Music Matters

Free concerts, Flaming Lips, and Lynyrd Skynyrd top best live music this week in Houston

What did we ever do to get so lucky? Houston's strongest fall season of concerts in memory is in full swing with another strong slate of shows this week that features plenty of fantastic touring acts, local events and several free shows that will ease the burden on the pocketbook. The best part is this is only the beginning. Houston's about to benefit from the ACL Festival trickle-down when bands book side-shows before, during and after the major event's double weekend slate in October. The weather may be cooling down, but the music is just starting to heat up.

Must-See Show of the Week

If the music industry completely collapsed tomorrow, forcing bands to become traveling minstrels like days of old, The Flaming Lips would would survive on its live show alone. The Oklahoma City based indie-psych band has developed from modest beginnings in the Nineties as a minor concern on the alternative rock charts (“She Don’t Use Jelly”) to a powerful live force making fans of millions, including one very famous pop star in Miley Cyrus.

The Lips are touring behind their latest album, Oczy Mlody. Lasers, a LED light show, costumes, confetti and giant inflatable balls are all within the realm of possibility, mixing LSD-meets-Mardi Gras visuals with heartfelt songs plucked from the stratosphere. Fronted by the charismatic Wayne Coyne, the creators of Oklahoma’s former state rock song (“Do You Realize?”) offer a sensory experience that could easily be considered performance art. The Flaming Lips play the Revention Music Center on Friday, September 29, with indie darling Mac DeMarco. Tickets are $40-$45. Show starts at 8 pm.

Family Friendly Events

Live music and the famous Clydesdale horses are on tap at the Budweiser Brewery Open House and Open-Air Market Saturday, September 30. Organized in only a few weeks to assist local musicians, arts and businesses affected by Hurricane Harvey, the event will include performances by local acts Los Dientes, Mind Shrine, Los Guerreros De La Musica, Sik Mule, Good Grief and Flash Gordon Parks. Several local artist and clothing vendors hurt by Harvey will be selling their wares, food trucks will be on site and beer will flow. The event takes place at 775 Gellhorn Drive from 10 am - 6 pm.

The Party on the Plaza concert series kicks off Wednesday, October 4, for a six-week run and has built an impressive lineup. Hosted along Avenida Plaza in front of George R. Brown Convention Center on Wednesdays through November 15, the series begins with the return of Nashville-based singer-songwriter Robert Ellis, appearing just blocks away at the Super Bowl Live experience last February. Subsequent weeks feature Ben Kweller (October 18), Bob Schneider with The Tontons (October 25), The Molly Ringwalds (November 1), The Old 97s (November 8) and Reverend Horton Heat (November 15). The best part? These shows are free. Shows start at 6 pm.

Other Shows of Note

Friday, September 29
Friday’s stacked concert schedule plays like the world’s best battle of the alternative bands. Emo-superstars Paramore, fronted by neon-haired dynamo Hayley Williams, hit the stage at the Smart Financial Center at Sugar Land with critically acclaimed So Cal indie darlings Best Coast in tow. Tickets are $38 to $340. Show starts at 8 p.m.

White Oak Music Hall offers the two excellent line-ups for one great price when Philadelphia '70s throw-back rockers War on Drugs play the lawn with fantastic Montreal band Land of Talk. War on Drugs is performing behind one of the best albums of the year in A Deeper Understanding, which hones the best of Dylan, Springsteen and Fleetwood Mac through a modern rock gauze.

Following that show, British upstarts The Cribs play a free show upstairs behind their brash, melodic new release 24-7 Rock Star Shit. This band has serious cred back home — The Smiths’ guitar genius Johnny Marr joined the band for a tour and album in 2009. Tickets for War on Drugs are $31 in advance, doors open at 7 p.m. The Cribs perform with PAWS, show starts at 10 p.m. Free for those 21-and-up. Tip your bartender!

Saturday, September 30
Fans of middling '90s torch songs sung by sensitive dudes prone to over-articulation that famous actresses inexplicably drooled over back in the day will get a thrill from the Matchbox Twenty and Counting Crows line-up at The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. Both acts found huge success in the Nineties, the former with grunge-lite radio hit “Push" among others, and the latter with multi-million copies sold August and Everything After hits, including "Mr. Jones," and "Round Here." Tickets are $24 to $210 and the show starts at 6:45 pm.

Those with a little more distinct musical palate should check out the killer bill of Young The Giant with Cold War Kids and Joywave on the White Oak Music Hall lawn. Young The Giant has been touring behind the 2016 release Land of the Strange and hits that sweet spot on the spectrum between Mumford and Sons and .fun. Tickets are $32 in advance. Doors open at 6 pm.

