JME Live Music Calendar
Your guide to concerts and music events in Jacksonville and across Northeast Florida.
See the full list of upcoming shows below, or check out our Go Concert Picks to see what the Jacksonville Music Experience team wants to see and hear this week (we update our picks every Monday).
Past Events
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Friday, May 6, 2022 - Saturday, May 7, 2022 8:00 pm - 12:00 am |
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Reckless Road & Sweet Melissa Jack Rabbits Original Rock Soul Blues Reckless Road & Sweet Melissa are: Melissa Stuto lead vocals Barry Rapp keyboard/vocals Phil Swindle guitar Sammy Buonocore drums/vocals John Piantadosi bass/vocals |
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Thursday, May 5, 2022 - Friday, May 6, 2022 7:00 pm - 12:00 am |
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Battles Jack Rabbits Battles return this autumn with their fourth album Juice B Crypts on Warp Records to follow their complex, mind-bending predecessors Mirrored, Gloss Drop, Dross Glop and La Di Da Di. Their latest album is a sensory overload of information that throws everything you thought you knew about Battles into flux once again. Battles redefined line-up puts Ian Williams (Keys, Guitar, Electronics) and John Stanier (Drums) at the core of the covertly named Juice B Crypts, which was produced and mixed by Chris Tabron (Trash Talk, Beyonce, Mobb Deep, Ratking). Marrying synthesizer loops, cut-throat drum patterns and cyclical riffs, the album flirts with new technology, questions of authenticity and the technicalities of reinventing the wheel at the eleventh hour. In true Battles form, the pair have encrypted the album with hidden codes and secret languages that only they know. What does the composer of “Taxi”, a semi-modular analog subtractive audio synthesizer, a two cycle gasoline tie drilling machine and a 70’s band with fifteen studio and six live albums have to do with Juice B Crypts? One answer Ian points you to is the concept of ‘medium specificity’ coined by New York art critic Clement Greenberg, which valued artists’ abilities to manipulate mediums based on their materiality. Like painters on the vanguard of modernism, Battles apply their medium of choice: intricate arpegios sequenced on an Elektron Octatrack, mind-altering pitch-shifted chord progressions, sixteen-measure time signatures and twisted clues to do the talking. All to be somewhat expected from the band responsible for boundary-defying songs such as “The Yabba”, “Atlas” and “Ice Cream”. The announcement of Juice B Crypts is timed with the first single “Titanium 2 Step”. Featuring No Wave legend Sal Principato from the iconic ‘80s New York band Liquid Liquid, this first offering is an homage to the city, resembling a lost New York classic. “We loved making this record in our hometown of New York and cannot be more pleased that Sal from Liquid Liquid is on the track,” explains John, “it could not have been more perfect”. While they’ve always been from New York, Juice B Crypts is the first album Battles have written and recorded living there. Influenced by its rhythms, it joins the dots of their lived and unlived experiences there, mapping them out on the LP artwork. This is also envisioned by local artist and friend Andrew Kuo, whose colourful abstract bars and triangle pixels on the album artwork test the limits of 2-D flatness with 3-D manipulations, and create an optical pattern that resembles the way Battles notate, coding phrases and patterns with memorable names. Starting its life as a venerated weight of information and data, Juice B Crypts is the refined and repeated ingestion of human inflections into machine learning. As Battles explore new territory for the first time as a duo, their approach to composition and live performance intends to dismantle the traditional band format. On this album they’ve become featherweight ghosts within the machine, changing direction with ease they leave the listener at the mercy of their instincts. Juice B Crypts is Battles untethered, Ian expands: “It’s about chord progressions, resolutions, returning home. Take that and throw it into a blender of modern electronic tools like glitching devices, or use melodic lines and take them and regurgitate them and pulverise the traditional stuff but at the same time try and retain harmonic relationships while completely smashing them up”. Arriving at around 40 minutes, Juice B Crypts is opened by “Ambulance”, which dives straight into Battles core sound with its meticulously tight guitar loops and maverick levels of instrumental deconstruction and arrangement. “A Loop So Nice…” offers a peculiarly attractive hand up in to “They Played It Twice” featuring New York vocalist Xenia Rubinos, whose vocals resonate on a granular level, liberating the track. Full of surprises, Battles invite Taipei’s psychedelic band Prairie WWWW and Yes vocalist and progressive rock icon Jon Anderson to push vocals through the wire shaped gaps on “Sugar Foot”. As well as hosting a party of vocalists, including Shabazz Palaces and tUnE-yArDs, the album boasts instrumental highpoints, like “Fort Greene Park” and the title track, which emits alternating beams of pitched energy that obfuscate and scramble your thoughts. On album closer “The Last Supper On Shasta (feat. tUnE-yArDs)” a piano plays the synth notes heard at the beginning of the album, reconditioning and corrupting the loop, demonstrating the limitless potential of these metapatterns that run deep through instrumental phrases to lyrics, like those heard in Prairie WWWW’s feature: “no beginning to the story, no end to the time”, which are looped like a tautological code twisting in time. |
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Wednesday, May 4, 2022 - Thursday, May 5, 2022 7:00 pm - 12:00 am |
