Credit: Courtesy of Waterloo Records

Melissa Carper

Friday 23, Waterloo Records

Since leaning into her easy throwback twang with 2021’s Daddy’s Country Gold, Melissa Carper has been on a roll. New album Borned in Ya continues to mine her distinct retro country sound, but cut with a deeper soul influence that can swing from tongue-in-cheek humor to gut-wrenching yearning beauty. Co-writes with fellow Wonder Woman of Country Brennen Leigh and deft covers like Cole Porter’s “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” all drip in the upright bassist’s crooked drawl, simultaneously unique and timeless. Waterloo provides the preview of Carper’s official local release at 04 Center on Sept. 7.   – Doug Freeman


Credit: Courtesy of Monks Jazz

Elias Haslanger Meets Mike Sailors Album Release

Friday 23, Monks Jazz

It’s rare that any of our homegrown jazz masters release a studio album – rarer still when two of the biggest get together to do so. Saxophonist Elias Haslanger and trumpeter Mike Sailors have been partners in horn for years, performing in each other’s bands and appearing in other bandleaders’ combos. Elias Haslanger Meets Mike Sailors, arriving this month via Austin label Bandstand Presents, is exactly the record you’d hope these gentlemen would make: swinging, bopping, bluesy, and badass. The pair will be joined by musicians who played on the album: pianist Andy Langham, bassist Ryan Hagler, and drummer Daniel Dufour.   – Michael Toland


Credit: Courtesy of 3TEN at ACL Live

Aaron Lee Tasjan

Saturday 24, 3ten ACL Live

The fourth album from Aaron Lee Tasjan, this year’s Stellar Evolution, lives up to its title. The Nashville songwriter continues to lean more into provocative pop inclinations, with synth-laced grooves like opener “Alien Space Queen” pushing into the anthemic swells of “Horror of It All,” but bounced against often hilarious asides like “The Drugs Did Me” and “I Love America Better Than You.” Tasjan remains masterfully unbound across his impressively eclectic stylistic turns, mixing winces and smirks in defiance of the world that comes across like Todd Snider and Tom Petty thrown into a psychedelic Beatles blender.   – Doug Freeman


The Get Up Kids

Saturday 24, Mohawk

It’s been 25 years since the Get Up Kids’ sophomore album, Something to Write Home About, changed the emo landscape. The Kansas City fourpiece put out an album that would shape younger generations for years to come. To mark the anniversary, the Get Up Kids are releasing an expanded reissue and performing the album in its entirety on tour. Mosh along to the euphoric pop-punk perfection of “Holiday” and “Ten Minutes,” or let the emotion of piano-driven ballads sweep you into tears. Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of elderly emos there to “Catch You.”   – Abby Johnston


Paige Plaisance Album Release

Saturday 24, Sagebrush

Paige Plaisance’s self-proclaimed “swampy tonk” has been heating up South Austin over the past year and gets a proper pressing with her debut LP, Louisiana Lonely. As the title implies, the songs dig deep into her bayou roots cut with Texas dance hall, shifting from homesick ballads (“Highway 65,” “Back Home Feelin’”) and proper honky-tonkers (“Good Time Girl”) to Louisiana-fried piano boogies (“Love You First”). Plaisance swings fearless and sincere backed by her Yeah You Right Boys, with a string of guests lined up to join her onstage. Rattlesnake Milk, Valley Flower, and Jack Fister provide support.   – Doug Freeman


Credit: Courtesy of Die Spitz

Fast Times at Hotel Vegas + Back to School Weekend feat. Die Spitz and Bosh

Saturday 24, Hotel Vegas

Now that the dust of their ground Teeth has settled, three April singles suggest Die Spitz has moved beyond their 2023 debut’s thrashing punk in favor of slower, sludgier metal. Ava Schrobilgen rips a throaty near-incomprehensible roar in towering “i hate when GIRLS die,” though her heartbreak’s more palpable in melancholy “My Hot Piss.” Breaking further, Chloe Andrews plays acoustic on ominous “Little Flame,” crooning, “I want another body.” The grisly quartet plays the Vegas patio Saturday alongside hardcore favorites Bosh; after the gig, Andrews and guitarist Ellie Livingston celebrate their birthdays with a Rocky Horror-themed party in the venue’s indoors.   – Carys Anderson


Come and Take It Productions’ 15th Anniversary

Saturday 24, Come and Take It Live

Propping up the bar a few weeks ago at Lost Well, yours truly gloated about his hood’s blueprint biker bar. Days later, the hesher HQ lost its lease. Out of sheer superstition, then, we won’t brag about our other essential metal hub, home to outsized international (Abbath, Enslaved, Rotting Christ), domestic (Midnight, Obituary), and local acts (this entire bill). Empire, Mohawk, and Parish all book live metal, but this former Latin disco and brief home to Antone’s maintains prime log-cabin acoustics and mosh pit intimacy. Alice, Texas, metalcore crew Shattered Sun leads nine acts and complimentary barbecue and beer while supplies last.   – Raoul Hernandez


Credit: Courtesy of Antone's

Eric Gales, Mathias Lattin

Monday 26, Antone’s

When Gary Clark Jr. skyrocketed into the upper echelon of blues guitar gods from hometown launching pad Antone’s, the entire music sphere rightly took note. Black practitioners of Delta shred never caught up to British Invasion pioneers and second-wave American South groups playing Mississippi sharecropper music. Eric Gales precedes Clark by a decade, the onetime Memphis prodigy initially ripping the Three Kings – Albert, B.B., and Freddie – alongside his older bros. Dozens of platters later, pandemic string-bend Crown wears his commanding intonation and Hendrix fire legitimately. Houston peer Mathias Lattin opens a show only Antone’s could lock in like this.   – Raoul Hernandez


