Crooked StillGet ready for a deluge of tremendous fall Cedar shows going on sale on Friday July 18. At noon 7/18, buy tickets for reggae-infused Irish singer-songwriter Damien Dempsey with local Celtic rockers Sweet Colleens (9/6), lively Spanish folkband La Musgaña (10/2), Milwaukee's finest songwriter Willy Porter with blues guitarist/vocalist Natalia Zukerman (10/4), and Glenn Elvig and friends in a benefit for the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota (10/5). At 2pm 7/18, get your tickets for Josh Rouse (10/12), bluegrass family sensations Cherryholmes (10/26), a deliciously crooked Halloween show with Crooked Still (10/31), the two Martin guitar greats Martin Simpson and Martin Taylor (11/8), and OUR SIDE OF TOWN: Red House Records 25th Anniversary Grand Finale Concert with John Gorka, Eliza Gilkyson and Cliff Eberhardt (11/22).

Habib Koité: Photo by Dirk LeunisThe must-see world music show of the summer, and a great prelude to TC Pan African Festival! Malian guitarist and singer Habib Koité is one of Africa's most beloved and popular musicians. Featured in last year's Acoustic Africa tour along with Vusi Mahlasela and Dobet Gnahore, this show will be a whole evening's worth of Habib's high-energy, infectious rhythms, and sheer exuberance. His band Bamada features traditional instruments such polyphonic hunter's horns, alongside balafón (wooden xylophone), and n'goni (a Malian lute), and is the perfect complement for Habib's fluid kora-inspired guitar and earthy vocals. Lots of room for dancing!

Punch BrothersPunch, brothers! punch with care!
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!

So goes the annoying jingle from Mark Twain’s amusing story of an early ear worm that spawned the name for virtuoso mandolinist/composer/singer and Grammy winning Nickel Creek-er Chris Thile’s latest project: Punch Brothers (formerly the How to Grow a Woman from the Ground Band), where Thile on mandolin and vocals is joined by Greg Garrison (Leftover Salmon, Ron Miles, Tony Trischka) on bass, Gabe Witcher (Willie Nelson, Randy Newman, Beck, Jerry Douglas) on fiddle, Chris Eldridge (Infamous Stringdusters, and son of the Seldom Scene’s Ben Eldredge) on guitar and Noam Pickelny (Leftover Salmon) on banjo. The project is an ambitious one, with the group’s debut release Punch (Nonesuch) a song cycle featuring at it’s core a 40-minute four-movement chamber bluegrass suite called The Blind Leaving the Blind, chronicling the story of Thile’s marital breakup and its aftermath through impressionistic lyrics that fall somewhere between a confession (directed, variously, to his listeners, to his ex, and to God), and an impassioned, late night, barstool soliloquy. Together, these performers helped Thile to realize the most conceptually daring, emotionally cathartic work of an already impressive career. Bluegrass, jazz, chamber and pop—all come together in a complex, but highly rewarding work that lead the New York Times to proclaim “expands the frontier of an emerging style of what might be called American country-classical chamber music.”

Damien DempseyPart Van, part Bono, part Christy, and at times part Bob (Dylan or Marley, take your pick), powerhouse vocalist Dubliner Damien Dempsey puts a ton of energy into his passionate songs, and represents the undisputed new roots voice of Ireland. Damien has previously provided all-too-brief opening sets in Minneapolis for Sinead O'Connor and The Swell Season; this is his richly deserved local debut as a headliner. Openers tonight will be local Irish roots band Sweet Colleens, creating a doubly sweet opening weekend spectacular.

Plastic People of the UniversePrague's Plastic People of the Universe, and the band they later became, Pulnoc, remain one of rock & roll's great stories of triumph and how great music can be produced and survive even in the most hostile of environments. The band was founded in 1968 soon after 500,000 Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia. With the Kremlin not being particularly fond of Western-style rock that wasn't sanctioned by the state, the Plastic People, to paraphrase the Jefferson Airplane, quickly became outlaws in the eyes of Moscow (and the ruling Soviet government in Prague). From 1970 until the "Velvet Revolution" of 1989 that ended Soviet domination, the Plastic People lived a mostly illegal existence, with two of their members, Ivan Jirous and Jaroslav Vozniak, doing lengthy stretches in prison. Influenced by Zappa, English progressive rock/radical politicos Henry Cow, Captain Beefheart, and the Velvet Underground, the Plastic People appropriated the avant-garde leanings and anti-authoritarian outrage of these bands while working in their own sense of dread and desperation. (John Dougan, All Music Guide)