Acclaimed roughshod guitar-and-drums garage-rock duo with streaks of psychedelia and gritty blues, arguably the heart of the lineup over at Ohio indie powerhouse label Fat Possum Records. The Whigs open with muddy distorted guitar riffs doused with muted arena-rock tendencies.

The Whigs - Kill Me Carolyne
The Whigs - Hundred Million

Legendary 1970’s soul singer with heavy sonic influences stemming from a short stint into gospel, even though its principles might be construed as directly opposed to his highly seductive secular material.

Hip-hop derived electronica trio. MartyParty and DJ XSV open.

Solo performance by the Richmond indie-folk singer-songwriter.

David Shultz - Natural

Energetic upbeat piano-pop singalongs. Fellow indie-pop buzz bands Drink Up Buttercup and Via Audio open.

Jukebox The Ghost - Hold It In
Jukebox The Ghost - Good Day
Jukebox The Ghost - Victoria
Jukebox The Ghost - Empire

Drink Up Buttercup - Ladies
Drink Up Buttercup - Mr Pie Eyes
Drink Up Buttercup - Gods And Gentlemen

Via Audio - Babies

Springsteen-enamored rock singer-songwriter. Swedish pop-rock sensation Moneybrother opens.

Moneybrother - Down At The R
Moneybrother - Born Under A Bad Sign

Danceable funk.

Jazzy jamband

Bluesy garage rock

The rock department at WTJU celebrates their recent triumph over the proposed format and scheduling changes with a “Welcome Back” show for UVA that hosts the popular local rock songwriter at the University’s outdoor amphitheater. With Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand and Caninos.

Reggae

Singer-songwriters

Six-piece Colorado bluegrass band

Rock covers

Acoustic jazz guitar

Cajun punk

Jolie Fille - Lake Arthur Stomp

Rock, soul, and blues

Blues and rock

Jazz

Jazz

Richmond jazz singer

Acoustic roots-rock, bluegrass, and country guitarist

Hank Williams tribute and a handful of originals led by the star of Live Arts‘ recent production of Lost Highway.

Singer-songwriter

Evan Lewis - Alone
Evan Lewis - Millers River

Fiddle and banjo

Acoustic instruments only

Contemporary acoustic folk

Irish and Appalachian music

Impossibly prolific songwriters Jason and Maryline Pollock celebrate the release of their latest album; we’ve lost count at this point. French Girl reflects on the long-distance relationship that developed in the years right after the couple first met in 1997 — “the hardship and rewards of a love worth fighting for,” as Jason eloquently puts it — and the release show will feature Bobby Read on sax and local folk songwriter Terri Allard on backup vocals.

The Pollocks - Perfume
The Pollocks - Medication
The Pollocks - Changeless

(more)

“Funky Urban Southern Ensemble” featuring pianist Jim Wray and percussionist Darrell Rose, among others.

F.U.S.E. - Oregon Green
F.U.S.E. - Silhouette
F.U.S.E. - Summer Dawn

UNC-Greensboro professor performs Chopin on piano and talks about the composer.

“Symphony Under The Stars” performance featuring Sousa, Gershwin, showtunes, and soundtrack selections from movies including Superman and An American Tail — and, for those of you who can stomach it and stick around, Samuel Barber’s magnificently sad Adagio For Strings commemorates 9/11.

Local multi-instrumentalist Matty Metcalfe already has an uphill battle, since he focuses pretty heavily on the accordion. On top of that, his new album consists entirely of tangos and an archaic French dance form called musettes which were widely consumed in the early 1900s, spreading between Argentina, France, and Eastern Europe, and making it over to Metcalfe’s previous home of New Orleans around the time Scott Joplin was building the mold for American ragtime. Now Metcalfe is out to update them for contemporary audiences by rendering them with updated instrumentation and dropping in pop references— think Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, and Tom Waits.

“If people forgot how great these songs are, whether they’re from the 1910s or the 1980s, I wanted to remind them,” he explains.

