination: Knife Emoji, Embahn @ 331 Club
Martin Devaney & Friends, Tiki Barnsworth and the Barnburners @ White Squirrel
The Makeouts, Cain& Co., Mike and the TV's @ White Squirrel
Passion Mango, Cherry Pick @ Zhora Darling
Friday, October 16
Shiner Shine Entertainment @ Acadia
Teague Alexy & the Common Thread (Album Release) @ Animales
Bob Frey & the Adaptors @ Aster Cafe
Michael Ragonese Trio @ Berlin
Some Shitty Cover Band, DJ D-MIL @ Boardwalk
Orchid Eaton, Ditch Pigeon, White Dune @ Cloudland
Band, James Band: 007’s Greatest Hits @ Crooners
The Double Down Daredevils Bluegrass Band @ Crooners
Davina and the Vagabonds @ Dakota
The Outcats @ Driftwood Char Bar
Armageddon Radio @ Dual Citizen
Wild Colonial Bhoys @ Dubliner Pub
Irish Music Session @ Dubliner Pub
Radiator Girl, alone-a, Jesse Whitney @ Eagles 34
Red Desert, Kingpin’s Crown @ 56 Brewing
- Heavens to Betsy, Tuffie, Scrunchies @ Fine Line—The most exciting reunion tour of 2026 might just be slipping past a lot of people who should care. Maybe you scanned the listings and thought, “They can’t possibly mean that Heavens to Betsy.” But yes they do: Corin Tucker and drummer Tracy Sawyer have reunited. Listening back now to the duo’s 1994 riot grrrl landmark Calculated, you might hear the inchoate ingredients that would cohere into the world-beating sound of Sleater-Kinney, but this is from Tucker juvenilia. First off, it’s meaner than S-K. “I've got a knife that's sharpened/Exactly for one white boy/My target is your heart/And the knife will go deep, the knife will go inside,” Tucker threatens, employing a sense of dynamics that recalls early PJ Harvey, and I don’t know that she ever screamed as chillingly as on “Stay Away.” Now all I wanna know is when are Carrie Brownstein and Becca Albee gonna get Excuse 17 back together?—Keith Harris
Judah & the Lion, Breakfield @ First Avenue
The Bob Weir Celebration⏤The Big Wu performs Bob Weir & The Grateful Dead @ Fitzgerald Theater
Candlelight: The Best of Hans Zimmer @ Granada
Candlelight: Tribute to Drake @ Granada
Letdown., Luchiano, Sikarus @ Hook and Ladder
Hipshaker 24th Anniversary Party @ Hook and Ladder
The Ultimate Tina Turner Tribute @ Minnesota Music Cafe
- Absolutely Yours (Album Release), Embahn, The Vanity Project @ Mortimer’s—The problem with so much dream pop is that it’s dreamier than it is poppy, and you tend to forget dreams shortly after you wake up. But Bridget Collins’s songs don’t just beguile you—they hook ya. Aside from Collins, the personnel on Absolutely Yours' second album, Desire Path, is all new, as the Minneapolis transplant has rounded up a fine set of local players, including guitarist Mark Ritesma, a veteran of too many bands to name, who knows just when to chime forthrightly and when to cut loose.—Keith Harris
Pictures at an Exhibition @ Orchestra Hall
Gus the Bardic Troubadour @ Padraigs
- Chris Koza (Album Release), Dylan Hicks & Small Screens, Clover & the Bee @ Parkway Theater—Koza has released 18 albums, either solo or with his group Rogue Valley; songs seem to just flow right out of the guy. His new, very midwesternly named Millsmoke On The Skyline, is as unforced, heartfelt, and endearing as its predecessors.—Keith Harris
Undead Breaks n Bass with Hatch, Foxxtrot, Tempest, and Puppy Chow @ Pilllar Forum
Everett Smithson @ Schooner Tavern
Telescreens, Runner and Bobby, Nautics @ 7th St Entry
The Naughty Northern @ Studio B
Torrentia, the F* All Massive Shadow, Sweet Land @ Terminal Bar
Richard Kriehn, Judy Vinar, Rachel Holder, Benjamin Kelly @ 318 Cafe
Wish Wash, Tender Comrade, TV For Dogs @ 331 Club
Arcwelder, Deep Tunnel Project, New Age Healers @ Turf Club
Weeb Like it HARD: Quest to the Grand Line @ Uptown VFW
Parisota Hot Club @ Volstead’s
The Mary Cutrufello Band @ White Squirrel
The Daily Norm. D.C. Leonhardt, the Cottonwood Shivers @ White Squirrel
Howling Giant, Faerie Ring, Insomniac, Extermination Day @ Zhora Darling
Saturday, October 17
Blues Night feat. Erin McCawley @ Animales
Steve Aoki, Audien, Benzi, Eddie Adams @ Armory
Ryan Little Eagle, Obsidian James @ Aster Cafe
Awa Mally aka The Mayor @ Berlin
Jason Marsalis Quartet @ Berlin
Bewitched by Weill @ Bryant Lake Bowl
The Good, the Bad, the Funky @ Bunker’s
JFlad and Jim Hinkley @ Carbone’s
Laura Viers, Karl Blau @ Cedar Cultural Center