Sunday, October 1
Eccentric, critically-acclaimed alternative troubadour Father John Misty is also at White Oak this Sunday. The LSD-dosing, Lana Del Rey caressing singer-songwriter satirist is touring behind well received album, Pure Comedy. Tickets are $35 in advance. Weyes Blood opens. Doors open at 6 pm.

Thursday, October 4
Massively popular hip-hop festival headliners Run The Jewels return after a closing set at Day For Night last December to take over the Revention Music Center with Cuz Lightyear in tow. The duo of El-P and Killer Mike has caught the imagination of hip-hop diehards, indie music heads and critics alike with a string of cerebral and fun albums in Run The Jewels, Run The Jewels 2, and Run The Jewels 3, producing some of the most exciting music of any genre over the last five years. Tickets start at $35. Doors open at 7 pm.

“Play Free Bird!” This may be the one concert where it’s okay to scream this at the band as 2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Lynyrd Skynyrd brings its Southern-fried hits from the Seventies to the Smart Financial Center at Sugar Land stage. They bring along fellow Southern boogie-blues band Molly Hatchet of “Flirtin’ With Disaster” fame. Tickets are $39 to $286.

Emo-rock band Paramore plays the Smart Financial Center at Sugar Land Friday, September 29.

Photo by Lindsey Byrnes

Emo-rock band Paramore plays the Smart Financial Center at Sugar Land Friday, September 29.

music concerts

let's go to the movies

18th annual Cinema Arts Festival promises to be the most Houston yet

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother film still

Courtesy of Houston Cinema Arts Festival

Mahershala Ali's Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is set in Houston.

Is it safe to say that, out of all the years the Houston Cinema Arts Festival has been up and running, this year’s fest is – the most Houston ever?

Courtesy of Houston Cinema Arts Festival

Mahershala Ali's Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is set in Houston.

The 18th-annual film festival — running from this Thursday, October 1, until Sunday, October 11 — will showcase several Houston-centric films and filmmakers in their “Spotlight on Texas” and “Texas Icons” programs. Pakistani-born, Clutch City-bred filmmaker Bassam Tariq (Mogul Mowgli) directed the opening-night film, the Mahershala Ali action drama Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, which is also set in Houston.

Vicky Wight, another H-Town filmmaker, will screen two films: the narrative drama The Body Is Water and Zina, a documentary short on Houston tennis great Zina Garrison. DJ Screw, Brittney Griner, the Fourth Ward, and the Billie Jean King-Bobby Riggs “Battle of the Sexes” match that went down at the Astrodome will also get screen time this year. And don’t forget about the 30th anniversary screening of Bottle Rocket, written and directed by hometown hero Wes Anderson.

“Houston was such a major source of inspiration for the festival,” says lead HCAF programmer Michael D. Robinson. “We have that idea of reflecting Houston back to itself, but also, for me, it was reflecting Houston to the world and the world back to Houston.”

Now in its eighth year, the HCAF (created and programmed by the Houston Cinema Arts Society) continues to look for cinematic art both regionally and internationally. The fest will screen the latest from acclaimed international filmmakers, including Possible Love, from South Korean dramatist Lee Chang-dong (Burning); and Fatherland, from Oscar-nominated Pole Paweł Pawlikowski (Cold War). A wide array of features and shorts will also be shown, ranging from films directed by female filmmakers to films centered on African American and LGBTQ+ themes.

“My Eyes Are Playing Tricks on Me” is a themed program dealing with the complicated relationship between image and truth, particularly in this increasingly-troublesome age of AI. Robinson gives props to HCAS for giving him more room to expand the lineup.

“There are 10 more features than last year, and I'm very happy that they let me do that,” he says. “But I definitely was more ambitious and, just looking at this year in film, there are so many great options. And it kind of became a moment of being like, if we can, let's just try to give audiences as many of these great films from international festivals — but also from [South by Southwest].”

The 11-day fest will be a sprawling affair, with screenings happening at various venues (including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Rice Cinema, River Oaks Theatre, and the DeLUXE Theater) along with parties, panels, and other events going on in other spots. Just as the festival wants to salute Houston on-screen, the organizers also want Houstonians to experience the spaces where you can see these films.

“Houston is not like [former Sundance Film Festival home] Park City, Utah, where everything is a mile away from each other, and you have 100 different theaters that you can walk to,” says HCAS executive director Katie Creeggan-Rios. “We are a big, sprawling, metropolitan area with a lot of different neighborhoods and a lot of our cultural identities. And it's been important to Michael and me from the beginning to make sure that we are programming site-specific, that we're thinking about what is important to an audience at the DeLUXE Theater, and what kind of movies feel at home at the River Oaks. And it's one of the things that makes our audience so special, and makes our festival so exciting.”

For more information on the Houston Cinema Arts Festival, go to the festival website.

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