This is trickier than your average straightforward vanilla accordion cover (which would still be plenty amusing) because each of the forms he’s following comes with a set of rules governing how the pieces must operate, and these will generally be totally out of whack with the original compositions. Think of how blues was formalized into the twelve-bar scheme, or how heavy metal almost always requires a distortion pedal. It’s kind of like trying to rewrite a legal brief using only limericks.

“I think maybe the subtext is that I’m trying to show how music is cyclical or is interconnected or can redefine itself,” he says. “‘Build Me Up Buttercup‘ can be the theme song for There’s Something About Mary, or ‘I’m A Believer‘ for Shrek. A good song is a good song, and the form isn’t as important.”

And that goal is still intact, albeit more abstracted, on the original songs, where he’s more interested in imitating master composers like Ástor Piazzolla instead of just quoting pop songs. For the most part they still sound pretty archaic, actually, since the electric guitars will take a back seat to more prominent elements like the waltzy 3/4 time signatures and the Django-inspired melodic phrasing, but that they’re even the focus of a new album in the first place is probably still a step in the right direction. “People who haven’t heard of these forms,” says Metcalfe, “might get interested in some of these older people and the thread that exists between them and us.

Resolving the conflicts between contemporary audiences and historically significant material is all part of the fun.

“‘Form’ is a synonym for ‘order’ in music,” he says. “It’s like your body parts. Everybody has different parts that make them unique, but the thing that people relate to is whatever’s on the inside. Whatever you can do to that to make yourself interesting, wearing earrings or whatever, gets you into the heart.”

In other words, even major structural features can change without necessarily betraying the composition, as long as the crucial elements— be they lyrical, rhythmic, or melodic— are carried through. You can look and you will find them. Time after time.

~

Metcalfe performs Sunday, August 29 at the Louisa Arts Center to celebrate the release of his two new albums. Show is at 4pm, and tickets are $10.

Charlottesville-bred country singer — “I went to Monticello High School but dropped out and don’t regret it!”, he writes. “Though I’m now studying for my GED and hope to become a truck driver within the next year.” This perhaps explains the source of the sinister undercurrent that pops up when he dispenses with the lighthearted lyrics and honky-tonk jangle and instead starts singing about chains and torture chambers, but unfortunately it’s pretty hard to feel sad for a guy named Corndawg so you almost expect him to flip that into a tribute to the new Saw movie or something. With Futurebirds and local songwriter Megan Huddleston’s folky Hackensaw-approved project Mister Baby.

Jonny Corndawg - The Life Of A Bear

Pianist and pop singer-songwriter of the Grey’s Anatomy variety. Acclaimed Irish folk-pop duo The Guggenheim Grotto opens.

The Guggenheim Grotto - The Universe Is Laughing
The Guggenheim Grotto - Wisdom

Jamband. With Wyllys.

Blistering garage-rock punks spun off from the promising but short-lived Nashville teen brat band Be Your Own Pet.

Country singer

Fredricksburg jamband guitarist who performs as a one-man band using a loop sampler. Highly amusing, but probably unrelated: he’s also releasing an album of children’s music on October 26, when he’ll be out on tour with the powerhouse Nickelodeon franchise Yo Gabba Gabba. This one’s for the grown-ups, though. Face it, you’re old now.

Deliberately odd Swedish mad-scientist progressive and psychedelic rock that sounds like it should have come from the 60’s instead of ‘06.

The reigning kings of crossover bluegrass are without a doubt the biggest folk-rock success story in recent memory, and to a great extent the most interesting in that this time it’s not just about acoustic guitar singer-songwriter types — one of the titular brothers focuses on the banjo, and upright bassist Bob Crawford and occasional cellist Joe Kwom figure prominently among the project’s engines. After nearly a decade of toiling away in relative obscurity (at least outside of passionate regional acclaim in their native North Carolina), their 2007 sorta-smash Emotionalism drew the attention of legendary producer Rick Rubin, who brought them into the major label game for last year’s improbably even more heartbreak-prone I And Love And You. Grace Potter and the Nocturnals open.

