MusiCal (July 2012)

 By Don Allred

Joe Walsh

Convivial singer/songwriter/lead guitarist Joe Walsh spent much of his childhood in Columbus, then ascended from Kent State with the radio-ready, festival-relishing James Gang. Walsh leavened 70s rock star heaven with wry lines, squeaking past the dramatic intro of his solo hit, “Life’s Been Good”: “My Maserati does 185/I lost my license, now I don’t drive.” Nevertheless, his lifestyle went habitually wild, especially while flying with the Eagles. The catchy candor of 2012’s Analog Man will meet and greet Walsh’s career-spanning audience favorites with sobriety’s star-spangled sonic tonic, on Independence Day.

07/04 @ Dublin Coffman High School Stadium, 6780 Coffman Rd, 5 p.m.

No Coast Fest

Reggae and rock shake a musical family tree tonight, especially when Brooklyn’s Folkadelics spark Jamaican traces of hip-hop’s roots. They’d “rather be a lover than a fighter--start the commotion!” “Folsom Prison Blues” morphs into a mighty chain-gang ripple, while fresh inflections rouse the careful cool of “Norwegian Wood.” Equally organic Columbus hybrids Devil’s Lettuce and Shrub (whose studio projects currently ingest the massive cred of rock producer Sylvia Massey and Ohio beat transformer Blueprint) also provide cogent smoke signals over the rugged rainbow. Ditto Minneapolis trio Jon Wayne and the Pain, who promise “reggaetronic dub.”

07/07 @ Woodlands Tavern, 1200 W Third Ave., 8 p.m.

Margot & The Nuclear So And So’s/Winter Makes Sailors

Margot & The Nuclear So And So’s’ Rot Gut, Domestic tilts through fractured stained glass love hangovers and breeze-blessed “Prozac Rock.” Margot multi-instrumentalist Erik Kang will sit in with Columbus neighbors Winter Makes Sailors “for a couple of numbers. He’s all over the new record,” says WMS’s Sean Gardner. This show includes some forthcoming songs, like "Swearing at Motorists,” which Gardner describes as ”a tribute to the band, also a true story of pure road rage turned melodic anthem.” As with Margot, we’ll hear just what can sound so good about feeling bad.

07/13 @ The Basement, 391 Neil Ave., 7 p.m.

All Good Festival

Along with the Grateful Dead’s living legacy of Phil Lesh & Friends, the Mickey Hart Band, and Bob Weir with Bruce Hornsby and Branford Marsalis (yet no typically overlapping festival sets), AGF includes The Flaming Lips’ psych-pop hijinks, Lotus’s rocktronica, Yonder Mountain String Band’s joy-riding Americana, and Michael Franti’s funky crossroads commentaries. Charities and the arts groove together; various local legends launch the Late Late Night series of dubstep, house, and other electric dreams. 

07/19-22 @ Legend Valley Concert Venue And Campground, Thornville, noon

Columbus Rocks The Cure

Columbus Rocks The Cure’s charitable events are helmed by Amee BellWanzo of Black Eyed Betty, whose resourceful practicality also applies to musical self-expression. They’re classic punks; nevertheless, “Slipped Away” matches undulating verses with abrasive breaks, like the Pretenders meeting Motorhead. The Girls! slyly apply booze to romantic wounds, versatile Millur Boyette specialize in stress-testing TV themes, Post Coma Network channel plush dance rhythms, and Fresh Wreckage rock some funky, juicy positivity. All proceeds purchase gas cards and wigs for local cancer survivors, via American Cancer Society Patient Navigator and Columbus’s Hair Theatre Fund.

07/20 @ Skully’s, 1151 N. High St., 9 p.m.

Indigo Girls/Shadowboxers

“Now when the springtime comes around/I’m gonna lay it down/Gonna give ‘em a smile/And just a little doubt.” No doubt about that vow from the Indigo Girls, who, like many a good-hearted, well-meaning woman, “just can’t keep from makin’ promises.” Although the folk-rocking indie role models have maintained their mindful momentum for nearly thirty years, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers show no complacency. On Saliers’ birthday, the Indigo Girls greet us with full-band support from the robust vocal and instrumental harmonies of Atlanta’s Shadowboxers, who also get their own opening set.

07/22 @ The LC Pavilion, 405 Neil. Ave, 7 p.m.

Best Coast/Those Darlins

On Best Coast’s second album, The Only Place, Beverly Cosentino stares down a break-up, though sharp edges curve back into shades of reflected gray, so she rides an emotional undertow, balancing increasingly rich melodies and succinct strength, sometimes with a tough East Coast-associated Italian-American accent, Cosentino and her multi-instrumental Merlin, Bobb Bruno, currently cruising with their shimmering garage-pop quartet, are supported by twangy janglers Those Darlins: three sharper-than-rhinestone gals and their drumming pal Linwood, often armed with another smart answer to bad love, and even the mirror.

07/23 @ Newport Music Hall, 1722 High St., 7 p.m.

Shockwave Metal Festival 2012

With its three surviving founders back on board, times guitarist Daniel “Chewy” Mongrain, thrash-prog visionary quartet Voivod provides strenuous inspiration for Shockwave 2012. Matt DeVries, veteran of Cleveland’s Chimaira, now extends his guitar smarts into bass tentacles, shadowing Fear Factory lead guitarist Dino Cazares’ seven- and eight-string probes. Fear Factory’s The Industrialist projects the progress of a Frankensteinian pilgrim. Cattle Decapitation’s Monolith of Inhumanity, though more pessimistic, reaches ravenously for new infusions of melodic mayhem. Shockwave’s dark, hearty catharsis also blood harvests Revocation, served with the viciously nutritious stew of Havok, Dirge Within, Vildhjarta, The Browning, and Forged In Flame. 

07/27 @ Alrosa Villa, 5055 Sinclair Rd., 2 p.m.

New Riders of the Purple Sage

Jerry Garcia and singer/picker David Nelson’s pre-Dead country adventures morphed into New Riders Of The Purple Sage. Nelson, with Garcia’s steel guitar successor, Buddy Cage (participant in Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks), reformed New Riders in 2005, recruiting Hot Tuna guitarist Michael Falzarano, plus two from self-stamped “swamp groove“ unit Stir Fry, bassist Ronnie Penque and drummer Johnny Markowski. NRPS roll deft jams and tight tunes, many (from 2009’s Where I Come From and 2012’s 17 Pine Avenue) written with Garcia lyricist Robert Hunter, who keeps Riders swirling around a “Barracuda Moon,” and curtly invokes the “difference between a bad loan/And a debt.” Nelson’s subtly Dylanesque delivery underscores such lines with dry wit. Expect their aromatic hit, “Panama Red.”

07/27 @ Woodlands Tavern, 1200 W Third Ave. ,8 p.m.

Hoodoo Soul Band

Audience-wise, the eleven-man, umpteen-instrument, almost eighteen-year-old Hoodoo Soul Band’s Boomers and Gen Xers get regenerated, while twenty-somethings learn to burn through “Sex Machine,” “What Is Hip?,” “Ring of Fire,” and a customization of the Black Crowes’ version of Otis Redding’s “Hard To Handle.”  Plus: Parliament-Funkadelic, Average White Band, Marvin Gaye--not to mention Columbus cowboy Dwight Yoakam’ s “Guitars, Cadillacs.” Paul Simon’s “Late In The Evening” and “You Can Call Me Al” provide percussive trade-offs. Also offering voices, horns, guitars, keyboards, and a harmonica, everybody is a star, ‘cause opportunity’s always knocking.

07/29 @ Rumba Cafe, 2507 Summit St., 10 p.m.