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Photo credit: Nikolay Ivanov
OK Go
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Photo credit: Alex Knowles
Foals
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Mary Fahl
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Jeezy
Billy Joel plays Miller Park for the first time, and Lex Allen keeps up his momentum with a new EP.
Friday, April 26
Billy Joel @ Miller Park, 8 p.m.
Piano-rock legend Billy Joel will turn 70 next month, but he’s still achieving career firsts. This week, he’ll play Miller Park for the first time, at a concert that’s being billed as his only Midwest show of 2019. Touring is the “We Didn’t Start the Fire” singer’s main gig these days. Joel hasn’t released an album on new material since his 2001 classical album Fantasies & Delusions, and before that his final pop album was 1993’s River of Dreams. At this point, it seems likely that he may never record another new album, but thankfully he has plenty of old hits he can fall back on at this show.
Jeezy
Jeezy w/ Sada Baby and Friends @ The Riverside Theater, 8 p.m.
Rapping like he’s too damn busy slinging product to pop a throat lozenge, Jeezy became one of the first true stars of trap music thanks to his outsized personality and ear for vicious beats. Though he’s sometimes stumbled in his efforts to stay with the times, the Atlanta rapper has been remarkably consistent in the studio, as his solid 2017 album Pressure attests, and his voice remains as thundering as ever. Jeezy has announced that he plans to release the latest (and purportedly final) installment in his popular Thug Motivation series, Thug Motivation 104: Trust Ya Process, later this year. On this bill, he’ll be joined by rising Detroit star Sada Baby.
Mary Fahl
Mary Fahl @ Shank Hall, 8 p.m.
Mary Fahl is best remembered as the singer of the classical-inspired pop-rock band October Project, who toured with acts like Sarah McLachlan and Crash Test Dummies in the ’90s, but since leaving that band in 1996, she’s released a variety of ambitious solo projects. Among them are a 2011 reinterpretation of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon called From the Dark Side of the Moon, her 2014 live album Mary Fahl Live at the Mauch Chunk Opera House and collaborations with composer Darryl Kubian. A cult favorite in certain goth circles, she also wrote music for the audiobook version of Anne Rice’s 2013 novel The Wolves of Midwinter.
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Saturday, April 27
Lex Allen w/ Immortal Girlfriend and DJ DRiPSweat @ The Cooperage, 8 p.m.
Butter-voiced Milwaukee singer Lex Allen refused to be boxed in on his 2018 album Table 7: Sinners & Saints. Expanding on the singer’s supple R&B, the record touched on triumphant pop (“Never Look Back”), heartbreaking ballads (“Mama’s Boy”) and audacious dance (“Struck Gold,” a pansexual club anthem for the ages). Just a week after winning a Wisconsin Area Music Industry’s top award for Artist of the Year, Allen will release his follow-up EP I.D.E.N.T.I.T.Y at this show, where he’ll be joined by the electronic-pop duo Immortal Girlfriend and DJ DRiPSweat.
Photo credit: Nikolay Ivanov
OK Go
OK Go @ The Pabst Theater, 7 p.m.
For the Los-Angeles-by-way-of-Chicago alternative pop band OK Go, music has always been a visual medium. The band owes much of its notoriety to clever, viral videos, particularly their breakout 2007 video for “Here It Goes Again,” which featured the dapper band hopping across treadmills in an elaborate, choreographed dance. They went to even greater extremes for their 2016 single, “Upside Down & Inside Out,” filming its video in zero gravity. The band will pay homage to those videos at this show, where they’ll perform 20 songs in sync with their high-concept visual accompaniments, breaking for question and answer sessions with the crowd.
Sunday, April 28
Photo credit: Alex Knowles
Foals
Foals w/ Preoccupations and OMNI @ The Rave, 8 p.m.
The mathy, unorthodoxly poppy British rock band Foals received the red-carpet treatment from the British music press before they released their 2008 debut album Antidotes, but in the years since they’ve proven the hype was justified. The band’s 2010 sophomore album Total Life Forever built on the syncopated, half-danceable post-punk of their debut with moodier atmospherics and sharper songs that unfolded at a deliberate pace, and their even bigger subsequent albums, including this year’s two-part record Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost, have been every bit as exciting and brainy. They’re joined on this bill by the nervy Canadian post-punk quartet Preoccupations (the band formerly known as Viet Cong, until they changed the name in 2016 after complaints that it was offensive).
Celebration of Bob Mueller’s Life @ Linneman’s Riverwest Inn, 2 p.m.
Milwaukee’s blues scene lost a lifer this spring. Drummer Bob Mueller spent more than 50 years backing up Milwaukee combos ranging from Bill Camplin’s Woodbine to Sigmund Snopek’s band Itch to acts like The Rolling Cohens, Raw Rockers, Leroy Airmaster, Short Stuff and Billy Flynn. Friends and bandmates are invited to this free event to remember Mueller the way he would have enjoyed most: with music. Linneman’s stage has drums, a bass amp and two guitar amps; guests are welcome to sit in and jam along with some of Mueller’s favorite songs.
Wednesday, May 1
Jane’s Walk Ballroom Block Party @ Turner Hall Ballroom, 5:30 p.m.
Milwaukee is a much larger city than most realize, but there’s a natural tendency for residents to stay confined to the areas and neighborhoods they know. Now in its fourth year, Jane’s Walk MKE is trying to change that by gathering groups of people to explore the city together on a series of more than two dozen community-led neighborhood walks, tours and bike rides throughout the month of May. Highlights include walks down Villard Avenue, Jones Island, Sherman Park, Lincoln Park, Lindsay Heights and the 30th Street Industrial Corridor. The month will kick off with this Ballroom Block Party at Turner Hall Ballroom from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., featuring art, music, Milwaukee trivia, food and drink, photo opportunities and displays from neighborhood organizations. For more information, visit JanesWalkMKE.org.
Lee DeWyze w/ Elizabeth and the Catapult @ Shank Hall, 8 p.m.
By the time Lee DeWyze won “American Idol” in 2010, the show was no longer the phenomenon it had been several years prior. Quietly triumphing over better-known favorite Crystal Bowersox in Simon Cowell’s final season of the reality contest, the former paint salesman went on to release a collection of Jason Mraz-styled folk-pop titled Live It Up, which sold poorer than any previous debut from an “Idol” winner—although, in hindsight, nine years later, it did numbers that just about any current “Idol” contestant could only dream of today. Despite that modest start to his post-“Idol” career, DeWyze has been able to record and tour consistently in the decade since, and last year he released his most recent album, Paranoia.
