Busy weekend ahead for Arkansas ‘Idol’ Harmon
Ryan Harmon will perform at 7 p.m. Friday and “Music Madness” will be held at 8 p.m. Saturday at The Library Kitchen + Lounge, 313 President Clinton Ave., Suite 100, Little Rock. (501) 916-9826; thelibrarylr.com.
Harmon was a contestant on the 18th season of “American Idol.” Read more about him, watch videos and more on his new website, ryanharmonmusic.wixsite.com.
■ David Graham & the Eskimo Brothers will perform at 8:30 p.m. Friday at Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack in Little Rock. Tickets are $10 and reservations are required. If any tickets remain at showtime, they will be $12. (501) 372-7707; stickyz.com.
Graham and his band’s motto is “Nashville, TN Roots Music Too Rock for Country — Too Country for Rock — Having Too Much Fun to Care.” Graham, who was born in St. Louis, began performing at an early age and experienced his first “honky tonk” atmosphere when his father sneaked the 15-year-old into such a joint.
■ Cliff & Susan will perform at 3 p.m. Saturday at the River Bottom Winery at BoBrook Farms, 13810 Combee Lane, Roland. (501) 519-5666; bobrookfarms.com. Admission is free.
Cliff and Susan Erwin Prowse have been a busy part of the Central Arkansas music scene for several years, even organizing North Little Rock’s Yadaloo Music & Arts Festival in 2019.
■ DJ G-Force will perform at 10 p.m. Friday; DJ Kramer will perform at 10 p.m. Saturday and DJ Bbox will perform at 11 a.m. Sunday at Cannibal & Craft, 307 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock. (501) 414-8870; cannibalandcraftlr.com.
CONWAY
R@ndom will perform at 8 p.m. Friday and Kyle Bruich will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at Kings Live Music, 1020 Front St., Conway. Admission is $5. (501) 205-8512: kingslivemusic.com.
■ Markus Pearson will perform at 9 p.m. Friday and Ryan Harmon will perform at 9 p.m. Saturday at TC’s Midtown Grill, 1611 E. Oak St, Suite 19, Conway. (501) 205-0576.
EL DORADO
The Pink Floyd Laser Show will be held at 8 p.m. Saturday at First Financial Music Hall, 101 E. Locust St., El Dorado. eldomad.com.
Seating will be general admission
and arranged in pods for social distancing. Tickets are $35 for golden circle, $30 for orchestra, $25 for mid and $20 for the rear.
■ In other El Dorado news, tickets go on sale Friday for a concert by Trey Johnson on May 8 in First Financial Music Hall. Tickets, $5, will be sold in tables for two or four patrons, socially distanced.
HOT SPRINGS
Pleasantly Blue will perform from 7:30-11:30 p.m. Saturday at The Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa, 239 Central Ave., Hot Springs. Admission is free. (501) 6237771; arlingtonhotel.com.
Pleasantly Blue is a duo consisting of Kimberly Martin and Gary Stipe.
■ Scenic 7 will perform from 8 p.m. to midnight Saturday at The Wagon Wheel, 816 Albert Pike Road, Hot Springs. Admission is free, but memberships ($10) are required. (501) 651-0827.
■ The second round of a “Country Music Showdown,” featuring Brian Mullen at 6 p.m., Misty Williams at 7 p.m. and Derek Herndon at 8 p.m., will be held Sunday at the Blitzed Pig Bar & Grill, 4332 Central Ave., Suite A, in the Temperance Hill Square shopping center in Hot Springs. (501) 525-1616.
■ “Artbeat Karaoke” will be held at 7:30 p.m. Friday at The Trough Bar & Grill, 833 Central Ave., Hot Springs. (501) 701-4390.
HOT SPRINGS VILLAGE
Feelin Groovy will perform at 7 p.m. Friday at The Beehive, 220 Minorca Road, Hot Springs Village. There is a $3 cover charge. (501) 777-8176; beehivehsv.com.
