Those April showers are a distant memory. They’ve been replaced by May pollen.

But plenty of live tunes are in bloom too, including a rare Cereal Killers show. Let’s get into it!

Tonight, you can catch Cockburn at Memorial Hall.

Oops, my bad, the video above is Frank Cockburn. It’s Bruce Cockburn who is playing Memorial Hall this evening.

Other shows tonight include:

• The Arcadian Wild w/ River & Rail at the Woodward
• Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass at the Taft
• Ovation is hosting a Clown show. I hear there will be lots of jugglers there. Oops, my bad. Juggalos.

Tomorrow night, the Smoking Popes will be at Madison Live. They’re from Chicago, just like the white smoke Pope!

Also, Lettuce and GZA from the Wu-Tang Clan will be co-headlining a show at the Taft.

And Dave Mason brings his “Let it Flow 2025 Tour” to Memorial Hall. It sounds a little something like this:

On Thursday, you can choose Furious Bongos (Ludlow Garage) or Napalm Death (Bogarts, with The Melvins).

Or you can chill out with the Farm Jam at Lost Bridge Beverage Company (North Bend, OH), featuring Sean Geil of the Tillers. And Liberty Theater has the Tray Wellington Band with Adam Gilliam.

Tray Wellington Band is a high energy progressive bluegrass band, led by IBMA award winner Tray Wellington. This band continues to push themselves musically to draw on the influences that continue to shape their musical mold.

Oh, and Jim Gaffigan kicks off six shows over the course of four days at the Taft.

This Friday and Saturday, Springfield will be the center of the musical universe.

Springfield, Ohio is hosting a FREE music festival called IndieCraft. Here’s the lineup:

Wild Pink and Aaron Lee Tasjan for free? You’re damn right I’ll be there Saturday!

(I like what I’ve heard from Snarls too. And I’ll be there in time for The Back Alley – the ticket price is right.)

Shows a bit closer to home (unless you live in Springfield) Friday evening:

• Tommy Prine plays Southgate with Conrad Moore and Jordan Lee King
• Rachel Baiman is at Liberty Theater with Maggie Noëlle of Magnolia Boulevard
• Ben Levin plays Arnold’s
• Alex Salcido (of The Harmed Brothers) plays Lost Bridge Beverage Co. in North Bend
• Ludlow Garage has FJ: a tribute to Foreigner AND Journey featuring Constantine Maroulis (“sixth-place finalist on American Idol season 4!”)

For some strange reason, you see a lot of FJ band fans on the golf course.

And the Madison Theater has Kid Kentucky and the American Badass Band… yes, that’s a Kid Rock Tribute. Or you can go to the waste treatment plant on Kellogg Avenue near Lunken Airport for free. Potato/Po-tah-toe.

Speaking of punchable faces, Truist Arena (NKU) has Gutfield Live on Saturday.

And here’s the list of shows that actually will be entertaining on Saturday:

• The aforementioned freebie Wild Pink, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Snarls show in Springfield
• JJ Grey & Mofro w/ The Marshall Tucker Band on the lawn outside the Hard Rock Casino
• Jeffrey Osborne at Ludlow Garage
• Plazmatic album release show with Electric Indigo and Cousins at the Woodward
• Hyryder (Grateful Dead tribute) at the Madison Theater

On Sunday, The String Cheese Incident and The Wood Brothers play the Rose Music Center, and Travis Talbert will be at the Lost Bridge Beverage Co.

On Monday and/or Tuesday, you can be part of a massive 69 at Memorial Hall.

The Magnetic Fields will be performing their 1999 triple album masterpiece 69 Love Songs in its entirety over those two nights.

Also on Monday:

• A Place to Bury Strangers, The Serfs, and The Mall play Northside Tavern
• The Toasters play Southgate

Next Wednesday, May 21, the always progressive, cutting edge lineup of shows at Riverbend kicks off with… (checks list)… Billy Idol and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts. Who needs the Bill & Ted phone booth when you can just buy a ticket to a Riverbend show?

