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Photo credit: Ebru Yildiz
Margaret Glaspy
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Photo credit: Jason Goodrich
A$AP Ferg
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Calliope
Friday, March 30
The Peder Hedman Orchestra @ Linneman’s Riverwest Inn, 8 p.m.
The Milwaukee music scene lost one of its giants this winter when singer, guitarist and songwriter Peder Hedman died unexpectedly. He’d been a champion of the city’s alternative scene for decades, playing in bands including Liquid Pink, Tweaker and The Winning People and continually exploring new sounds. At this event, some of the many musicians Hedman shared stages with over the years will honor his legacy by performing his music. The list of performers includes members of 3 on Fire, The Mighty Deerlick, The Carolinas, Radio Radio, Testa Rosa, F/I, The Peder Hedman Quartet, Voot Warnings, Bicentennial Rub, Liquid Pink, The Mercurys, Sugar Foot, The Riverwest Aces, The Aimless Blades, Trolley, Couch Flambeau, The Blinding Lights and The Detroit Jewel. The first 100 people admitted will receive a copy of a new 7-inch record from the Peder Hedman Quartet. The night will also feature a silent auction.
Slow Walker w/ Gallery Night and Moon Curse @ Cactus Club, 9 p.m.
“Gotta weed out the squares!” Slow Walker cheer with Ramones-esque brevity on the opening track of their new album, Ah Yes. Weeding out squares, to say the least, has never been a problem for the perennially underrated Milwaukee rock outfit, whose sludgy compote of stoner metal, pysch rock, punk and garage pop isn’t exactly honey for listeners with delicate tastes. If you’re on its wavelength, though, Ah Yes is an absolute blast, and perhaps the closest the band has come to making a party record. Like 2016’s Robert Plantain’s Grunge Lords, the sounds are heavy but the music is brisk and to the point. This is stoner rock for people with places to be and things to do. For this release show the band will be joined by a band with their own new product to plug: Milwaukee’s irascible Gallery Night will be releasing a trio of 7-inch records through Dusty Medical, Tall Pat and Big Neck records.
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Saturday, March 31
Photo credit: Jason Goodrich
A$AP Ferg
A$AP Ferg w/ Denzel Curry and IDK @ The Rave, 8 p.m.
Like A$AP Rocky, the other marquee member of New York’s fashionable A$AP Mob collective, A$AP Ferg has always had impeccable taste in production, which he demonstrated on his striking debut record, Trap Lord. But more than anybody else in his crew, Ferg hasn’t been afraid to get personal. On his 2016 sophomore album, Always Strive and Prosper, he stepped out of character to write vividly and emotionally about his family and his upbringing. “I felt like it was something I had to do in order to move forward,” he explained to the Shepherd in an interview last fall. “I gave them the character of Trap Lord. I gave them the persona, the shell. It was my ego, Trap Lord. But I wanted to give them the human being, somebody who was baring themselves to the public and who was vulnerable, so people could relate to me.” That soul baring hasn’t come at the expense of bangers, though. His latest mixtape Still Striving is thick with them.
Calliope
Calliope w/ Space Raft and Shogun @ Company Brewing, 9 p.m.
Psych rock isn’t supposed to be cool. It’s supposed to be weird and disorienting, maybe even unnerving. And first and foremost, it’s supposed to be loud. On those fronts, Milwaukee rockers Calliope always deliver, and their new album, Chapel Perilous, is their most massive yet, an eruption of scorched-earth guitars, blustery vintage organs and quaking rhythms that plays like a stack of old Deep Purple 78s that got badly warped by the sun but sound all the better for it. There are thousands of psych rock bands on the circuit, but none that sound quite like this one.
Monday, April 2
Brewers Opening Day @ Miller Park, 1:10 p.m.
What should Brewers fans expect from the team this season? That’s a tough one to answer. After telegraphing their intentions to compete by acquiring two elite outfielders, Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich, the team disappointed title-hungry fans by declining to pick up any of the big name starting pitchers on the market. So can they really hold their own against the Cubs and the Cardinals? We won’t have to wait too long to find out, since the team plays 10 or their first 13 games against those division rivals. No matter what happens, though, baseball is finally back, and for that fans can be grateful.
Of Montreal w/ Mega Bog @ Turner Hall Ballroom
If you’ve been keeping up with Of Montreal, congratulations: You have a remarkable attention span. Since the band’s 2007 zenith, Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, Kevin Barnes’ shape-shifting ensemble have been one of the most prolific, ambitious and demanding bands in indie-rock, bounding from one makeover to the next. After losing their way for a while, they’ve been on something of a hot streak lately. 2015’s Aureate Gloom was Barnes’ most personal record since Hissing Fauna, detailing the dissolution of his marriage, while taking cues from the fairly straightforward rock ’n’ roll of New York’s ’70s glam and proto-punk scenes, and 2016’s Innocence Reaches added some cool new tricks to the band’s playbook, boldly cribbing from contemporary EDM on a few tracks. This winter, they released their latest, White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood , which draws from the spirit of ’80s dance singles. Although the band tours a lot, they’re always worth seeing—they constantly reinvent their live show.
Tuesday, April 3
Judas Priest w/ Saxon and Black Star Riders @ The Riverside Theater, 7 p.m.
British heavy-metal titans helped reinvent the genre with their massive 1980 album, British Steel, a stripped-down, straight-ahead assault on the eardrums. The dual guitar attack of Glenn Tipton and former member K.K. Downing drove the album, while Rob Halford’s amazing vocals (the guy has a four-octave vocal range) pushed the material well over the top. What is perhaps most remarkable is that British Steel came out just one year after Hell Bent for Leather, and two years after the equally strong Stained Class. Time hasn’t dulled the band any. This month the group released their 18th album, Firepower, which reunited them with producer Tom Allom for the first time since 1988’s Ram It Down. The band has bragged that the title track may be the fastest song they’ve ever performed.
Creed Bratton @ Turner Hall Ballroom, 8 p.m.
Before NBC’s adaptation of “The Office,” Creed Bratton was best known as a former singer and guitarist for the California bluegrass band The Grass Roots, but TV viewers are far more familiar with the considerably shadier version of himself he played on the sitcom. For nine years, viewers watched the drug-addled character lie, cheat and seriously weird out co-workers whose names he could rarely remember. For this show, the real Creed Bratton will perform a night of music and comedy.
Wednesday, April 4
Photo credit: Ebru Yildiz
Margaret Glaspy
Margaret Glaspy w/ Buck Meek @ The Back Room at Colectivo, 8 p.m.
Margaret Glaspy sets herself apart from other indie singer-songwriters with her genre-defying approach to creating music. On her debut 2016 album, Emotions and Math, Glaspy’s vulnerable lyrics were complemented by her strong vocals, with each component threaded together over a patchwork of folk, blues, rock and pop influences. Publications that took notice of Glaspy included the New York Times, NPR Music and Billboard, which all included Emotions And Math on their “Best of 2016” year-end lists.
