This Week in MKE Music: June 19-25, 2025

Summerfest, Juneteenth Day, Make Music Day, Jeremiah Sammartano, The Swongos and more—This Week in Milwaukee Music!

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Thursday, June 19

Summerfest @ Henry Maier Festival Park – through Saturday

The Big Gig kicks off the first of three Thursday-Saturday weekends filled with live music. Shepherd Express previewed many of the acts. Check back for concert reviews as the Fest unfolds. Gary Clark Jr., The Isley Brothers, The Shonn Hinton Experience and Bryan Cherry play Thursday, as Summerfest and Northcott Neighborhood House partner for a Juneteenth Day Celebration.

Hozier, Foghat, Bad Boy, The Hungry Williams and Vincent Van Great play Friday.

Saturday brings James Taylor, Japanese Breakfast, Collections of Colonies of Bees and Raine Stern.

Looking for a deal? Summerfest offers admission promotions nearly every day for free or discounted promotions.

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Juneteenth Day

To African Americans, Juneteenth carries weight. It marks the day in 1865 when the last of the enslaved were finally told they were free, more than two years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Freedom, long promised, was finally spoken.

Juneteenth is not just a date. It’s a story of waiting, of struggle, of climbing mountains that seemed to have no peak. But maybe now, for some, it’s the feeling of beginning the descent, not because the work is done, but because the view has finally changed.

For Juneteenth 2025, Shepherd Express writer Tom Jenz spoke with Milwaukee residents, leaders, artists, politicians, and everyday people. He asked what this day means to them now, in this 21st century chapter of America shepherdexpress.com/news/central-city-stories/the-meaning-of-juneteenth-2025-the-people-speak/

More information on Milwaukee’s Juneteenth celebration here juneteenthmilwaukee.com/history

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Friday, June 20

Ryan Adams: Heartbreaker ’25 World Tour @ The Pabst Theater, 8 p.m.

With Whiskeytown, Ryan Adams set something of a template for the next generation of Americana artists. His resume includes over 30 albums. In addition to his work with the Cardinals, the sci-fi metal-influenced album Orion and a song-for-song cover of Bruce Springsteen’s album Nebraska, Adams has produced records for Willie Nelson, Jesse Malin, Jenny Lewis, and Fall Out Boy. Two and a half decades after the release of Heartbreaker, Adams revisits his solo debut.

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Saturday, June 21

Make Music Day @ Everywhere, All Day

Make Music Milwaukee is part of Make Music Day, the worldwide music celebration held each June 21, the summer solstice. Featuring concerts, performances, music lessons, jam sessions and other musical events on streets, sidewalks, parks and public spaces in Milwaukee and across the U.S. Make Music Day encourages all people, of all musical abilities, to celebrate the joy of making music. Over 1,000 cities around the world have celebrated Make Music Day.

It all started over 40 years ago in France. In 1982, Jack Lang and his staff at the Ministry of Culture dreamed up an idea for a new kind of musical holiday. They imagined a day where free, live music would be everywhere: street corners and parks, rooftops and gardens, store fronts and mountaintops.

The Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts (JGCA) will show off its newly renovated interior when it hosts Make Music Day Milwaukee from 2-10 p.m. Located at 926 E. Center St. The Milwaukee-area community is invited to come to the JGCA to explore electronic and percussive instruments, music production, and sequencing. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet local Milwaukee electronic music vendors and participate in demonstrations of beat-making, sampling, tape loops and free improvisation.

The Out There Series will have a music production table set up outside the JGCA for jamming and will also offer an outdoor group sound walk.

Wrapping up the day will be an evening concert that will include the playing of a live film score to accompany a vintage German Expressionist film,

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Surrealism Showcase @ Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts, 7 p.m.

Here in the city of festivals, it’s easy to set a low bar for expectations. If you are adventurous this might be just the ticket. Following last year’s inaugural trip here is the second installment of the series paying tribute to Surrealism. Bigfoot, Feral Kid Theory, Fundamentals, Jay Mollerskov/Daniel Park/Tim Russell, Mark Mantel/Wilhelm Matthies, John Sparrow and Speakerghost will offer an evening that will challenge and entertain.

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Metro Jam @ Washington Park, Manitowoc, Also Friday

A quick road trip up the shoreline finds this year’s two-day festival headlined by The Jayhawks. Back in the mid-‘80s, the Minneapolis band carved out a space in the early days of Americana. In 2020 the quartet released the album XOXO.

Full lineup here https://www.metrojam.org/

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Azymuth @ Shank Hall, 8 p.m.

Azymuth are one of Brazil's most influential bands, responsible for carving out an entirely new sound, fusing jazz-funk with samba to create their own unique genre, referred to as “samba doido.” Over five decades since they began, Azymuth have released over 30 albums and are still going as strong as ever—writing, recording and performing with the same energy and enthusiasm as when they began. A live performance by the three-man orchestra is a journey through the full spectrum of their brilliantly colored expressionist funk, with cosmic energy and masterful musicianship.

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Sunday, June 22

Microplastique @ The Sugar Maple, 4 p.m.

Microplastique, the innovative quartet based in Chicago, features multi-instrumentalists Ben Zucker, Molly Jones, Josh Harlow and Adam Shead. Drawing inspiration from the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Don Cherry, Kurt Weill and Misha Mengelberg, the group perform energetic, playful and eccentric compositions that are as silly in their aesthetic as they are serious in their execution.

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The Swongos @ Foundation Bar, 8 p.m.

Milwaukee’s premier tiki bar presents an evening of instrumental surf, spy and Exotica sounds with The Swongos.

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Monday, June 23

Jeremiah Sammartano - It's Alive! in Milwaukee @ Milwaukee Theater District (W. Kilbourn Ave. & N. Vel R. Phillips Ave.), 3 p.m.

Jeremiah Sammartano, the Los Angeles based, Emmy nominated Native American singer-songwriter who fronts the bluesy, Americana group, Jeremiah and the Red Eyes, is influenced by the raw blues of Charley Patton, The Pogues and Willie Nelson.

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Tuesday, June 24

Chill on the Hill – Solstice Celebration @ Humboldt Park, 5 p.m.

So technically the summer solstice will have been Friday, but don’t let details get in the way. Pulpa De Guayaba, Devils Teeth and DJ Barry from WMSE’s Boogie Bang help celebrate long days and short nights here in the Northern Hemisphere.

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Wednesday, June 25

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit @ The Riverside Theater, 8 p.m.

Jason Isbell played in Drive-By Truckers for six years before embarking on a solo career in 2007. Critically acclaimed for his raw emotional honesty, the singer, songwriter, guitarist and actor has steadily earned his place as one of music’s greatest performing songwriters. A six-time Grammy Award winner, in 2023, he starred in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, releasing his ninth studio album, Weathervanes.

Isbell’s recent all-acoustic album Foxes in the Snow features his vintage Martin 0-17 guitar. In an interview in Acoustic Guitar magazine Isabell said, “I think it’s really easy, after you’ve been doing this kind of job for a couple decades, to start writing the imitation of yourself, you know? I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to do something that was exposed and difficult. I thought, well, if I just take one guitar and sit down and make a record full of new songs with just me, then there’s nowhere to hide. If the songs aren’t good, if they don’t do what I want them to do, it’s going to be really obvious to me before it is to anybody else.”