Next Friday, Dark Star Jubilee weekend kicks off in Legend Valley (nee Buckeye Lake):

Other shows on Friday, May 23:

• Blues singer Carolyn Wonderland plays Southgate’s main room with Scotty Bratcher opening
• Angela Perley and Hello June are upstairs in the Southgate Revival Room
• Ricky Nye Inc. plays the Southgate Lounge for free
• Hunter Root plays the Liberty Theater in Lawrenceburg, Indiana
• The Ben Levin Quartet plays The 1931 (at the Hilton Netherland downtown)

On Saturday, May 24, it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: The Cereal Killers play Big Ash Brewing!

Regular readers* of this…uh, whatever the heck this is… know that I’m cuckoo for CK and their amazing repertoire of classic punk, new wave, power pop, and just plain damn fine songs. It’s like a 97X Modern Rock 500 come to life!

*all 3 of them

Cereal Killers gigs have been as rare as hen’s teeth over the past several months. They are the local band equivalent of a century plant:

Some flowers are so rare and extraordinary that they bloom just once in a lifetime—or even once in a century! These plants may require decades of patience, but when they finally burst into bloom, the display is nothing short of spectacular.**

Rare and extraordinary? Check. Decades of patience? Well, maybe just months, but it feels like decades. “The display is nothing short of spectacular” is 100% accurate!

As usual, I’ll be offering my “first beer’s on me” guarantee that this show will be time well spent. Just present this voucher (which I totally did NOT steal from some unsuspecting artist on the interwebs) on your phone and I will buy your first beer.  

**it should be noted that although I compared the Cereal Killers to a plant that blooms only rarely, I am NOT comparing them to the corpse plant, whose unique aroma when it blooms every 7-10 years has been described as “smelling like cheese, garlic, smelly feet, diapers, or rotten fish.”

Other Saturday shows that you won’t be attending because you’ll be at Big Ash drinking free beer and rocking out to great tunes:

• North by Northside kicks off a two-night run at the Northside Tavern
• Carriers have an album release show at the Woodward with Gardener and Dyan
• Maria, etc. has an album release show at the Liberty Theater with Anna Applegate
• Brit Floyd “Wish You Were Here” 50^th anniversary show at the Rose – it’s sold out, but fear not, you can catch the same band on the same tour at the same venue in August…

On Sunday, 5/25, Kinda Grassy plays Lost Bridge (Carriage House Farm).

Monday, May 26 is Memorial Day, a day when we pay tribute to fallen soldiers… typically by grilling hot dogs at the pool.

The Garcia Project (Jerry Garcia Band tribute) plays the Woodward on Tuesday, May 27.

On Wednesday, May 28, I’ll be motoring up to Cleveland to catch The Wedding Present and The Tubs at the Grog Shop.

Peelander-Z and Penfold’s Revenge play Southgate that evening too.

Young Widows play the Woodward on Thursday, May 29 with Kowloon Walled City and Fotocrime on the undercard. And Stanley Clarke kicks off a two-night stand at Ludlow Garage.

Midwest Fest kicks off on Friday, May 30.

Other shows on Friday, May 30:

• Casey Campbell plays Lost Bridge Beverage Co.
• Nikka Costa is at the Woodward
• Dallas Moore w/ Pure Grain at the Liberty Theater
• Taft Theatre has An Evening with Jon Stewart… it’s sold out

Wrapping up the month, Italian guitar phenom Matteo Mancusco plays Ludlow Garage on Saturday, May 31.  

American Aquarium plays the Southgate House on Sunday, June 1, with Justin Wells opening. I plan to hit that show. Eric Johnson is at Ludlow Garage that same night.

We love it live!

Ken “Lobby Boy” Laube, his friend Suzanne and I went up to Columbus to see Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds on 5/2. What a show! Our seats were pretty far back on the main floor, but we bum-rushed the stage during the 2^nd song and stayed there for the duration of the gig. Nick’s a live wire!

List member couples Rico & Ashley and Jay & Alyssa also were in attendance. Nick loves us all.

“When I tell the audience that I love them, the sentiment is entirely true. I feel an emotional transaction with the crowd that is powerful and profoundly intimate. I stand before you all – strangers – witnessing you both individually and collectively, and sense an unbounded love. This love is true. It is not symbolic, metaphorical, or platitudinous. I see before me a group of human beings, precarious and vulnerable, granted a brief time on this earth, each filled with a shocking potential for beauty and terror, good and evil, and with the extraordinary capacity to give and receive love. At that moment, love is the appropriate response.”

