Cory Graves
Go Through a Phase with Nicole Atkins.
Even though we already got our quota for puking in public out of the way this past Saturday and left Greenville Avenue littered with hundreds of broken beer bottles in the name of one Saint Patrick, we skills remind you: His actual eponymous holiday is actually today.
We expect your official celebrations — which we're guessing mostly just involve wearing a requisite green item of clothing — will be a lot more tame than however you spent the weekend.
That's OK. It's good to take it easy every now and then.
To that end, here's a handful of spots where you won't have to lose your lunch to fit in.
Nicole Atkins at Dan's Silverleaf
The throaty, Brooklyn-based singer is most often compared to long-gone artists like Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Loretta Lynn. That's to say she's what one might call vocally gifted. More contemporarily, however, Atkins is closer to someone like a Neko Case, who just so happened to sell out the Granada back in January. How so? Well, both she and Atkins have collaborated extensively with New Pornographer A.C. Newman. It was Atkins, you might recall, who provided most of the backing vocals on Newman's 2009 solo effort Get Guilty. Arc Iris and Davey Horne open. — Cory Graves
The Fighting Jamesons at Gas Monkey Bar & Grill (Free)
Since the Dropkick Murphys came through a week or so before St. Patty's Day this year and Flogging Molly won't roll through until later in the week, you might as well spend the actual holiday with the next best thing. — CG
Warm Soda, The Rich Hands and Big Tits at Double Wide
While a lucky few bands use their SXSW showcases to springboard to the next level in their careers, others fizzle out, thanks in no small part, to the insurmountable stress that particular weekend puts on a band. Such was the case with Bare Wires, the Bay Area garage rockers who imploded at South By not long after putting on one of our favorite performances from 2012's 35 Denton festival. Thankfully, it didn't take Bare Wires frontman Matthew Melton to start making a comeback with his power glam outfit Warm Soda. — CG
Starlight Girls at Dada
Brooklyn's Starlight Girls like to claim that they sound like the music of every decade from the '20s on. While the most prevalent of those decades to come through in their songs is, perhaps, the girl groups of the '60s, their more recent work with Xiu Xiu frontman Jamie Stewart has seen the group exploring '90s trip-hop territory. These jacks of all trade also recently toured with English folk singer Kate Nash, which we only bring up to prove that the group's seemingly endless source of influences has helped them find acceptance with just as diverse an audience. New Madrid, Animal Spirit and Drug Animal open. — CG
Blessin', Each Other, Senor Fin and Goldeen at The Whitehouse
It's almost unthinkable that a band like Blessin' — which recently earned praise from national sites like Brooklyn Vegan, and that'll become the first American band to have an album released on UK label Art Is Hard Records next week — will be performing in a coffee shop tonight. At the same time, though, this kind of thing happens all the time in Denton. So perhaps we should just start expecting it by now. — CG
Oral Fixation at Hamon Hall
A wise man once said that the leading fear for most Americans — ahead of even death — is the fear of public speaking. Goes that old bit: “To the average person, if you have to be at a funeral, you'd rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.” Of course, the only public speaking scenarios most folks face in their lives comes through the mundane presentations they're forced to make at school or in front of co-workers. Those moments rarely come elsewhere — like, say, in front of a crowd of strangers. And yet that's exactly what Dallas storytelling series Oral Fixation asks its contributors to do. And the results are great: The authenticity and honesty behind the tales shared by organizer Nicole Stewart and her gutsy performers are what makes Oral Fixation such an exceptional series. Tonight, all tales will center around an “Elephant in the room” theme. — CG
Kayo Dot at Rubber Gloves
While Boston prog-metal outfit Kayo Dot’s sound has changed numerous times the past decade, but that probably has more to do with the dozen-or-so members that have come and gone during that span of time. The band’s core members, though, met while studying jazz at Hampshire College in Massachusetts which is so very Denton. Locals Cutter, Vaults of Zin, and Mountain of Smoke open. — CG
To find out what else is going on today, this week and beyond, check out our events page.
