[COUNTRY] Almost governor of Texas, storyteller, and songwriter Kinky Friedman, returns to Buffalo for a show at Buffalo Iron Works on Friday, July 6. The 73-year-old musician makes country rock music that often times has a political bent touching on everything from racism to animal cruelty. He’ll be joined by Americana singer/songwriter Brian Molnar.
[INDIE] Following the 4th of July, the Elmwood Village Association Summer Concert Series continues with The Tins. The Buffalo-based indie rock band is performing on the heels of their new, self-titled record, which was produced by the Goo Goo Dolls’ Robby Takac and features cover art by Rolling Stone cover artist Philip Burke. The free concert takes place at Bidwell Parkway at the corner of Elmwood Avenue on Tuesday, July 10 at 7pm.
[TRIBUTE] After a week off for Independence Day, the free Live at Larkin concert series returns with Workingman’s Dead. The five piece Grateful Dead cover band, which plays “Grateful Dead music for deadheads by deadheads,” is one of the most popular Grateful Dead tribute acts in the region. Catch them on Wednesday, July 11 in Larkin Square.
[TECHNO] A new, queer-focused house and techno dance party launches this week from new promoters Ghost Stories. The party will feature headliner Rachel Noon, herself a founding member of the Brooklyn-based queer party collective Large Marge. The native New Yorker, who has shared the decks with notable names in the techno and house worlds, brings to the table techno in all forms from minimal to bombastic—often rigid, upright, and sharp, perhaps informed by her daytimes spent as an architect.
[ROCK] Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies return to Buffalo for a concert at Artpark on Tuesday, July 10. The band is touring in support of their 2017 album Fake Nudes, produced by Gavin Brown, who has also worked with bands like New Kids On The Block, Three Days Grace, and Hoobastank. Opening sets come from Better Than Ezra and KT Tunstall.
[JAM] Quintessential jam band Umphrey’s McGee comes to the Canalside stage for the next Canalside Live concert this Thursday, June 28. The jam band from South Bend, Indiana have been active since 1997, touring the country relentlessly and making a name for themselves early on with hits on college radio stations. With a streak of progressive rock shot through their straight up jam band style, the band has released 11 studio albums, including their most recent, It’s Not You.
[ROCK] As package tours go, this is a pretty reasonable pairing that should capture a solid cross-section of fans, which is why it’s been held over for another 40 dates after last summer’s run. 2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Steve Miller continues to sell out gigs year after year mainly on the strength of material from his 13 million selling Greatest Hits 1974-78, which contains a run of hits so deeply ingrained in our collective consciousness, we couldn’t forget them if we wanted to.
[CLASSICAL] ArtPark’s Free Music in the Woods series launches this Sunday, July 8 with a performance by the Boleo Quartet, a classical and baroque chamber music ensemble featuring Moshe Shulman. The series will run for seven Sundays throughout July and will feature future performances by Buffalo Gamelan Club, UB Percussion Ensemble, Buffalo Tango Orkestra, and more. For more info check out artpark.net.
[AMERICANA] If the grain silos are a fascination of yours – and you’re not alone in your curiosity — Silo City Alive presents an opportunity to check them out much more closely while taking in an afternoon of music and art. Musically, the event has an Americana slant (and is presented by the Sportsmen’s Americana Music Foundation), featuring the neo-twang of Steam Donkeys, Folkfaces, First Ward, Leroy Townes Band, The Rust Belt Birds, Dee Adams, Uncle Ben’s Remedy, Mom Said No, CPX, and Ten Cent Howl.
[ROCK] To some, James Taylor might seem like little more than a purveyor of bittersweet sentiment on the outskirts of rock and roll — a crooner in troubadour’s clothing that soothed the weary minds of a counterculture rendered exhausted in the early and mid 1970s. And while elements of that characterization may ring true, Taylor is more than sentimentality bottled in an acoustic-pop format—you don’t sell 100 million records being so-so. In fact, for 40 years, every album James Taylor released sold over a million copies.
[HIP HOP] This spring has been pretty jam packed with blockbuster hip hop albums from Kanye West, Nas, Jay Z and Beyonce, and others, so it’s possible that Tory Lanez’s latest record, Memories Don’t Die, which was released in March, might have gotten lost in the mix. It’s worth revisiting though as the record features a solid and eclectic line up of producers—from AraabMuzik, to Cashmere Cat, and C-Sick—and features from 50 Center, Future, and more.
[HIP HOP] Mental health is a topic at the center of our nation’s conversation, especially this month after the suicides of celebrities Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. Oddly enough, that makes it a good time to revisit one of last year’s biggest summer hip hop hits. The hit we’re talking about is Logic’s “1-800-273-8255,” a song and music video that entered the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline phone number into the pop-culture lexicon.
[FOLK] A founding member of the Grammy Award Winning band Carolina Chocolate Drops, Rhiannon Giddens is a multi-instrumentalist from Greensboro North Carolina. Lightly strumming a five-string banjo, Giddens delivers entrancing, mysterious mountain-folk music on songs like “Wayfaring Stranger,” which has amassed hundreds of thousands of views on Youtube. As a solo musician and as part of Carolina Chocolate Drops, Giddens plays everything from her five-string banjo, to fiddle and kazoo, and sings with a voice that’s at once powerful and comforting.