Gonna be disappointed in you if this show doesn’t do well, Charlottesville. The legendary rapper and reggae heir seemed like an odd couple when they paired up for a one-off song on Marley’s Welcome To Jamrock, but the personal chemistry was reportedly off the charts, and the resulting tune at least worked well enough for them to consider an album together. That’d be Distant Relatives, on which they trade off line-by-line, with Marley often coming across less as a proper singer and more like a mono-pitched rapper a la Nelly. This keeps things feeling more like a hip hop album than an even 50/50 split with the reggae elements, but Nas is much more furious on stage than on his records, and that enthusiasm unfolding in front of Marley’s killer band is really something to behold (likewise for the latter’s dreadlocks, which are absolutely insane). Even if he doesn’t actually play anything, mega bonus points to those two for hiring a guy whose only job is apparently to dance around on stage twirling a flag.

Americana-rock. With Andrew Cedermark and The Cinnamon Band.

The War On Drugs - Comin’ Through

The Cinnamon Band - Buena Vista
The Cinnamon Band - I’m Asking You

Synth-pop and indie rock outfit, debatably named after the time-traveling isle in Lost but most certainly a product of the Baltimore cool-kids-table known as Dan Deacon’s Wham City arts collective. Also featuring Double Dagger and Pictureplane.

Dark electric folk singer-songwriter. Peyton Tochterman opens.

Peyton Tochterman - Mamma’s Genes

Not much more needs to be said about Georgia improv rock titans Widespread Panic at this point, except perhaps to remind you that they’re actually pretty palatable as an occasionally twang-infused meandering rock band even if you don’t particularly care for the more esoteric groups from the jamband scene and tolerate only the poppiest Dead songs. (Personal favorite: “Travelin’ Light,” at least if we assume that JoJo Hermann will knock the organ solo outta the park.) And they’re Pavilion staples to some degree, but since October is just about upon us, it bears repeating that they released a Halloween-themed live album in 2004 titled, awesomely, Jackassolantern. (That word is worth a round with Google Image Search when you get a moment, obviously.)

Daniel Hutchens of their hometown pals Bloodkin opens.

Widespread Panic - North

Far too many bands make this claim, but 311 were legitimately hard to pin down stylistically back when “Down” briefly made them the golden boys of alt-rock in the mid-90’s. They were heavier than most of the other bands on the same radio rotations, had experimental edges way more far-flung than the post-grunge bands they competed with, and even displayed a bit of what a white dude who loves Sublime might have mistakenly considered reggae. Within a few years, though, a ready-made capsule summary emerged when they became ragingly successful as a frat-boy fave. They’re again a bit harder to put in a box now that most of those kids have long since graduated, but if you’re looking for true-believer fans these days, the entry level jobs at a failing investment bank of your choice are as promising a starting point as you could reasonably hope for. Sponsored by Bud Light!

This is certainly the powerhouse indie-folk bill of the month, and highly recommended for fans of Espers and Joanna Newsom — first, Marissa Nadler, one of the biggest non-freak folk breakout acts of 2007, and then also buzzed-about singer-songwriter and Sharon Van Etten, who looks to be just about to hit that same point in her own career thanks to a slate of ultra-personal tragic ballads which tend to break your heart in slow, controlled, methodical steps. Also featuring Breathe Owl Breathe.

Sharon Van Etten - Love More

Local jazz singer and bebop pianist.

Young jazz singers

Jimmy Buffett cover band.

Shostakovich and Sibelius on piano and strings

Pieces by various French composers and minimalist icon Steve Reich performed on flute, harp, clarinet, and strings.

Pianist and ,a href=”http://www.raphaelbell.com”>cellist open the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival by performing pieces by various composers from Vienna.