Benny Green

Tuesday 27, Parker Jazz Club

One of the brightest lights of the “young lions” movement in the Eighties and Nineties, pianist Benny Green went from playing in his high school jazz ensembles to – at 25 – holding down the keyboard chair in drummer and talent-spotter Art Blakey’s legendary Jazz Messengers. That led him to work with singer Betty Carter, as well as logging time with Ray Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Don Braden, and more. A pianist from the Bud Powell/Oscar Peterson school, Green had led trios, quartets, and quintets under his own name. For this gig, he performs alone, as per last year’s appropriately titled Solo.   – Michael Toland


Squeeze / Boy George Summer Tour

Tuesday 27, Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park

There’s no way you can tell me you didn’t spend some time performing in front of your mirror (or your teddy bears or your collection of Beanie Babies), crooning the lyrics to Culture Club’s lament of lost love “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” or jamming to the endlessly effervescent silliness of Squeeze’s “Cool for Cats.” Eighties icons Boy George and Squeeze join forces this summer on a tour that will have Gen Xers teasing their hair to impossible heights, reaching for their lace fingerless gloves and Members Only jackets, and testing their knees and ankles with what’s sure to be an all-night dance party.   – Cy White


The Front Festival

Thursday 29 – Sunday 1, Various locations

Helmed by women and queer creative collective Future Front, this Labor Day weekend festival celebrates the end-of-summer holiday with this Austinite’s favorite activities: appreciating local music, film, and art, and doing a lot of swimming. The main event launches Friday, when the Contemporary Austin-Laguna Gloria hosts over a dozen independent Texan filmmakers for a movie showcase; on Saturday, Cheer Up Charlies welcomes musical acts Pam Reyes, Never, promqueen, p1nkstar, and more. Thursday and Sunday bookend the event with, respectively, night and day parties at the LINE Hotel pool, featuring DJ sets and pop-up art exhibits to boot.   – Carys Anderson


Credit: Courtesy of Monks Jazz

EARS: Easley/Arrington/Read/Satterwhite

Thursday 29, Monks Jazz

Two guitar quartets remain oddly rare in jazz. Fortunately, Austin has the debut of EARS, a veritable murderer’s row of local talent. Drummer Aaron Easley has shared the stage and studio with Andre Hayward and Adrian Ruiz; guitarist Carter Arrington plays with Kirk Covington and British keys-wielder Benjamin Croft; guitarist Matt Read studied with Julian Lage and Fred Hamilton to become an in-demand sessioneer; and bassist Billy Satterwhite studied under bass legend Robert Hurst and the late Geri Allen. It’s unknown what direction EARS will take – hard bop, fiery fusion, experimental atmospherics, all of the above – but the show heralds the arrival of a major ATX ensemble.   – Michael Toland


Shaboozey Credit: Photo by Daniel Prakopcyk


Music Notes

by Derek Udensi

Ford Fan Fest

Friday 23 – Sunday 25, Moody Center

Last year’s Professional Bull Riders (PBR) Camping World Team Series regular season champions, Austin Gamblers, return to Moody Center for their annual homestand. Artists performing across the accompanying three-day Ford Fan Fest are country artist Shaboozey (Friday), Wade Bowen (Saturday), and Shinyribs (Sunday). Virginia-raised Shaboozey notably released Billboard chart-topper “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” earlier this year.

Batch’s Seventh Anniversary Party

Saturday 24, Batch Craft Beer + Kolaches

This East Austin locale dishing out fresh kolaches, beer, and coffee rings in year seven with an all-day affair. Tiny Tails to You! begins the free proceedings with a morning-time small animal petting zoo before musical performances commence at 2pm. Performers include Batch favorites Felt Out, Seu Jacinto, and Bat City Brass Band. Electropop purveyors Felt Out (Walter Nichols and Sowmya Somanath) will release their new EP on August 23.

DARKWEBMAFIA

Tuesday 27, Mohawk

Launched in 2023, DARKWEBMAFIA is a rap collective featuring Chuck Mallard, Khaki, and NIPS THE ZOMBIE. Debut EP THE OBSCURA TAPES sees alternative rap and experimental production collide. Fellow local rap artist Ryan Dove headlines the record release show for his new album, LIVE LAUGH DOVE.

Want to see all of our listings broken down by day? Go to austinchronicle.com/calendar and see what’s happening now or in the coming week.

This article appears in August 23 • 2024.

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

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Carys Anderson moved from Nowhere, DFW to Austin in 2017 to study journalism at the University of Texas. She began writing for The Austin Chronicle in 2021 and joined its full-time staff in 2023, where she covers music and culture.

As the Chronicle's Club Listings Editor, Derek compiles a weekly list of music events occurring across town. The University of Texas alum also writes about hip-hop as a contributor to the Music section.

San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.

Doug Freeman has been writing for the Austin Chronicle since 2007, covering the arts and music scene in the city. He is originally from Virginia and earned his Masters Degree from the University of Texas. He is also co-editor of The Austin Chronicle Music Anthology, published by UT Press.

Michael Toland started writing about music in 1988 on the Gulf Coast, moved to Austin in early 1991, and has inflicted bylines upon the corporeal and digital pages of Pop Culture Press, The Big Takeover, Blurt, Amplifier, Austin.citysearch, the Austin American Statesman, Goldmine, Sleazegrinder, Rock & Roll Globe, High Bias, FHT Music Notes, and, since 2011, The Austin Chronicle.