Warpaint @ The Pabst Theater, Oct. 4
Friday, Oct. 3
Los Lobos @ Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts, 8 p.m.
Very few rock acts can claim to have grown genuinely better with age—especially when that age spans four decades—but Chicano roots-rockers Los Lobos really have made the most of their time together, perfecting their soulful, Mexican-influenced Americana. Their most recent studio record, 2010’s Tin Can Trust, stands with their best, thanks to a strong set of songs about ordinary people enduring trying times and some truly exceptional tag-team guitar work from David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas. There’s a reason this band has stayed intact for 40 years: chemistry.
Saturday, Oct. 4
‘Jimi: All is By My Side’ @ Oriental Theatre, 8 p.m.
One of the major coups of this year’s Milwaukee Film Festival is an appearance by filmmaker John Ridley, who is fresh off of an Oscar win this year for his adapted 12 Years a Slave screenplay. The festival will screen Ridley’s new biopic, Jimi: All is By My Side, an account of rock pioneer Jimi Hendrix’s early years in London starring André Benjamin (better known as André 3000, of Outkast) as the guitarist and Hayley Atwell as his love interest, Kathy Etchingham.
Heat It Up Bloody Mary and Chili Challenge @ Cathedral Square Park, 10 a.m.
Touchy fall weather too often cuts Milwaukee’s festival season short, but it won’t matter much if there’s a bit of a bite to the air at the East Town Association’s latest outdoor event, since the food and drink should keep the crowd plenty warm. A $30 ticket to the fifth annual Heat It Up Bloody Mary and Chili Challenge includes all the chili and tomato-y drinks that attendees can fit in their bellies, as well as live reggae music from The Tritonics. Nearly 20 restaurants will be supplying the food and drink, including Mi-Key’s, Kil@wat, Saz’s, Hotel Metro, Blue’s Egg, Café Benelux and Cafe LuLu.
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Junior Brown w/ Twang Dragons @ Shank Hall, 8 p.m.
Junior Brown is no stranger to greatness. Over a career that has stretched more than 40 years, the country singer and guitarist has brushed elbows with the Beach Boys (with whom he performed on their 1996 album Stars and Stripes Vol. 1) and Bob Dylan, with whom he toured in 2006. His latest and tenth (depending on how you count) collection of Tex-Mex-style country is the playful 2012 EP Volume Ten, which features plenty of his signature guitar work, played on a distinctive double-neck guitar that’s half electric guitar, half lap steel guitar.
Warpaint w/ Guy Blakeslee @ The Pabst Theater, 8 p.m.
With their self-titled release this year, the Los Angeles band Warpaint built on the post-punk of their 2010 full-length debut The Fool to create an expansive, elastic pastiche of rock, dub and hip-hop. That description may sound busy, but the album itself is anything but. “When we started writing, it was an anything-goes type of thing,” bassist/singer Jenny Lee Lindberg told the Shepherd this summer, ahead of the band’s show opening for Nick Cave. “The only thing we were mindful of was to be very minimal, and to keep space for each other. With this album, we wanted to be able to express ourselves individually, and make sure that everybody’s voice was heard, but in a way that wasn’t overbearing.”
Twenty One Pilots w/ Mister Wives and Vinyl Theatre @ The Rave, 7:30 p.m.
The synergistic duo of Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun, Twenty One Pilots, represent the more eclectic side of the emo label Fueled By Ramen, dabbling not just in alternative rock, but also in danceable hip-hop and electronica. The group, which released its breakthrough album Vessel in 2013, will share this show with their newly minted labelmates Vinyl Theatre, a Milwaukee band that released its debut for the label, Electrogram, just last month. The two bands have a lot in common, including a bright, synth-slickened sound and decidedly modern outlook.
Sunday, Oct. 5
Erasure w/ All Hail the Silence @ The Pabst Theater, 6 p.m.
Vince Clarke was one of the co-founders of Depeche Mode, but as that band treaded into darker territory, he left for sunnier pursuits, most prominently the synth-pop band Erasure, which he founded in 1985 with singer Andy Bell. The band never found much success in the United States beyond their 1988 singles “Chains of Love” and “A Little Respect”—Bell speculated that his undisguised homosexuality may have been a commercial handicap—but they’ve retained a loyal following over the decades, as their music has grown dancier.
Wisconsin Wind Orchestra @ Carroll University, 4 p.m.
One of the state’s most unusual music ensembles, the Wisconsin Wind Orchestra is made up primarily of woodwind players, a lineup that lends an otherworldly sound to any material they interpret. For this program, “Goes Wilder!,” the orchestra will honor pioneering American composer Alec Wilder, whose mid-1900s albums blurred the boundaries between jazz and classical music. They’ll play several of his compositions, along with works by Alex Shapiro, William Alwyn, Kevin Volans and Leonard Bernstein.
Ken Thomson and Slow/Fast @ Sugar Maple, 8 p.m.
Once dubbed “the hardest-working saxophonist in new-music show business” by Time Out NY, alto saxophonist/bass clarinetist/composer Ken Thomson is taking a swing through the Midwest in support of his latest album with his quintet Slow/Fast, Settle. The group pairs Thomson with guitarist Nir Felder, trumpeter Russ Johonson, bassist Adam Armstrong and drummer Fred Kennedy, who each lend their stamp to the album’s elegant fusion of chamber jazz and contemporary classical.
Comedians for Critters @ Shank Hall, 2-5 p.m.
Like so many fundraisers, this charity event was inspired by a tragedy. After birthing a litter in Kentucky, a dog named Sadie was shot in the head and left for dead two years ago. She survived, but continues to need rehabilitation. To offset some of those costs, a variety of entertainers have arranged this event, which will feature Chicago standups Dobie Maxwell and Elly Greenspahn, the former a Milwaukee native and the latter a rescue activist, as well as special guests.
Tuesday, Oct. 7
Asia @ The Pabst Theater, 8 p.m.
By the early ’80s, prog-rock groups like King Crimson, Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer had folded, but players from those bands found a new home playing with the super-group Asia, started by ex-King Crimson bassist John Wetton. Asia hit its commercial peak early when their self-titled 1982 debut album stayed at the No. 1 spot in the United States for nine weeks and yielded the hits “Only Time Will Tell” and “Heat of the Moment,” earning a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist of the Year. The band has continued to evolve in style and lineup, adding and subtracting members while experimenting with stripped acoustic sets and more progressive rock elements, but in recent years they’ve been touring with all four original members.
Wednesday, Oct. 8
Santana @ The Riverside Theater, 8 p.m.
At the height of San Francisco’s musical and cultural revolutions of the late 1960s, young guitarist Carlos Santana surfaced with a new sound, one that blended traditional blues with his own Mexican-American roots, all awash in the era’s “psychedelic” and socially conscious overtones. With a hit single, “Jingo,” and a legendary performance at Woodstock, Santana took the world by storm. The result was a vibrant new voice in the musical scene, one that continued to evolve through the guitarist’s growing spiritualism and emerging pan-cultural musical palette. The Grammy-winning artist’s latest album, Corazón, is an especially rhythmic affair that features collaborations with Gloria Estefan and Ziggy Marley.
