1) Like beats, bleeps, bloops, and beers? Tonight (Wednesday) at the Boiled Owl Tavern (909 W Magnolia), there’s an all-electronica show featuring Lexington, KY’s Blood Handsome at 11pm. The show is anchored by Starbass Laboratories at midnight, with Loose Pony and Beachpriest in the 10 and 9pm spots, respectively. Please be chill and don’t balk at the $5 suggested donation; bands gotta eat too, and anyway, word on the street is that the Owl’s drinks are hella cheap on Wednesday nights, like five years running. Check out Blood Handsome in something called a Living Room Session. Wonder what that is all about!
2) Newly reconfigured and ready to um, ramble, Whiskey Folk Ramblers are headlining Lola’s Saloon (2736 6th St) on Friday night in support of bluegrass punker Luke McGlathery’s new CD release. McGlathery and his band play in the 11pm spot, and blues shredder Michael Lee Clemmer and his band, the Wartime Limosine. All ages, $10 cover. Here’s MLC gettin’ it at the Gas Monkey:
3) Saturday afternoon at Shipping & Receiving (201 S Calhoun), there’s a benefit for Trinity Habitat for Humanity, called VINO-Palooza. As you probably guessed, wine is the main hook of this thing, but it also features unplugged performances from world famous pop icon Ryan Cabrera, as well as Yellowcard’s Ryan Key, Nash Overstreet (of dance-rock band Hot Chella Rae), and Son of Stan. Over 20 wineries, craft breweries and local distilleries are on hand to provide food and drink samples, so go be charitable, and be sure to take a Lyft to and from the event, because a DWI is a miserable way to end what will otherwise be an entertaining afternoon. VINO-Palooza is 21+ only, and it runs from 1-5pm; get tickets at this link. Here’s Ryan Key covering Weezer and talking about the event:
4) Also on Saturday: Division Rock Show at Division Brewing in Arlington (506 E Main). This installment of the new breweries live music series features Dead Vinyl, Jeremiah Jackson (from Waco), and Springtime and the Changes, the solo project of Teenage Sexx drummer Charlie DeBolt. Dead Vinyl always puts on an entertaining rock show – they’re heavy on the Zeppelin influence, so if you’re looking for a thing to go bond with your dad, beer and fuzzed out, high octane blues riffs are a good pretext to get him out of the house. Hell, bring mom along, too! She probably partied to “Rock ’n Roll” a bit when she was your age, too. This is a video about Division Brewing put out by the city of Arlington:
5) Legendary local band Pop Poppins plays the Live Oak Lounge (1311 Lipscomb) on Saturday night, so I’m gonna call this the Team to Beat Show of the Week. I remember hearing about them when I as a DJ at KTCU in 1997 along with the phrase “indie rock” when that was a new genre that meant something different than it does now. “King of song-style” Kevin Aldridge cites them as a huge influence, and he’s opening the show, so I imagine he’ll be on cloud nine for this one. Tickets start at $8, and the all-ages show begins at 9. In this video, Pop Poppins plays at the Green Elephant near SMU sometime in the s’90s, and it is a charming bit of that decade’s aesthetics:
