This Week in MKE Music Sept. 17-23, 2026

2nd Annual Native Heritage Celebration, Eric Blowtorch & Rockin' Johnny Ricco w/ MiNei Monique, Bay View Bash, Thomas Gabriel—Johnny Cash’s grandson, Tom Jones, Patti Smith and more—This Week in Milwaukee Music!

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This Week in MKE Music

Thursday, Sept. 17

Music on the Beerline – De La Buena @ Beerline Plaza (Holton Street and Townsend Street), 6 p.m.

Music on the Beerline is winding down but an evening outdoors with the music of De La Buena is always a celebration. Growing from a trio into a powerful 10-piece, De La Buena electrifies audiences with their own brand of Afro-Cuban and Latin jazz. De La Buena remains ever conscious of the influence and necessary respect for tradition… yet, is a band willing to inject sophisticated, psychedelic sensibilities into an aggressive, expansive framework.

Friday, Sept. 18

2nd Annual Native Heritage Celebration @  Marcus Performing Arts Center, 5 p.m.

Wisconsin has one of the largest concentrations of Native American Tribes east of the Mississippi River and each has a distinct culture and rich heritage. To celebrate and honor this rich history and culture, the Marcus Performing Arts Center will present its 2nd Annual Native Heritage Celebration.

Through this celebration, attendees will learn about the culture and heritage of the 11 federally recognized tribes of Wisconsin through a variety of offerings including traditional smudging, drumming, beadwork, basketry, and performances by hoop dancer Ty Defoe and drumming group Red Nation Boyz (evening only).

The Native Heritage Celebration is free and open to the public.

Eric Blowtorch & Rockin' Johnny Ricco w/ MiNei Monique @ Art*Bar, 9 p.m.

Eric Blowtorch and Rockin’ Johnny Ricco will burn through lively original numbers of shameless bopaganda and a few choice covers, and MiNei Monique will sing and play all original joints. With any luck the evening will include a rendition of Blowtorch’s 2025 single “Got Your Back b/w “Can’t Break Us” by the Lincoln Arcade Singers.

Saturday, Sept. 19

Thiensville Blues Fest @ Thiensville Village Park, 10 a.m.

Here’s a full day of live music, craft beverages, food and community fun at Thiensville Blues Fest: Blues, Bikes & Brews.

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Featuring some of the Midwest’s finest blues musicians, this all-day celebration brings together blues fans, motorcycle enthusiasts and craft beer—and a lineup featuring some of the best live blues acts in the Midwest. Artists include: Cameron Webb & His Soul & Blues Revue. Third Coast Blues Collective with Special Guests Benny Rickun and Big Al Dorn, Otto Junior Band, Paul Filipowicz and Sheryl Youngblood Band, Also, Tom Holland throughout the day on the Pavilion Stage. More info here https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1523733466460032&set=gm.1293539066187475

Bay View Bash - Kinnickinnic Avenue from Potter Avenue to Clement Avenue, 11 a.m.

Things kick off at 11 a.m. with the Shape Up Shoppe “Stretch & Strength” Class. Music includes Mortgage Freeman, Floor Model, Sleepersound, The Championship, Emmitt James and The Crosses.

Chicago punk legends The Effigies headline the Rush-Mor Records stage at 9 p.m. At 5 p.m. Milwaukee’s Alligator Gun reunites. From 1991-’97 the band rocked hard and would reunite in 2006 and 2014.

Guitarist-vocalist John Kucera chatted about Saturday’s gig. He said the reunion idea kind of came around organically and through some sad circumstances. A friend, Mike Chubbuck passed away suddenly in January they all attended the memorial and wake.

“We were all happy to see each other and catch up even under those sad circumstances, our conversations seemed to pick up right where they left off, just normal friend stuff,” Kucera says.

“Within the next week or so texts started going back and forth and we floated a few ideas, nothing big--and for me personally I was just looking for an excuse to jam again with these guys.”

More info here https://www.bayviewbash.org/

Live music @ Patti’s Power Plant

A Bay View Bash bonus, here’s another indoor stage of music all day and night with Bo Randall, Stallis Cowboys, Alex Wilson and Michael Scott.

Sunday, Sept, 20

Tom Jones: Come Gather Round Tour @ Miller High Life Theatre, 6:30 p.m.

“It's Not Unusual,” “Delilah,” “What's New Pussycat?”  and “She's a Lady.”

Legendary Welsh singer and performer Tom Jones continues to sustain his popularity around the world, captivating audiences with his timeless discography of hit songs and enduring talent and charisma. With a remarkable career spanning over six decades, Jones is widely considered to be one of the greatest singers and recording artists of all time.

At the age of 85, Jones has received some of the best reviews of his career for his most recent string of Ethan Johns-produced albums.

Michelle Shocked @ Anodyne Coffee Roasting Co., 6:30 p.m.

An awfully authoritative-sounding internet rock guide insists that Michelle Shocked’s life must be fiction. But if it seems like an incredible road movie, a tall tale, a legend, it is no mystery.

The soaking humid Piney Woods swamplands of east Texas at the edge of the border with Louisiana was where she came from; born in Dallas and schooled in Gilmer. Raised in a large, extremely poor, strict fundamentalist Mormon household, her escape consisted of summers spent with her hippie-atheist father. She left home for good at 16.

In 1986 Shocked returned to Texas, to the annual songwriters’ gathering at the Kerrville Folk Festival, to volunteer and hang out with her friends, to listen to their new songs and play her own.

An Englishman who said he was a journalist heard her one night out among the campfires and asked if she would play her songs for his Sony Walkman. He never got around to mentioning that he was actually a partner in a brand new British independent record label. That tape of her music, made on a Walkman with weak batteries so that it ran far too quickly when played back at normal speed, got played repeatedly on the BBC.

Tuesday, Sept. 22

Ayodylan w/ Fakeout and Bayview Lane @ X-Ray Arcade, 6 p.m.

AyoDylan is a genre-blurring artist rooted in raw emotion, honest songwriting and modern alternative energy. He makes music for emo kids who grew up, got real jobs, and still feel everything a little too deeply.

Milwaukee’s Fakeout and Bayview Lane round out the evening.

Wednesday, Sept. 23

Patti Smith @ The Riverside Theater, 7 p.m.

Patti Smith could have retired after her groundbreaking album Horses was released in 1975. But the core principle of her creative arc has always been the work—her website refers to concert dates as “jobs.” With over a dozen releases it sometimes gets lost that she began as a writer, setting her poetic incantations to music. Her string of memoirs offer insights and observations, blurring history and creativity. This evening of songs and stories focuses on the Bread of Angels, an overarching chronicle of Smith’s life.

Boswell Book Company and The Pabst Theater Group present an evening of songs and stories with legendary artist Patti Smith. The National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids, Woolgathering, and M Train appears with her radiant and intimate memoir, Bread of Angels.

Tickets cost $35 plus tax and fees. Each ticket includes a paperback copy of Bread of Angels. Do note, there will not be a book signing or audience Q&A at this event.

In this moving account of her life, Smith recalls her post-war childhood, the first glimmers of teenage art and romance, true love and devotion, profound loss, and a life driven by artistic freedom and the power of the imagination to transform the commonplace into the magical, pain into hope.

Thomas Gabriel w/ God's Outlaw @ Shank Hall, 8 p.m.

Thomas Gabriel is about to give fans of outlaw country the album they have been waiting to hear for years. Produced by the multi-GRAMMY-winnrt Rodney Crowell, the lyrics are raw, raucous and real, the delivery is awash in passion and purpose, and Gabriel has lived every word of it.

Gabriel was born into a family of legends in Ventura, California to Kathy Cash (daughter to Johnny Cash and his first wife Vivian Liberto Cash). Thomas spent much of his youth touring with grandparents Johnny and June. Growing up part time on the road had a deep and lasting impact on Thomas, as did his grandfather’s nurturing and steady encouragement for Thomas to explore his talents and musical roots.

“When things are tough, I can pump out songs like no tomorrow,” he says. “Maybe I am not as self-aware when I am happy, but I am always working on my songwriting. I love performing live… for me the best compliment I can get is when someone tells me that my music has helped them through a hard time or touched their heart in some way.”