2010 Music Showcase: 1 night, 50+ bands, 5 bucks this Saturday on Wash. Ave.

Madahoochi 
If you think that Madahoochi, one of this city's longest-running jam bands, is stuck in the paisley-colored past, you haven't been paying attention. Last year the band released "Text Slut," a synthed-up, hard-rocking cautionary tale about textual intercourse (the accompanying video, filmed at Cicero's, is worth a look as well). The song is a reminder of how Madahoochi has stayed vital for so long: by constantly tweaking its style of feel-good rock & roll to absorb modern styles, while retaining its classic-rock leanings. (CS)

Messy Jiverson 
If a typical jam band relies on back-and-forth improvisation among musically dexterous band members, Messy Jiverson doesn't exactly fit that mold. The sextet's songs are like long-playing grooves, with well-defined melodic lines and a reliance on harmony over sonic exploration. Nate Carpenter pumps gallons of funk from his vintage keyboard rig, a place where smooth electric pianos, deranged analog synths and burbling Hammond organ chords bob and weave around one another. Thankfully, you can still dance to the music; these intuitive players never let the beat drop. (CS)
9:30 p.m., Lola

Teddy Presberg 
From the first note he plays, you can tell that Teddy Presberg is a jazz guitarist. He nails that sweet, dulcet tone of the finest jazz stylists, from Wes Montgomery to George Benson. But like modern guitar heroes (John Scofield in particular), Presberg isn't weighed down by jazz tradition. His latest, Outcries From a Sea of Red, provides a tour through his stylistic passions. Presberg incorporates everything from New Orleans funk to synth rock to slinky blues in these original compositions. (CS)
8:15 p.m., Lola

Best Jazz Artist

Willie Akins
The dean of St. Louis saxophonists, Willie Akins needs another RFT Music Award nomination like he needs a Mel Bay guide on riffing. But he's just as deserving, having established a sound — ripe, flexible, swinging and soulful — that is his alone and that still sets the standards for any jazz-band leader, in a town with a long history of masters. His every set is a generous, stunning clinic on the art of the golden horn. (RK)

Hamiet Bluiett
Miles Davis prominently featured the baritone saxophone on Birth of the Cool, and Oliver Nelson used the instrument to anchor his seminal The Blues and the Abstract Truth. However, neither St. Louisan revolutionized the instrument like Hamiet Bluiett has. Fascinated with the baritone's sonic palette, Bluiett has made it scream for mercy alongside free-jazz icon Sam Rivers and made it sing like a canary while accompanying Stevie Wonder. Bluiett has been baring his soul on his bari for half a century, but with recent accolades in the New York Times and All About Jazz, the world is finally catching up to what us locals already know. (RW) Dave Stone
If Dave Stone played an instrument less conventional than the saxophone, he would be nominated for Best Noise Artist rather than lumped in with swingers and beboppers. If jazz traditionalists had legal authority, Stone would burn at the stake. If a line exists, Stone will discover the beauty in its crossing. And if the Mangia Friday-night resident musician has built a reputation as a jazz heretic, it's because his improvisations live within the genre's most polarizing gray areas: between dissonance and atonality, melody and texture, and free jazz and noise. (RW)
7 p.m., Lucas Park Grille

Jeanne Trevor
Four decades of performing in St. Louis haven't tarnished the luster of Jeanne Trevor's voice. She still sings with the open-heartedness and playfulness of a remarkably gifted jazz vocalist who's still discovering how far those gifts can take her. Her repertoire and influences are impeccable — Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald — and her charisma and grace onstage have made her the First Lady of Jazz in St. Louis. (RK)

Best Live Band
Dogtown Allstars
It's hard to remember a time without the Dogtown Allstars — after all, the quartet has been playing live funk so well for so long now. The band knows that its sound — slow-burning, percolating groove music — is best experienced live and in-person, so it doesn't even bother trying to capture that energy in a recording studio. So when you come across the Dogtown Allstars at regular gigs around town, be prepared for a relentless rhythm section, some fleet-fingered organ solos, jazzy guitar licks and plenty of hip-shaking from the crowd. (CS)
midnight, Lola

Fattback 
You never know what to expect from a Fattback show. For a band that draws on Southern rock, reggae, country, surf rock and beyond, its live performances can touch on any — and all — of those styles. It helps that Fattback has not one, but two frontmen: John Joern and Dave Hagerty switch off drum and guitar duties, and both manage to make their bizarre fever-dream songs come to life. (CS)
1 a.m., The Dubliner

The Feed
At their core, the Feed's songs are piano-pop ditties that glide along with a Brill Building-esque sense of harmony and tempo. But in concert, the band shows no mercy in deconstructing these tunes and adding on layers of funk, soul, jazz and noise. The Feed now operates as a duo featuring keyboardist Dave Grelle and drummer Kevin Bowers, but the pair still manages to make a big racket onstage by pairing scholarly levels of musical literacy with a jazzman's sense of improvisation and communication. (CS)
5 p.m., Main Outdoor Stage (14th & Washington)