Each week we bring you our picks for the best shows of the next seven days! To submit your show for consideration, click here. All events subject to change; check with the venue for the most up-to-date information.
ShowcaseSTL
7 p.m. Friday, June 21 and 1:30 p.m. Saturday, June 22. Multiple venues in the Grove, Manchester Avenue. $20 to $25.
OK, sure, we're biased — it is our event, after all — but we're confident that ShowcaseSTL will be one of the best events of the week, if not the year. More than 100 of our favorite St. Louis acts will converge on the Grove for a two-day celebration of the city's extensive musical talent. For a full rundown of every single act, including links to music, check out our complete guide to the the fest here.
—Daniel Hill
Matt Harnish’s Guided By Voices Record Spin
9:30 p.m. Friday, June 21. The Royale, 3132 South Kingshighway Boulevard. Free. 314-772-3600.
A recent New York Times exposé on a 2008 studio fire that wiped out an untold number of master recordings, including work by everyone from John Coltrane to the Roots, gave music fans pause: It reminded us of the physical, fragile nature of our favorite songs and how they could easily be lost to antiquity. It is unclear where Robert Pollard stores his archives — perhaps on a dusty shelf in a Dayton, Ohio, garage — but wherever they are, they must be vast. As the leader of Guided by Voices and several other offshoots, Pollard has written and recorded a huge number of songs, often releasing several albums and EPs in a single year. Local superfan (and Bunnygrunt honcho) Matt Harnish probably owns copies of all of them, luckily, and he’s planning on sharing them with an all-Pollard spin at the Royale this week. He’s promised to only play one song per release, meaning that picking the best from Alien Lanes or Isolation Drills is a heroic task best left to a true scholar like Harnish.
Scat Man: In a nice bit of serendipity, the Royale’s longtime barman Robert Griffin, who released GBV’s beloved Bee Thousand on his Scat Records imprint, will be behind the stick all night.
—Christian Schaeffer
John Paul White
8 p.m. Wednesday, June 26. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Boulevard. $20 to $25. 314-726-6161.
For five years, fans of the Civil Wars have been waiting for news of a reunion. Based on the career path of the duo’s guitarist and co-songwriter, John Paul White, they’ll need to get over it. White has embraced a low-key schedule, relishing the small-club circuit and the freedom to develop a quality label. His Single Lock Records has supported artists in and around his native Muscle Shoals, Alabama, area, the fecund terrain that sustains his own way with blues, soul and honky tonk. On The Hurting Kind, this year’s second post-Civil Wars solo album, White channels the eerie croon of Roy Orbison, duets with Lee Ann Womack and embraces twin-fiddle and pedal steel sounds. His soaring voice remains the most underrated instrument in American music.
Shimmer and Twang: Recent signees to White’s Single Lock label the Prescriptions open with lots of bright, Byrdsy guitar chime and even more hazy country rock.
—Roy Kasten
