THURSDAY 9/12

THE KID CARSONS, SWAMPBIRD

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9:30 p.m. White Water Tavern. $5.

The Kid Carsons is a fairly new outfit hailing from New Orleans. Brother and sister duo Chad and Morgan Carson started the band as an outlet for their interests in country music, soaring harmonies, swelling lap steel, sweetly sad melodies that stick in your head and so forth. They joined forces with some of their top buddies and cut this EP called “Settle Down.” I think they mean that as in like get married and put down some roots, not like what you tell your friend so he’ll stop throwing chairs into the street. I hear tell from the Swampbird camp that the last time The Kid Carsons came to Capital City, they found out at the last minute that their show had been canceled, so they moseyed on over to the WWT and caught a show and really dug the place. Now they’re gonna be back with a proper booking to perform alongside their spiritual colleagues (and Bear America Records labelmates) in the ‘Bird. These Central Arkansas boys have a new video out for a song off their latest album, “On Being Alone.” It’s for the song “What I Start” and it’s all dudes having what looks to be the funnest day ever, with carousing, beer-drinking, revelry, shirtlessness, gunplay, and then they go down to south Louisiana.

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FRIDAY 9/13-SATURDAY 9/14

2013 JAZZ EUREKA FESTIVAL

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Various times and venues.

So Spyro Gyra is headlining the Jazz Eureka Festival this year. I hadn’t ever listened to them but my dad digs them and so I thought, what the hey, I’ll give it a go. Turns out that the band’s pop/smooth-fusion jazz music is so severely mellow and laid-back and tropical-sounding that listening to a few minutes of it made me have a mild panic attack. In fact I had to listen to Slayer’s “Reign in Blood” and “Hell Awaits” just to calm back down. To clarify, this is not a criticism of Spyro Gyra’s music, because tons of people seem to like them and popularity certainly counts for a lot. But if you’re more of a sensitive-type listener like I am, you might want to just know what you’re getting into. Spyro Gyra plays at The Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and tickets are $20-$43. There’s also lots of free music all weekend at Basin Spring Park, with the 18-piece Fayetteville Jazz Collective performing Friday from 7-9 p.m. Starting at noon on Saturday, you can catch Alan Gibson & First Line, Richard Brunton Quartet, Walter Savage Trio and NSU Jazz Quartet. The Missouri State Jazz Band performs Sunday at 1 p.m.

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FRIDAY 9/13

MOTEL MIRRORS

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10 p.m. White Water Tavern. $7.

This should be really good: Memphis mainstays Amy LaVere and John Paul Keith went and recorded a very nice duet EP of some highly tasteful-sounding country-influenced rock ‘n’ roll, under the moniker of Motel Mirrors. These two artists should be familiar to Central Arkansas audiences, as they’ve both played the circuit quite a bit in the last few years. The self-titled record somehow manages to sound off-the-cuff and utterly perfectionist at the same time. As Keith put it in a press release, “One thing that is important to me about the project is that it’s not hokey or corny or campy or anything. Sometimes when people try to do something with a classic country influence they can get hokey or self-righteous. I wanted to avoid all that and do something that was kind of romantic. The themes are classic — that’s stuff you don’t see a lot of anymore. I wanted to just explore that and do something that’s timeless.” This mix of originals and covers sounds like exactly that.

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SATURDAY 9/14

LATINO FOOD & MUSIC FESTIVAL

6-10 p.m. Argenta Farmers Market Plaza. $15-$20.

Do you or a loved one enjoy delicious food and drinks, captivating live musical performances, dancing and a generally fun and festive atmosphere? If so, then y’all should seriously consider coming out to the North Point Latino Food and Music Festival. As you have perhaps surmised from the title, the Times is one of the sponsors of this celebration of Latino food and music, along with North Point Ford, Budweiser, Pulaski Technical College Culinary Institute, our sister pub El Latino, Edwards Food Giant and The Argenta Arts Foundation. There’ll be salsa, merengue and cha-cha-cha music from CruzWay, Papa Rap’s Mambo Jam and Mariachi America, as well as vendors serving food of Brazilian, Colombian, Mexican and Argentine influence and origin. Beer and wine will be available for $3. It’s free admission for children 12 and younger.

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SATURDAY 9/14

THE GETO BOYS

$10 adv., $15 before midnight, more later. Discovery. Late.

Mike “Mandonna” Brown has had a strong streak of bookings over the last few months at Discovery — DJ Muggs, DJ Paul, Yung Joc, 8 Ball & MJG and Mike Jones, among others, usually hosted by personnel from Power 92. But this latest one is a real doozy: The Geto Boys, featuring the main trio of Willie D, Bushwick Bill and Scarface. This Houston crew was largely responsible for not only the horrorcore subgenre, with its focus on shocking subject matter, but for putting Southern hip-hop on the map with classics like “My Mind Playing Tricks on Me,” “6 Feet Deep” and “Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta.” And after seeing it even just once, who could forget the album cover for their breakout “We Can’t Be Stopped,” with Bushwick Bill getting wheeled into the hospital after he just got his dadgum eye shot out by a girlfriend. Well, here’s your chance to see some true hip-hop pioneers. They go onstage at 2:30 a.m. or thereabouts, so wear your stayin’-out-late pants, assuming that’s something you own. Advance tickets are $10 at ArkansasLiveMusic.com or it’s $15 before midnight at the door, but if you wait until fashionably late o’clock, they’re liable to run you a bit north of $15.

TUESDAY 9/17

LISA MARIE PRESLEY

8 p.m. Juanita’s. $20.

Here’s an interesting one: Lisa Marie Presley. Her father was a singer of some renown who lived in Memphis and recorded several hit songs, and she was married for a time to one of the guys who was in The Jackson 5 and who went on to have a fairly successful career. Presley’s most recent album, “Storm & Grace,” was produced by walking cred-generator T-Bone Burnett, and it garnered positive reviews in the music press. This show costs $20 for a GA ticket, but I believe the early birds got all the $100 VIP tickets and all of the enticements that came with them: a meet-n-greet, photo-op, autographed merch and that kind of stuff. Opening the show will be the Central Arkansas Southern rock/Red Dirt favorites in The Trey Hawkins Band.

WEDNESDAY 9/18

HOORAY FOR EARTH

9 p.m. Stickyz. $7.

The influence of Animal Collective and the first MGMT album continues apace. Which is a fine thing if you dig squiggly weirdo psychedelic pop tunes with beautiful vocal harmonies and traces of various strains of electronic music. That’s Hooray for Earth’s bag, but this crew adds to that mix a huge, unironic dose of early ’80s, big-sounding pop production, e.g. “Bring Us Closer Together” and “Same,” from 2011’s “True Loves.” That was the band’s last album, and it was well received, but they seem poised to reach a larger audience with this upcoming long-player, due out early next year. “Never/Figure,” a two-song EP from last year, pointed toward somewhat sparser sound. I hear tell that Hooray for Earth will be playing new material on this brief jaunt through Texas and the mid-south, so you can check out these tunes before they’re released to the masses.

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