STAY TUNED
“Kickin’ It at the Creek,” a Kentucky River flood benefit livestream, will feature Luna and the Mountain Jets, Geno Seale, Flat Tracker, John R Miller & the Engine Lights, Laid Back Country Picker, Of the Dell, Abe Partridge, Madison Lewis, WhizzbangBAM, William Matheny and Arlo McKinley, from 5:30-8:30 p.m. today on Facebook. The concert is free.
■ The Missing Drum & Music Anthology, an online event hosted by the Arkansas Archeological Society, will be available free from 7-8:30 p.m. today on Facebook. Guest speaker Jim Rees, the society president and researcher, will speak on “The Search for the Missing Drum: A Case Study in Music Archeology.”
■ Colter Wall and The Scary Prairie Boys will perform “Live in Front of Nobody” at 7:30 p.m. today on Facebook. Tickets, $15, are available at boxoffice.mandolin.com.
■ Singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock, with Emma Swift, will perform a streaming concert, “Live from Sweet Home Quarantine,” at 2 p.m. Friday in a “pay what you can” show on stageit.com.
■ Conway native Erin Enderlin will perform at 7 p.m. Friday on the Grand Ole Opry, at opry.com, along with Rodney Atkins, Mandy Barnett, John Crist, Riders in the Sky, Jeannie Seely and Dailey & Vincent. Enderlin will perform songs from her new album, “Campfire Covers.” She is slated to open some shows on Tanya Tucker’s “Bring My Flowers Now Tour” later this year.
■ Daughtry will perform live from Nashville, Tenn., at 8 p.m. Friday on Facebook. Tickets, starting at $20, are available at gigs.Live/events/daughtry-live-nashville.
■ Singer-songwriter Grant Lee Phillips will perform streaming concerts, “Live from the Parlor International,” at 1 p.m. Saturday and 9 p.m. Sunday in “pay what you can” shows on stageit.com.
■ Singer-songwriter Rhett Miller will perform a streaming concert, “Featuring the JBL Eon One” (PA system) at 8 p.m. Saturday in a “pay what you can” show on stageit.com. He will also perform a “Sunday Brunch” show at 11 a.m. Sunday in a “pay what you can” show on stageit.com.
LISTEN HERE
Singer-songwriter-storyteller Todd Snider has a new album, “First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder,” due out April 23. His 18th album, Snider tells folkradio.co.uk that “After my last album, “Agnostic Hymns,” I felt like I was out of ideas, and I just didn’t know where to go next. So I did a side project with the Hard Working Americans, and I learned a ton. I tried to study music by other people, and come to this record hoping that I’d have something new to say. I wanted to do what I was calling ‘funk in back and busking up front, with “White Album”-y **** still scattered about.’
“I had done a lot of listening to Parliament and James Brown and lots of reggae music, too. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I’ve been trying to think of this sound all my life. This is the closest I’ve come to thinking, ‘Man, I don’t know that I’ve heard anything like this before.’”
■ The latest posthumous release by David Bowie, “Something in the Air (Live Paris 99),” will be available Friday on CD and LP record, and only from Rhino.com and the David Bowie official store.
READ THIS
The Bottle Rockets will not soar through the skies again — or in the case of the beloved Festus, Mo., band — roll down the highway to perform their special take on Americana/ roots rock music. While the band may not be done in name, lead singer Brian Henneman (whose songwriting has been compared in The New York Times to Woody Guthrie’s) has announced that at age 60, he has had it, he’s finished and that’s that.
“I have no problem at all with the band,” Henneman writes on bottlerocketsmusic.com, “That’s not why I’m leaving. It’s all about where I’m at on the walk of life. I no longer want to travel, don’t really have any burning desire to write songs anymore either. I just want to be a good husband. A good neighbor. A responsible homeowner. A little dog’s daddy. A guitar repairman. A guitar player in my kitchen, and in some local country cover band whenever that scene comes back around.”
His statement is warmly eloquent and worth reading, even if you never saw the band at any Central Arkansas venues between 1992 and 2020.