From Nick’s Red Hand Files: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/how-can-you-love-a-total-stranger/

True to his word, “Disco Dan” Lewis was at the Son Volt show, along with his friends John W. (also a list member) and Steve (the voice of “The Oasis” – the station that is now on 97.7 FM… I remember that frequency!).

Other list members in attendance: Dan Bockrath, Gene Dow, Mark Morse, Tim Morse, Tom W. and Jamie. Dan Bockrath summed up the show quite nicely:

Fantastic show from Son Volt at The Ludlow Garage. Bumped into many longtime music friends at the gig. Up close and personal for a career spanning set. Amazing!

Meanwhile, list member Kevin Sullivan snuck down to Nashville to catch Lucy Dacus at the Ryman:

An updated version of the 97X Modern Rock 500… with a new spin!

Inhailer Radio (catch Ken “Lobby Boy” Laube Fridays 11a-3p!) is doing an updated version of the old 97X Modern Rock 500, counting down the top 500 indie songs over Memorial Day Weekend.

And this year, they’re expanding the list of songs and extending the listening window with “qualifying laps”:

If you tune in to the 500, you might just catch your ol’ pals Dave and Damian doing a few breaks.

Shameless Self-Promotion (while also promoting the Indie 500)

Dave and I also interviewed Inhailer’s Music Director, Nils Illokken, about the station and this year’s countdown for a “very special episode” of our “97X Rumblings from the Big Bush” podcast. You can catch that episode on 97Xbam.com here, or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podbean, or any other podcast platform that hasn’t banned us yet.

Hot Ticket Alert

X and Los Lobos play the Rose Music Center on Sunday, September 21. They’re calling it the “99 Years of Rock ‘n Roll” tour.

I already have my ticket, courtesy of Steve “El Blanco” White.

The Sad Section

A heartfelt FB post from list member “The Lovely & Talented Elizabeth Cannon”:

Follow-up single “Spirit of ’76” — which Peters co-wrote, as he did for most of the band’s songs — recounted his early days of discovering punk rock and name-checks the likes of Johnny Rotter and Siouxsie Sioux.

“The song is about the most important time in my life,” Peters wrote in the program for the Strength tour. “I had my whole life mapped out before me and life seemed pretty unexciting. Then I saw bands like The Jam and The Buzzcocks and U2, and things and they really had an impact on my life. It gave me the courage to leave something behind and go out and try to build a new life for myself.”

From this article.

Here’s a shot of Mike Peters with Mr. K and Jetson from 97X, along with some fans (not pictured: The Lovely & Talented Elizabeth Cannon):

And R.I.P to singer/songwriter Jill Sobule, who died in a house fire.

Sobule was known for taking control of her career by fundraising so she could make her next album. In 2008, after two major record companies dumped her and two indie labels went bankrupt beneath her, she raised tens of thousands of dollars from fans so she could make a new album.

“The old kind of paradigm, where you’ve always waited for other people to do things, you’d have your manager and your agent,” she said at the time. “You’d wait for the big record company to give you money to do things and they tell you what to do. This is so great. I want to do everything like this.”

From this article.

Shortly before her death, Sobule had written and recorded a provocative song titled “J.D. Vance Is a C***” in collaboration with friends Michelle Lewis and Kay Hanley under the name Sugar Tits. The song, filled with biting satire and rhymes, quickly went viral on social media, thrusting Sobule back into the spotlight in her final days. It’s not radio-friendly. It’s not my best song, but it does get to the point.”

From this article. Her JD song is here.

Public Service Reminder for hipster parents of teens

Album Cover(s) of the Week(s)

There’s so much to love in this one. The outfits, of course. The amazing hairdo on the woman… or is that a beaver pelt? And best of all, the band name that’s illegible on that busy background. But we don’t need to read that! Everybody who is anybody knows that’s Johnny & Nadine Rexroat (and the Gospel Travelers).

“Great day for a hike! Let’s put on our best dresses and our white high heels and start ‘going through the land.’”