WHAT: Ron Pope, Ari Herstand
WHERE: Canopy Club ($12 advance)
WHEN: Thursday, May 19th at 9:00 p.m.
Thursday night brings a pair of touring singer/songwriters to the Canopy. While Ron Pope’s bio is the kind of stuff that makes you curse whoever invented the concept of PR, the music is actually pretty enjoyable once you divorce it from the recording deal with Universal and numerous placement spots on shit like So You Think You Can Dance. Opener Ari Herstand is one of those looping one man band projects, with seemingly solid results.
WHAT: Redleg
WHERE: Cowboy Monkey ($5)
WHEN: Thursday, May 19th at 10:00 p.m.
Redleg were formerly Crane and Badger, so those who saw them know the deal: walls of noise, space vocals, and a serious amount of volume. Bring earplugs.
WHAT: New Ruins, the Leadership, Andrew Voris
WHERE: Mike ‘N Molly’s ($5)
WHEN: Friday, May 20th at 9:30 p.m.
A good chance to peep some of New Ruins’ new material when they take a foray out of the studio to play a show along with the Leadership, who are quite simply phenomenal live. Five bucks also gets you comedian Andrew Voris.
WHAT: Eva Hunter Band, Ghosttown Gramophone, An Evening with Your Mother, the Palace Flophouse
WHERE: IMC ($5/8)
WHEN: Saturday, May 21st at 6:00 p.m.
As it turns out, there are actually bands from Bloomington, and two of them are playing this show (Eva Hunter and Ghosttown Gramophone). While the combination of two traditional folk acts with An Evening with Your Mother and the Palace Flophouse seems odd on paper, I’m betting it works out well in practice, netting each band a set of listeners they wouldn’t normally have.
WHAT: Withershins, Alpha Mile, Rusalka
WHERE: Mike ‘N Molly’s ($5)
WHEN: Saturday, May 21st at 10:00 p.m.
Nothing tickles me more than seeing a band like Rusalka playing with Alpha Mile and Withershins. While all three are sonically pretty similar, Rusalka have come up in the house show scene and Withershins/Alpha Mile are downtown Champaign stalwarts.