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.

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 on Thursday, October 4.

Photo courtesy of Lynyrd Skynyrd

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 on Thursday, October 4.

music concerts

welcome home, wes

Wes Anderson's Houston homecoming supports historic theater restoration

A fancy, eccentric-looking crowd showed up for the Wes Anderson Homecoming Soirée, held on Friday, July 17, at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts’s Zilkha Hall.

Fans of the Houston-born, Oscar-winning auteur paid hundreds of dollars to attend this benefit event. Guys dressed up like characters from The Royal Tenenbaums. Others wore red skull caps and low-top Adidas, like the characters from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Some people working the event even wore “Lobby Boy” hats, looking like the bellboy character from The Grand Budapest Hotel.

The people gathered for two reasons: 1) to get a chance to see Anderson in person; and 2) to raise money to renovate and restore the Garden Oaks Theater, a project spearheaded by local nonprofit Arthouse Houston. Top-tier “Founders Experience” ticketholders got a chance to meet Anderson onstage for pics. The St. John's School alum also received a proclamation from Mayor John Whitmire declaring it “Wes Anderson Day.”

After that, he and actor/fellow SJS alum Michael Maggart (who has appeared in several Anderson films) held a half-hour discussion where they reminisced about making Rushmore here in Houston, Anderson’s days working at the Bookstop on W. Alabama (now a Trader Joe’s), and how he and frequent collaborator Owen Wilson used to sneak into the River Oaks Theatre. (It involved pretending to lose a pair of glasses.)

Of course, the conversation shifted to Anderson coming back home to support the Garden Oaks project. “I always say you can't build an old building,” Anderson said. “First of all, I mean, a beautiful old place has history, and has people's experiences tied into it, and it has stories involved in it. And I think an old cinema — these things are kind of endangered all over the world, and it's not just an architectural thing. It's not even just a community thing. It's a sort of delivery system for something that’s, to me, deeply important to our country.

“It’s one thing we can access these things on all these devices,” he continued. “It's a different thing when you go to a place that's designed to help you share the experience of a movie together. It's such a powerful art form. And, anyway, for me, it's worth making a bit of an effort to try to save a place like the Garden Oaks.”

After the convo, he introduced the quintet of films he curated for the event. (Unfortunately the DCP file for his 2007 short Hotel Chevalier had some technical difficulties and was cut short.) “We wanted to do a screening here, and I don't have a new movie to show,” he said. “I don't have something hot off the presses. So, I thought I'd put together a little something that just was different from what anybody else will see. So it's a sort of mixture… This is just for Texas, this little collection.”

He eventually left the stage, leaving Arthouse Houston co-founder/director Maureen McNamara and Houston Public Media host Ernie Manouse to auction off perks & gifts and encourage the audience in helping revive another legendary, local movie palace. Among other items, attendees bid for treasures such as a special John Waters backstage VIP experience at his upcoming Christmas Show, dinner with John Cameron Mitchell, and a rare set of photo portraits of a young Anderson and friends, circa Bottle Rocket. Others paid $5,000 for select seats in the future theater and $5,000 to restore one foot of the venue's neon sign.

Photo by Alan Nguyen

Mayor John Whitmire declared Friday as Wes Anderson day in the director's honor.

So far, the effort has raised approximately $1.3 million of the $4 million required to begin the renovation project. The organization needs to raise $4 million by July 30 for the project to move forward. Those interested in securing naming rights will find more information here.

“River Oaks has 245 seats,” McNamara informed the crowd. “The Garden has over 700, and that is a place that we don't have in Houston. We have a need for that, for premieres, for performances in your life, for music, for a dynamic learning & exhibition space… So, we're building new on the shoulders of our history. I hope you guys will join us, and we need people to join us in a big way today.”

wes anderson garden oaks rushmore houston fundraisers