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Mephiskapheles Jack Rabbits Mephiskapheles, the band that helped define third-wave ska, then defied critics by exploring even greater possibilities with its darkly original ska fusion, forges ahead with amazing shows and a new full-length record in the works. Formed in the East Village of New York City in 1991 by a group of punk rockers/artists/ad guys/jazz musicians, Mephiskapheles played its first show on Long Island. From day one, the band began attracting a diverse, dedicated fan base. Sold-out NYC gigs led to tours with the Buzzcocks and GWAR, and hits on the Hawaiian Islands Chart with three singles from the band’s first album, 1994’s God Bless Satan, produced by Bill Laswell. While touring relentlessly, Mephiskapheles followed-up in 1997 with Maximum Perversion, a jazz-influenced work that didn’t take long to be hailed as a classic. A deal in 1999 with Koch Records resulted in the band’s hard-hitting, exploratory third album, Might-Ay White-Ay. The band released the self-titled EP Mephiskapheles in 2015, featuring the single “Satan Stole My Weed,” an instant classic. The Never Born Again EP, released in 2019, brings the band back full circle to its dark and melodic roots. Fronted by lead singer Invidious aka the Nubian Nightmare, along with the hottest rhythm section in New York, and the Horns of Hell, Mephiskapheles spreads its evil seed with an ongoing reissue program, epic shows, and new music to be released this year. |
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Sunday, May 1, 2022 - Monday, May 2, 2022 8:00 pm - 12:00 am |
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Local H Jack Rabbits Local H, the iconic alt-rock duo known for their blistering live shows and pioneering the two- piece band set-up, is atthe top of their game more than two decades after they first burst onto the music scene. Frontman Scott Lucas, whocovers both guitar and bass (through an extra pick up in his guitar), and drummer Ryan Harding have enjoyed aresurgence in recent years, buoyed by global touring along with the release of some of their most critically acclaimedwork to date. Local H’s first major release was 1995’s Ham Fisted, but it was their follow up album As Good As Dead thatpositioned the band as one of the elites in what was a groundbreaking decade for rock music. With multiple radiohits on the album, “Bound For The Floor” emerged as a generational anthem and remains a staple on playlists aroundthe country over two decades later. Their widely praised 1998 concept album Pack Up the Cats, produced by thelegendary Roy Thomas Baker, solidified Local H as a leader in the genre and the albums that followed were reflective of not only the band’s definitive character, but as well their relentless effort to give their audience as muchof themselves as possible. While recipients of numerous accolades over the years, Local H has always kept the focuson their fans, which can be seen by the awe inspiring and often times daunting tour schedule the band has kept upyear after year. The last three years have seen a multitude of releases from the band in various forms. In 2015, Local H celebratedthe 25th anniversary of their first show and released a career-spanning coffee table book, “Local H: Twenty-FiveYears of Skin In The Game”. That same year they released Hey, Killer, their eighth full length studio album, to nearunanimous acclaim. In 2016 the band celebrated the 20th anniversary of the release of As Good As Dead with asuccessful three month national headline tour (partnered with their first live Blu-Ray DVD, “Straight Outta Zion”,shot at the Metro in Chicago during a weekend of sold out shows). 2017 was perhaps Local H’s busiest year yet, as the band continued to tour extensively not only as headliners, but onhugely successful tours with The Toadies and Helmet and —perhaps most exciting of all— career highlightperformances on Metallica’s sold out stadium tour. The band also found time to publish another book “The LastPicture Book Outta Zion or: How We Learned To Stop Worrying About Cell Phones And Love The Photos Of JohnOakes”, an intimate behind the scenes portrait of the band shot by photographer John Oakes. |
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Saturday, April 30, 2022 9:00 am - 12:00 pm |
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Community-wide Shred It Day WJCT Studios Join WJCT and AARP for a community-wide shred it day! Saturday, April 30th from 9AM... |
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Saturday, April 30, 2022 - Sunday, May 1, 2022 8:00 pm - 12:00 am |
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LOAT! Jack Rabbits A little bit emo rap, a little pop punk, and a little hyperpop, it’s hard to make a song that better encapsulates the current musical moment than LOAT!’s “cheyenne.” Combining vivid snapshots of late-night excess with a self-aware edge, the track marks the arrival of a talent capable of building consensus across genres. LOAT! stands for “Lover of All Things,” and hearing what influenced the ascendant 17 year old’s music makes it abundantly clear why such a name is appropriate. Based in Jacksonville, FL, LOAT! cites musicians like Lil Tracy, Ski Mask the Slump God, and Pierce the Veil, as well as horror movies from Nightmare on Elm Street to Midsommar as inspiration. “My whole life I’ve always wanted to see both sides of every story and wanted to know the ladder to everything,” he says. His stage name also helped inspire the title of his upcoming debut EP Devil’s Advocate. The project is a classic doomed lover story, enlivened by LOAT!’s knack for arena-sized hooks and his commitment to portraying both perspectives. “I just put so much into it and I never even could have thought that I would put it out,” LOAT! says of Devil’s Advocate. “Views don’t matter to me. Reviews don’t really matter. I make my music for the people that want to hear it.” Songs like lead single “cheyenne” and “haunted house” marry bubbly pop melodies with grim tales of love, loss, and longing. LOAT! says this Trojan horse style of songwriting is particularly intriguing, and he also injects them with a kind of caustic fourth-wall breaking wit. “I like taking lighthearted songs and putting very dark meanings into them,” he explains. His baritone voice is commanding, particularly when juxtaposed against bright guitar chords and squirming synths. At times, his woozy cadences recall the early work of Juice WRLD, though with even more low-end heft. When he reaches into his reedy upper register, his voice, often dusted in distortion, has a sweetness that you wouldn’t associate with chronicles of drugs, devotion and demons (both personal and literal). Since he began taking music seriously in 2018, he’s recorded almost exclusively DIY style in his home, but that hasn’t stopped him from writing tracks that you can picture thousands belting along to at a festival. The first step in his process is concocting a narrative worth exploring, which he later builds out into specific songs. He says he’s got more to explore in the same universe as Devil’s Advocate, but is also eager to keep branching out. Songs like “voices” and “FUEGO” prove his hip-hop bona fides, and why he’s considered a key fixture in the sober core and aesthetic rap scenes. |