Which to choose? Which to choose? Friday offers three great music options in the Bluegrass.
Fall is rocking out on Friday. Get set for some picking and choosing as three prime shows take over three regional venues to start the weekend. Here is what the evening’s concert harvest is offering.
Town Mountain
Opening: The Misty Mountain String Band. 9 p.m. Oct 19 at The Burl, 375 Thompson Rd. $15. theburlky.com.
The Carolinas may be their home, but the members of Town Mountain have made Lexington a regular performance destination for much of their decade-long run as one of bluegrass music’s most industrious young bands.
So it probably isn’t major news that Town Mountain is heading back for a show tonight at The Burl. But this should be an ideal time and place to catch the band in action. The show falls one week prior to the release of “New Freedom Blues,” an album that further extends Town Mountain’s dive into the rhythmic, roots-driven terrain introduced on 2016’s “Southern Crescent.”
But don’t let the addition of Sturgill Simpson drummer and Woodford County native Miles Miller on these sessions throw you. He merely enhances the drive within tunes like“Witch Trials” and “Life and Debt” that has always been at play in Town Mountain’s best music.
Friday’s Burl show also comes on the heels of several prestigious Nashville appearances this week, including a Tuesday outing at the Grand Ole Opry and two nights at the city’s famed bluegrass haunt The Station Inn. Look for the band to be joining Kentucky’s own Tyler Childers (who wrote the brooding album-closing outlaw anthem “Down Low” with Town Mountain banjo player Jesse Langlais) for a series of December shows in Texas and Oklahoma.
Rickie Lee Jones
7:30 p.m. Oct. 19 at the Grand Theatre, 308 St. Clair St. in Frankfort. $45-$65. 502-352-7469. grandtheatrefrankfort.org.
Want to feel old?
Then try on the fact that February will mark the 40th anniversary of Rickie Lee Jones’ self-titled debut album — the record that made “Chuck E.’s in Love” a rock radio staple, prompted a win for Best New Artist at the Grammys the following year and cemented her reputation as a priestess of hipster pop cool.
“Although none of the legion of emulators she has inspired is, strictly speaking, worthy of comparison to her, the fact remains that her influence on the evolution of the singer-songwriter tradition in unquestionable,” wrote the late Walter Becker of Steely Dan in the album notes to the 2005 Jones anthology “Duchess of Coolsville.” Becker produced 1989’s “Flying Cowboys,” one of the many other sublime albums that have peppered Jones’ career through the years.
Jonny Lang
Opening: Zane Carney. 7 p.m. Oct. 19 at Manchester Music Hall, 899 Manchester St. $27, $35. 859-537-7321. manchestermusichall.com.
It can be a common expression when detailing the length of an extended career to say someone has “spent half their life” on a given pursuit. But Jonny Lang really has, and he’s only 37. The Grammy-winning guitar star was 14 when he released his first album and turned 16 just after the release of his platinum-selling “Lie to Me” in 1997.
At the time, Lang was among a legion of guitar prodigies that audiences were turning to further the blues-rock vision of Stevie Ray Vaughan, who died in 1990, as well the psychedelic legacy of Jimi Hendrix. In regard to the latter, Lang has long been part of Experience Hendrix, the annual touring collective that celebrates Hendrix’s pioneering guitar work.
Lang’s allegiance to such heavy electric music remains unwavering. His most recent album, 2017’s “Signs,” still roars with the same volume, drive and blues-invested rock ‘n’ roll that fueled “Lie to Me” two decades earlier. Lang isn’t the only guitar-slinger on Manchester Music Hall’s schedule this fall. The great Texas picker Eric Johnson will play there on Oct. 29.