Rock Picks: Willie Nelson, Maude Maggart, Two Tears

Also playing Monday:

RACHEL CANTU at the Bootleg Theater; MATTHEW BANKS, AIYANA CADWELL, EDWARD “TEX” MILLER at Home; THE BLIND BOY PAXTON & FRANK FAIRFIELD VARIETY SHOW at the Redwood Bar; GIANT STATE, LINKS, REPEATER, MATA LEON at the Silverlake Lounge; MERE MORTALS, GRAND DUCHY (WITH BLACK FRANCIS AND VIOLET CLARK) at Spaceland.

Sandy Kim

Magic bus: Two of these Girls are not like the others.

Jayme Thornton

Cold Cave: Life is but a dream.

Location Info

Map

Walt Disney Concert Hall

111 S. Grand Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Category: Music Venues

Region: Out of Town

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The Echo

1822 W. Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026

Category: Bars/Clubs

Region: Echo Park

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Tuesday/December/8

Willie Nelson at Club Nokia
There’s something so classic and familiar about Willie Nelson’s songs and his voice, which are as comforting and weathered as his famously beat-up old acoustic guitar, Trigger. When he was in Lake Elsinore for an afternoon set back in August, he was dressed completely in black, seemingly undeterred by a temperature that soared well over 100 degrees. After tossing his black cowboy hat into the crowd, he quickly donned a giant tan sombrero and kept right on going without missing a beat. While Nelson is righteously celebrated as a songwriter, he’s also an underrated guitarist, stirring up fluidly groovy bluesy-jazzy lead-guitar runs, which he flips quickly within the chords or spins out into longer jams as his band ramps up throbbing boogies behind him. (Keeping it all in the family, his smokin’ group features his sister Bobbie Nelson on piano and his son Lukas Nelson on lead guitar.) While cynics grouse that Willie’s rather-prolific output over the past decade — seemingly touring nonstop while releasing at least one new album every year — is merely the result of his ongoing attempts to pay back the IRS, the truth is that he’s still making vital, interesting music instead of just coasting on his old hits. In the past few years, Nelson has tried his hand at reggae (Countryman), paid homage to songwriter Cindy Walker (You Don’t Know Me) and released another album of pop standards, whose title is a fitting description of the man himself: American Classic. (Falling James)

Also playing Tuesday:

JONATHAN RICHMAN at the Mint; YELLOW RED SPARKS, THE STEELWELLS, HORSE STORIES, SON OF THE VELVET RAT at the Bootleg Theater; THE FRENCH SEMESTER, THE SPIRES, THE MONTHLIES at the Echo; BLACK FRANCIS & FLEA, WEIRD AL YANKOVIC, MICHAEL PENN, DAVID J., GRAND DUCHY, THE 88, OK GO’S TIM & DAMIAN at the Echoplex; BRYAN & THE MODERN CONSPIRACY, XDAO, STILL CHAOS, IMPULSIVE LUST at Good Hurt; AUTOMATIC LOVELETTER, AM, SARA LOV at the Hotel Cafe; BRUCE HORNSBY & THE NOISEMAKERS, BOB SCHNEIDER at House of Blues; BLACK MATH HORSEMAN, JESUS MAKES THE SHOTGUN SOUND, NATIONAL SUNDAY LAW at the Silverlake Lounge.

Wednesday/December/9

Califone at the Hammer Museum
These well-connected Chicagoans have been making a consistently compelling avant-roots racket for more than a decade now, and they’ve been doing it for longer than that if you count the work they did in a slightly different arrangement as Red Red Meat, whose killer 1995 disc Bunny Gets Paid received the deluxe-reissue treatment from Sub Pop earlier this year. Califone’s latest effort is the typically textural All My Friends Are Funeral Singers, released in October by Indiana’s Dead Oceans label; it serves as the soundtrack to a feature film directed by frontman Tim Rutili about a psychic woman who lives in a haunted house in the middle of the woods. At tonight’s show — entrance to which is free for those who arrive before the venue fills up — the band will perform the album as live accompaniment to the movie, then play an additional set comprising tunes from Califone’s ample catalog.  (Mikael Wood)

Also playing Wednesday:

BEBEL GILBERTO at the Henry Fonda Theater; JOHNNY CLARKE & ROOTS COVENANT at the Echoplex; JONATHAN RICHMAN at the Mint; METALLICA, VOLBEAT, MACHINE HEAD at the Honda Center; ZAZA at Spaceland; THE GOOD LISTENERS, BUDDY, CAVE COUNTRY, GRAND HALLWAY at the Bootleg Theater; ROCKET CHIRAC, SEEING THINGZ, FIRE AT PLAY, MUR MUR at the Good Hurt; SEAN PAUL at the House of Blues; BREATHE CAROLINA, CASH CASH, STEPHEN JERZAK, KILL PARADISE, FIGHT FAIR at the Roxy.

Thursday/December/10

Two Tears at the Prospector
The rise and fall of the ’90s band the Red Aunts is almost a Tinseltown cliché. When the Red Aunts first got together, they had an organic, uncontrived charm and lo-fi enthusiasm that made up for the fact that none of them could really play their instruments. If nothing else, they seemed to be in on their own joke. But, as so often happens, once they got coverage in Flipside and attracted the attention of major labels, they became just as serious and pretentious as the groups they used to lampoon. By the time the Red Aunts broke up, they still couldn’t play their instruments, but they’d nonetheless developed outsized rock-star egos, and the joke was now on them. The band’s best musician and songwriter, Kerry Davis, dropped out of sight before moving to New York, where she eventually reinvented herself in the raw, primitive garage-punk combo Two Tears. Their debut CD, Little Tea, is far more tuneful and catchy than anything the Red Aunts ever released, as Davis strums and sings sly, stripped-down anthems like “2nd Worst Girlfriend in the World” and “Up in My Tree.” Two Tears play garage rock, sure, but not in the literal, slavishly derivative style of retro groups like the Hives and the Fuzztones. Instead, Davis’ dark-&-fuzzy rambles are closer in spirit to such art-garage sonic reducers as the Cheater Slicks, the Oblivians, and the Bassholes. Also at the Redwood Bar & Grill, Fri., Dec. 11. (Falling James)