Whew, we just made it through January's subzero temps, rain, ice, fog and plain old gloominess. As we kick off February on a Thursday, I couldn't help but notice that the shortest of our months definitely packs a long list of holidays to celebrate. There's Groundhogs Day, Abe's birthday, Fat Tuesday, Valentine's Day, Presidents Day (along with George Washington's official birthday), leap day (this year) and it's also Black History Month. Plus, around Feb. 10, a few billion (seriously) people around the world will celebrate the Lunar New Year, listed as the Year of the Dragon for you restaurant placemat readers. I suppose in some ways we could consider the Super Bowl on Feb. 11 as about as big of a national holiday consensus that we experience. A good deal of these celebrations connect us through live music, so get ready for a fun-filled romp of a musical month. Let's get to looking at this week's offerings for now.
Thursday evenings deliver a nice grouping of jamming options with Ole Stogie doing a whole bunch of classic rock tunes played on a cigar box guitar out at Crows Mill Pub, while Ricarda Rosalina covers this week's Thirsty Thursdays night at El Arriero on Wabash Avenue. The open mics continue, with Jack Reilly and friends presenting at the Railyard Cafe and John Drake hosting musicians and poets at Ad Astra, while Kortney and friends do a rocking, full band, open jam at the Blue Grouch.
Nowadays, Friday nights seem to begin for many folks with a visit to Boone's for drinks and eats at the Springfield Area Arts Council-sponsored Friday Night Jazz & Blues music series. This week is a super-duper treat as The José Gobbo Trio lays it down front and center.
The entire month's lineup is quite an incredible list of longtime local groups all doing variously different things very well including The Michael Taylor Trio on the 9th, Stone Cold Blues Band on the 16th and Footprints with Virgil Rhodes on the 23rd. So now you can plan ahead (though you should just plan on going ahead and showing up anyway), knowing you may want to get there early to find a spot in the space where the music happens. And it won't be long before the happening is happening back outside in the friendly confines of the music garden. Wow, just pause and think of that for a moment.
Otherwise, it appears Friday's trend is to be a-rocking hard with Echoes of Pompeii (Pink Floyd tribute) at Danenberger Family Vineyards, The Stone Giants at Goodfellas and Phantom Lordz (Metallica and more) with Enamel and Dysfunctional Family at The Curve Inn.
On Saturday night, the assortment of music is absurdly wonderful with Blue Note Trio, featuring Buddy Rogers, on jazz sax at Harvest Market upstairs, Broken Brogue bringing its Celtic music traditions from Decatur to Buzz Bomb and The Fairweather Friends, led by Mike Metz at VFW Post 755, doing Clapton, Petty, Dylan, Snyder and the like. Then, Fuerza Bruta, Home Invasion, No Guard, Discern and False Negative tag-team together for a Dumb Records in-house concert, as Jay Larson Band plays it in the pocket out at Mowie's Cue.
Sunday is chock-full of all kinds of stuff, especially in the area small towns, from Robert Sampson at Trails End in Curran to Joel Honey at Hill Prairie Winery near Oakford, Ella Gibson at Lucky's in Petersburg and Not Petty at 1905 Brewing Co. in Assumption.
Please remember to check our listings for all the many more exciting events going on in our music community and have fabulous fun in February.
