This Week in MKE Music: Nov. 21-27, 2024

SistaStrings return, Theatre Gigante presents The Wind & Little Bang Theory, Bembé Bombazos, UWM Steel PANthers Steel Band & Community World Music Ensemble, Body Futures release party, Nod to Bob and more—This Week in Milwaukee Music!

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SistaStrings return, Theatre Gigante presents The Wind & Little Bang Theory, Bembé Bombazos, UWM Steel PANthers Steel Band & Community World Music Ensemble, Body Futures release party, Nod to Bob and more—This Week in Milwaukee Music!

Thursday, November 21

Bembé Bombazos @ La Casa Cultural de Bembé, 6:30 p.m.

Join Bembé Drum & Dance for a community Bombazo at la Casa Cultural de Bembé. Gather in community, drum, sing, dance and experience the tradition of Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba con Bembé at his free, family-friendly event, open to the public. Food and refreshments provided. Located across the street from the Mitchell Park Domes: 611 S. Layton Blvd.

UWM Steel PANthers Steel Band & Community World Music Ensemble @UWM, Jan Serr Studio, 7:30 p.m.

This exciting night of music will feature music from Guatemala and Trinidad and Tobago performed by UWM students and Milwaukee community members. The UWM Steel PANthers Steel Band and the Community World Music Ensemble will join forces on a program highlighting traditional and arranged music played on Guatemalan marimba doble and Trinidadian steel pans.

Friday, November 22

Body Futures w/ Nonagon, Redshift Headlights and Vacancy Chain @ X-Ray Arcade, 6 p.m.

Kick off the weekend with an evening celebrating Body Futures’ new “mathy power pop” release Do Not Befriend the Reaper. 

Redshift Headlights return to the confines of Cudahy. They recently released If You Are Around Still, a nine-song album recorded in March of 2024; the band worked with Steve Albini, who passed away this May.

SistaStrings @ South Milwaukee Performing Arts Center, 7 p.m.

Having toured with Brandi Carlile and performed with Joni Mitchell, SistaStrings aka Chauntee and Monique Ross return to Milwaukee. Using their classical training with their deep-rooted love for R&B, hip-hop and gospel and now residing in Nashville, the sisters are a formidable and highly sought-after duo, earning “best instrumentalist” for the Americana Music Association’s 2023 honors.

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As members of Carlile’s touring band, they branched out of Milwaukee and have performed at venues such as Madison Square Garden, the Kennedy Center, Newport Folk Festival and “Saturday Night Live.”

Lovanova w/5 In the Sky and Van Jaeger @ Ope! Brewing Co., 7:30 p.m.

Paul Kneevers returns with the pandemic-era project 5 In the Sky, the cabin fever-inspired group was actually kick-started in a cabin. That band should provide a dynamic contrast to Lovanova’s hectic, jazz-prog grooves. Kneevers predicts over a dozen musicians will be on stage at some point. Van Jaeger’s loop-based sounds open the show.

Bristlehead @ Kochanski’s Concertina Beer Hall, 8 p.m.

Braun, Dean, Fredrickson and Jennings, DBA as Bristlehead, provide top notch music for all your dancing needs. If you could take the combined musical experience of Dave Braun, Bob Jennings, Bruce Dean, and Mike Fredrickson and somehow lay it end-to-end-to-end, it would reach around the sun and back to Earth. Fredrickson’s songs, combined with this local Wrecking Crew is a great way to kick off the weekend.

Saturday, November 23

Breaking in America Tour: Dogpark w/ Meyru @ Cactus Club, 7 p.m.

Transport Volume 4: Anastasis • Language Models @ Cactus Club, 11 p.m.

NYC’s Dogpark roll into Bayview with their Breaking in America Tour. Infectious stage presence and an homage to the indie-rock of the ‘90s have kick-started their career from a backyard band to a mainstage group. Meyru brings impassioned, guitar-driven songs anchored by melodic hooks and deeply personal lyrics. Then at 11, the late show kicks off dancing and DJ’d psychedelia for late-night weirdos with an overload of techno and house music.

Sunday, November 24

The Wind and Little Bang Theory, Theatre Gigante @ Jan Serr Studio, 2 p.m.

The gale seldom stops blowing in Victor Sjöström’s film The Wind. You can’t hear it howling—it’s a silent film, but you can see the buffeted buildings and battered people, the dark layers of windblown dust overspreading everything: shepherdexpress.com/film/reviews/you-can-almost-hear-the-wind-in-theatre-gigante-little-bang.

Maybe the sound of that rattling wind will be echoed by Little Bang Theory as the trio of musicians accompanies the Milwaukee screening of this 1928 film, regarded by movie historians as a cinematic masterpiece, a coda to the era of silent pictures.

Rhett Miller @ Vivarium, 8 p.m.

“This has been a hell of a year,” Rhett Miller says. “I turned 48 in September and I’m still surprising myself.”

After more than two decades as founding member of the venerable Old 97’s and acclaimed singer–songwriter in his own right, Rhett Miller has crafted a trio of new projects that see him pushing his creative energies in hitherto untraveled directions. Among them are two utterly unique new albums—one solo, the other as part of Old 97’s—as well as his first ever book, a collection of subversive kids’ poems.

Monday, November 25

Marie and Rosetta @ Milwaukee Rep (Stiemke Studio), through Dec. 15

While gospel music is at the root of 1950s R&B and influenced Elvis, few gospel singers have been included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (shepherdexpress.com/culture/theater/sacred-meets-secular-at-reps-marie-and-rosetta). Sister Rosetta Tharpe (inducted posthumously in 2018) deserves the honor. Unlike many gospel performers who kept blues and vernacular music at arm’s length, Tharpe embraced the electric guitar and the rhythms pouring from the rural South into Chicago’s South Side. Marie and Rosetta tells the story of Tharpe and her protégé, Marie Knight. They enjoyed a Top-10 R&B hit together in 1948, “Up Above My Head.”

Tuesday, November 26

Ike Reilly Assassination @ Shank Hall, 8 p.m.

Since his 2001major label debut, Salesmen and Racists, Ike Reilly has been making punk/folk/blues influenced rock and roll records that lean heavily on stories of outsiders with keen details and broad strokes that insinuate a crack in the American Dream. In 2021, the former gravedigger released Because the Angels, oozing with “the flair and charisma of a streetwise poet.”

“Someday Tonight (Will Seem Like a Long Time Ago)” was written by Reilly in the days after the police shooting of Jakob Blake in Kenosha in 2020. Two of Reilly's children live in Kenosha and on the evening of the Jakob Blake shooting Reilly's son called him and sent him the video of the shooting. Protesters squared off against police and armed civilians. Illinois resident 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse murdered two people and wounded another.

Wednesday, November 27

Nod to Bob @ Linnemans’s Riverwest Inn, 7 p.m.

Set your calendar by it. Each year on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Nod to Bob celebrates the songs of Bob Dylan and raises much-needed donations for Hunger Task Force. Bill Camplin, Heidi Spencer, John Sieger, Denny Rauen, Chrissy & Mike Clobes and more take the stage. Dylan shows no sign of slowing down and neither does this show which features arrangements of songs familiar and obscure, from acoustic to electric—Judas!

Evan Christian, Shonn Hinton, Alex Wilson, Bryan Cherry and Mariano Latona @ Gibraltar, 7 p.m.

This acoustic showcase brings together some of Milwaukee’s finest guitarists. The potential for collaboration is endless.