- Crush Scene (Album Release), Products Band, Panel @ Cloudland—All rise, Food Court! is now in session. That’s the title of the latest from Crush Scene, and the band has come a long way from the gutsy 2023 debut that got ‘em noticed for Poised to Pop last year. They’re still a garage band at heart, with occasional support from Sage on Sax on, well, sax, and Sumanth Gopinath on organ, but they’re accentuating their country side more than ever. Rachael Guertin’s trebly guitar jangles and jabs, the rhythm section of Janet Kolterman and Tasha Spencer kicks up with more aplomb, and singer Madelyn Rowell, who judging from her lyrics has had to dust herself off a time or two recently, hauls off on the mic, none the worse for wear. As the lady sings, “That’s the price of being cool.”—Keith Harris
Minute By Minute: Doobie Brothers and Yacht Rock Icons @ Crooners
Maud Hixson and Rick Carlson @ Crooners
Pumpernickel @ Driftwood Char Bar
The Northerly Gales @ Dubliner Pub
Mechanix @ Eat Street Crossing
- Digable Planets @ Fillmore—Thirty years of Blowout Comb—now that’s worth celebrating. At the time, this sophomore joint was intended as one of those course corrections that good-natured rap crews felt compelled to make; the problem wasn’t that too many white kids dug this BK rap trio’s Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space), but how too many white kids dug them—see also: De La Soul Is Dead. Reachin' was plenty Black, but Blowout Comb proclaimed “It’s nation time.” From this historical distance, the follow-up sounds as jazzy as its predecessor, only slightly less playful, and still spacey if not quite so extraterrestrial. Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler, still in the rap game with Shabazz Palaces, is the wise observer while Craig "Doodlebug" Irving is the more active participant in streetlife. And if I can’t say for sure that no female MC has ever rapped with the smooth chill of Mariana “Ladybug Mecca” Viera, certainly no one else name-checked Eric Dolphy, Bahamadia, and Derrick Bell in the same verse.—Keith Harris
Blake Whiten, Eli Winders @ Fine Line
Daði Freyr with BRÍET @ First Avenue
The Right Here, Fast Hearts, Rank Strangers @ Gambit Brewing
Minneapolis Valhalla Fest III @ Hook and Ladder
Trench Size Trio @ Jazz Central
High & Mighty @ Mainstreet Bar
Ben Cook-Felz (Album Release), Matthew French @ Metronome Brewery
Morpheus @ Minnesota Music Cafe
Supportive Parents, Virgin Whores, Daisycutter, Behind the Wire, Ca$ual @ Mortimer’s
Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band @ Mystic Lake Casino
Pictures at an Exhibition @ Orchestra Hall
Fall Sensory-Friendly Concert @ Orchestra Hall
Branford Marsalis and Dianne Reeves @ Ordway
Big Head Todd and the Monsters @ Palace Theatre
Martin Zellar and the Hardways @ Parkway Theater
Mae Simpson, Colin Bracewell, and School of Rock @ Pilllar Forum
Christy & the CC Club, C.U.N.T., Fiona Hayes, Darkling I listen @ Pilllar Forum
Them Dots, Cindy Lawson & Jerry Lefkowitz @ Schooner Tavern
Interlay with 12th House Sun and abalone @ 7th St Entry
Customers Band, Lone Sum, Nancy Gross @ Terminal Bar
Close to Toast, Paper Beast, SYFN @ 331 Club
FLUID FREQUENCIES x Dutchess x The Apothecarium @ Uptown VFW
Sounds of Schmidt @ White Squirrel
The Sounds of Many, Muun Baato, Lent, the Modern Era @ White Squirrel
Bluehound, the Symptones, Mild Manner @ Zhora Darling
Sunday, October 18
Witchybois & Friends @ Amsterdam
Sunday Swing Brunch @ Aster Cafe
Sounds From Planet IE feat. American Cream Band & Shawn Walker @ Berlin
YOLO Reunion Dance Party @ Black Hart
Richard Shindell @ Cedar Cultural Center
Dorothy Doring and Rick Alexander @ Crooners
Phine & Friends, Shotgun Ragtime Band @ Driftwood Char Bar
Lenz & Frenz Open Jam @ Dual Citizen
Sunday Trad Session @ Dubliner Pub
Irish Set Dance @ Eagles 34
TC Ramblers @ Eagles 34
Twin Cities Country Dancers @ Eagles 34
Karaoke with Reina Starr @ Eagles 34
Medium Build, Bella White @ First Avenue
Beethoven Piano Trios @ Metronome Brewery
Church of Cornbread @ Schooner Tavern
Will Dempsey, Gavin Hughes @ 7th St Entry
Disney Descendents, Zombies, & Camp Rock @ Target Center
Bryan White, Jackson White @ 318 Cafe
Eleven Degenerates, Robert Wilkinson, Switchyard @ 331 Club
Sounds of Schmidt @ White Squirrel
Karaoke with Ally @ White Squirrel
Monday, October 19
Fleshpots of Egypt: Hymntap @ Dubliner Pub
The Army, the Navy with Ella Woolsey @ Fine Line
Free Community Concert @ Metronome Brewery
Blues Jam with Moses Oakland @ Midway Saloon
Monday Jam @ Minnesota Music Cafe
Bright Young Things, Kilroy, Issy @ Pilllar Forum
RAV with Teller Bank$ and Fatboi Sharif @ 7th St Entry
4 Star Review, the Comebacks @ White Squirrel
Your Favorite Crybaby, Aeris and the Piggies, Living Bloom @ White Squirrel
