Each week, the team at We Are Memphis Music brings you some of the best upcoming concerts. Here are our picks for the week beginning April 10th!
Polyphia
8PM, Tuesday, April 11th
Minglewood Hall
$28
Though its nowhere near as divisive a genre as it once was, progressive rock still tends to get a bad rap. Just the word ‘prog’ summons stereotypical visions of twelve-sided die in basement rec rooms, pewter dragons arrayed beneath blacklight posters and replica swords. Visiting Texan instrumentalists Polyphia don’t entirely subvert these cliches, but they do manage to overcome them through breathtaking flights of fretwork and the clever courting of a handful of more contemporary genres (post-rock, math-rock). If the epic sweep of technically-precise guitar heroics and a vague sense of windswept fantasy are your bag, then Polyphia just might be your best attack roll, Dungeonmaster.
Pony Bradshaw
7PM, Wednesday, April 12th
Hernando’s Hideaway
$15
The landscape of North Georgian Appalachia is stunning, to say the least, an impressionist patchwork of lush vegetation and shimmering lakes, and the roots of its native music are buried deep, indeed. Pony Bradshaw knows this countryside intimately, and has crafted his art around a sense of place, a tactile and ephemeral tapestry of home. The songs are keening laments delivered in a slightly-twanged howl, the lyrics generous and reflective, and all of it’s laid against a shifting backdrop of hollers and hillsides, dusty cabin floors and snaking rural byways. More than anything, this music is a reckoning with all things past, of the places we grow up in and leave behind and sometimes return to, as well. These songs are a hymn to the land and its journeys; Bradshaw makes an ideal ambassador.
Live at the Tracks
6:30 PM, Thursday, April 13 (and ongoing)
Central Station
Free
While we are more than happy to suggest a show from Elevation Memphis, one of the city’s finest party/cover groups who is headlining this week’s ongoing “Live at the Tracks” series, let this serve as blanket endorsement for the series itself. Each Thursday evening from now ’til the end of summer, Central Station will be hosting free music live from the outdoor train platform. The third season of the popular series promises to continue to bring some of the best live music to one of the city’s coolest locations, so be sure to keep it in mind over the coming weeks and months.
Happy Hour with Easy Mo Bee & IMAKEMADEBEATS
6pm, Friday April 14th
The Stax Museum
No Cover
In the world of hip-hop and R&B, producer Easy Mo Bee is a legend. Throughout his storied career, the Brooklyn native has worked with anyone and everyone that’s important to the genre, from The Notorious BIG and 2Pac to Alicia Keys, Wu-Tang Clan and Big Daddy Kane. This week he’ll be at the Stax Museum for a special conversation as part of their monthly Soul Sessions. What’s even cooler is that Memphis’ own IMAKEMADBEATS, producer and founder of UNAPOLOGETIC, will be interviewing Easy Mo Bee for the event. The Q&A is free to attend, but that’s because you can’t really put a price on hearing two musical masterminds swap stories, right?
YOUNG NUDY
8pm, Friday April 14th
Minglewood Hall
$30
Young Nudy first caught listeners’ attention a few years ago with a string of successful mixtapes Slimeball (2016), Slimeball 2 (2017), and Slimeball 3 (2018) – but it was his 2019 critically acclaimed Sli’merre tape that garnered him a cult-like following. Since then the East Atlanta rapper has steadily dropped one quality project after another including his most recent album, Gumbo, which came out just last month. Now he’s bringing his eclectic beats and trademark food-laced verses to Minglewood Hall this Friday. The Memphis show will be his last before he closes out the tour back home in Atlanta, so you already know that this will be one to see.
