There are some fantastic concerts happening this weekend! Here’s the 411.
FRIDAY
Music Midtown @ Piedmont Park
Music Midtown is finally here! Artists performing on FRIDAY include: Ron Pope, Mayer Hawthorn, Bear Hands, Run DMC, Iggy Izalea, Lorde, Jack White, and John Mayer.
Hawthorne Heights w/ Red Jumpsuit Apparatus @ The Loft
Remember when today’s middle-aged working stiffs were once young Generation X-types who were wearing ironic T-shirts reading “FREAK” or “LOSER,” words that mirrored their grunge-centric ennui? Then there was one band who made that pervading nihilism even more stylish by rocking black shirts with the word “zero” in silver glitter. But while the z-word has the capacity to taint test scores, bank balances and attempts at self-actualization in ways no other common integer can, it does represent more positive ideals. Consider the terminology used by project managers to herald the beginning of a big project: Year Zero. What’s the numerical equivalent used when someone uses the metaphor of “hitting the reset button” on their lives and/or careers? That’s right: zero.
For the members of Hawthorne Heights, the word (or number) isn’t the providence of losers, nor a bastion of stylish disconnection. Zero, the fifth album from the Dayton, Ohio, outfit, represents a positively incandescent future. Now aligning themselves with Red River Entertainment, Hawthorne Heights—singer/guitarist JT Woodruff, guitarists Micah Carli and Mark McMillion, bassist Matt Ridenour and drummer Eron Bucciarelli—are rising above their post-hardcore roots in ambitious measures. Overseen by producer Brian Virtue, Zero marks a wider breadth of the band’s capacity to create compelling work, regardless of the social implications found in certain music subcultures.
Show starts at 6:30 pm.
Antigone Rising w/ Special Guest Trina Hamlin @ Eddie’s Attic
Show starts at 7 pm.
Keb Mo and Mavis Staples @ Atlanta Botanical Garden
Three-time Grammy winner and visionary roots-music storyteller Keb’ Mo’ embarks on a new chapter in his career with the April 22 release of BLUESAmericana on Kind of Blue Music. His twelfth full-length album marks the 20th anniversary of his debut Keb’ Mo’, but, more important, the disc is a signpost of artistic and personal growth. At its core, the album is about love and understanding. Those qualities are expressed in some of the most poignant and joyfully melodic numbers Keb has ever recorded. Many of them, including the pledge of commitment “Do It Right” and the reflective “For Better Or Worse,” assay devotion and marriage. The thorny, comic “The Worst is Yet To Come” is about hope, despite the hilarious laundry list of pitfalls its protagonist endures as he searches for a silver lining. And “Somebody Hurt You” is, in Keb’s words, “where the blues meets the church.” That number features Rip Patton, a longtime friend and Civil Rights era Freedom Rider, on beatific bass vocals. “My first intention was to make a stripped-down acoustic album — just me and my guitar playing some songs. But” — Keb laughs — “I couldn’t do it! I love ensembles so much.”
Show starts at 8pm.
Ryan Montbleau @ Eddie’s Attic
Songs for Ryan Montbleau typically need to simmer. In his 10-year career this gifted singer and his limber band have built their catalog the old-fashioned way, by introducing new songs to their live set, then bending and shaping them over dozens of performances before committing a definitive version to the hard drive. For that and many other reasons, Montbleau’s latest album, For Higher, is quite literally a departure. Well-established out of his home base in the Northeast, the singer threw himself into New Orleans, where everything is slow-cooked, for a few fast-moving days — and whipped up an instant delicacy. A few of the cuts on the new album — the playful stomp of “Deadset” or “Head Above Water,” freshly peppered with horns — were already part of the Ryan Montbleau Band’s ever-growing repertoire. But the majority, including four handpicked cover tunes — stone soul nuggets from Bill Withers, Curtis Mayfield, the late Muscle Shoals guitarist Eddie Hinton and more — came together spontaneously, with little prep work. It was a feel thing, with Montbleau putting heads together with fellow music head Ben Ellman of New Orleans flag-bearers Galactic. The singer and songwriter first eased his way into the city when he was invited to contribute songs to Backatown, the breakthrough album of favorite son Trombone Shorty. That went so well, Montbleau co-wrote two more songs for Shorty’s recent follow-up, “For True.”
Show starts at 9:30 pm.
Earth w/ King Dude @ The Drunken Unicorn
Earth’s career, like its music, has always been a slow, deliberate progression. Each record slightly removed from the last, a constant refinement of a singular vision. Dylan Carlson has remained focused throughout on coaxing moments of strange beauty and reflection from “the riff”. This elemental foundation of rock is refracted, in their earliest recordings, through the prism of sheer volume & feedbacking drone or, in the twin Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light set from 2011 & 2012, via a sparse unraveling take on folk. With Primitive and Deadly, Earth’s tenth studio collection, Carlson & long term foil, drummer Adrienne Davies, manage to pull off the trick of completing an Ouroborean creative cycle, 25 years in the making, whilst exploring new directions in Earth’s music. For the first time in their diverse second act, they allow themselves to be a ROCK band, freed of adornment and embellishment.
Doors open at 9 pm.
Lydia Loveless w/ Special Guest @ The EARL
