Chris Stapleton isn’t the only big music act coming to Lexington: 4 more concerts to catch

Think Chris Stapleton has the concert traffic cornered as April heads into the home stretch? Well, the Kentucky country kingpin’s April 23 outing with Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow and Madeline Edwards at Kroger Field may be the biggest bill of the weekend (and the week ahead) but its hardly the lone offering of note.

If you’re up for downsizing from a stadium to far more intimate theatre setting, the Lexington Opera House (401 W. Short St.) and the Troubadour Concert Series have an especially cool cure coming up for the Monday blues.

Rather hit the clubs? Then make The Burl (375 Thompson Rd.) your hot spot for the week ahead. The popular Distillery District venue has three exceptional shows on tap over a six-day run.

Here are the four major league alternatives – or additions - to going supersized at the stadium.

Robyn Hitchcock

8 p.m. April 23 at The Burl (indoor show). $ 20.

Going head-to-head with Stapleton’s stadium roadshow on Saturday is veteran British song stylist Robyn Hitchcock. It’s a fitting match-up, oddly enough. Hitchcock was initially slated to play The Burl on April 25, 2020, which also the original date for the Stapleton performance. Both concerts were rescheduled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hitchcock has direct lineage to the first waves of post-punk music out of England through his band The Soft Boys. But from the ’80s onward, he has worked as an indie-minded craftsman (even while recording for major labels), forging songs that bridge surrealist, psychedelic inclined lyrics to earworm-worthy pop melodies. His solo acoustic concerts, though, also make room for the odd Bob Dylan cover or two.

Hitchcock is also no stranger to cinema buffs. He was the subject of a 1998 concert documentary, “Storefront Hitchcock,” by the late director Jonathan Demme. The Demme connection continued with Hitchcock in a strictly acting capacity alongside Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep in the 2004 remake of “The Manchurian Candidate.”

Tickets: theburlky.com/events.

Indigo Girls

7:30 p.m. April 25 at the Lexington Opera House. $71.50.

It is sobering to realize Amy Ray and Emily Saliers have been making music as Indigo Girls for over 35 years. In some respects, little has changed in that time. Listen to “Secure Yourself” from the duo’s 1989 breakthrough self-titled album alongside the title tune to 2021’s “Look Long” and you’ll hear harmonies that have remained refreshingly consistent and unspoiled.

Of course, so much has changed around that singing style. Often referenced strictly as a folk act, the Indigos have created keen electric music that has regularly blossomed into full grown orchestral collaborations. There has also been a sense of activism that, while present even in the earliest stages of their career, has had Ray and Saliers championing causes of environmentalism, gay rights and Native American rights.

Lexington has been with them most of the way, too, through concert appearances at the Kentucky Theatre, the Singletary Center for the Arts and now the Opera House. Among the most notable local visits was an April 1998 show at the University of Kentucky’s Memorial Coliseum that featured a surprise collaborative cameo by folk empress Joan Baez.

Tickets: ticketmaster.com.

Son Volt

8 p.m. April 25 at The Burl (indoor show). $25.

Son Volt was born in 1995 out the wreckage of Uncle Tupelo, a figurehead band of the late ’90s alt-country movement led by Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy. Farrar turned to the Tupelo-friendly Son Volt with Tweedy opting for the more expansive pop-rock plateau of Wilco.

The initial Son Volt lineup issued three crisp, electric Americana rock albums between 1995 and 1998 and toured relentlessly before disbanding. Farrar then took a detour with several critically acclaimed solo records before reconvening Son Volt for 2005’s “Okemah and the Melody of Riot” album. The lineups have shifted regularly since then, along with a sound that shifts between dark country terrain to near psychedelic and topically minded rock ‘n’ roll. The prevailing consistency in all of Son Volt’s music is a sense of steadfast despondency from Farrar that has dominated his singing as well as his songs.

Son Volt first played Lexington in late 1995, packing every breathable inch of the long-since-demised Short Street music club known as The Wrocklage. While Farrar has performed here numerous times since then as a solo act, the Burl show will mark the first Son Volt visit to Lexington in many years.

S.G. Goodman will open the performance.

Tickets: theburlky.com/events.

Los Lobos

8 p.m. April 28 at The Burl (outdoor show). $32.

Okay, we all know our man Chris Stapleton cleaned up at the Grammy Awards earlier this month, taking home three trophies including the prize for Best Country Album. But let us interject that he will not be the only newly crowned Grammy champ heading our way in the week ahead. Rounding out the brisk run of killer concerts at The Burl will be Los Lobos, the veteran East Los Angeles rock troupe that won a Grammy for its recent “Native Sons” albums.

There is a weird irony surrounding the win. For decades, Los Lobos has created a series of albums full of masterful original songs. Some reflect its Mexican-American heritage while others are more universally plaintive. Musically, those sagas are set to everything of vintage cumbias and Nortenas to searing electric psychedelia.

What makes the recent Grammy win so curious is that “Native Sons” is made entirely of cover tunes by artists from the band’s California homeland, ranging from obscure (the Chicano band Thee Midniters) to legendary (Buffalo Springfield, The Beach Boys). While it would be nice for some of Los Lobos’ own music get more love, a Grammy win is a Grammy win. “Native Sons” is more than a worthy recipient.

Tickets: theburlky.com/events.