[ALT ROCK} + FRI, JUNE 28

Some people just have it in their blood. It keeps them up at night, recalling a riff, imagining hook with melody, composing and writing and fretting until music simply explodes from them. Other people have it in their blood to take the dreams of those musicians and polish, re-arrange, edit, and offer a creative soundboard before wrapping up a final production that glistens with just the right amount of grit and gleams with just the right amount of raw. And some people have both in their blood. Jack Endino is one of those people, and first listen to "Set Myself on Fire," the title track of his band Endino's Earthworm's upcoming full-length release, and I'm sold. Deep vocals, edgy lyrics, and a crushing ride of instrumentals leaves me pleased. Endino may have produced Nirvana and Mudhoney, but all that matters is that his band is going to tear up The New Frontier, and you are invited. {NIKKI MCCOY}

ENDINO'S EARTHWORM, w/Mosquito Hawk and electric Falcons, 9 p.m., The New Frontier Lounge, 301 E. 25th St., Tacoma, cover TBA, 253.572.4020

[AMERICANA] + SAT, JUNE 29

An almost too obvious entry point for the kind of satirical Americana of Shotgun Kitchen would be their spiritual forefather, John Prine. Just as Prine had a tendency to almost undermine salient points in his songs by making stoned-out, hallucinatory jokes about chasing rainbows down the street and nonchalantly tossing off non sequiturs about having a sister who's a nun, Shotgun Kitchen's perfectly legitimate satire is given a winking treatment that lets the medicine go down nice and easy. Stories about white-trash-living and country-road-dying are performed with appealingly unpolished instrumentation and vocals, giving everything the sort of spontaneous feeling of a group of good ol' boys sitting around a kitchen table and feeling a song out. But I always return to the lyrics, like the ones in "Down in my Basement," an in-turns creepy and hilarious subversion of the pining ballad. {REV. ADAM MCKINNEY}

SHOTGUN KITCHEN, w/ guests, 9 p.m., The New Frontier Lounge, 301 E. 25th St, Tacoma, 253.572.4020

[BLUESDELIC] + SUN, JUNE 30

Man, I don't ever get tired of slide guitar. Ex-Sheryl Crow guitar slinger Todd Wolfe plays classic rock with jam-band elements thrown in and a wicked blues slant. He and bandmates bassist Justine Gardner and drummer Roger Voss conjure up tones that are swampy, greasy and menacing. Wolfe's blues is the kind of sexy, slithering strain you'd expect to hear coming through a broke-down Delta joint's screen door. Great music for dancing slow, for dancing close. {RON SWARNER}

TODD WOLFE BAND, 7 p.m., The Spar, 2121 N. 30th St., Tacoma, donations, 253.627.8215

[PUNK] + SUN, JUNE 30

I suppose it's fitting that The Mormon Trannys will be gracing Olympia with their presence on a Sunday. I also suppose there's no way for me to really know if they're actually scorned former members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, like they claim, but what is utterly apparent is that these guys are packed almost to the breaking point with the kind of sneering satire and politically incorrect social commentary that marked bands like the Frogs and other punk weirdos. Unlike fellow Portland punks, the more restrained Gaytheist, the in-your-face satire and religious condemnation of The Mormon Trannys is so over-the-top that it slides into goofy humor, even as it scathingly sets its sights on bigotry of all kind. The slashing and burning doesn't end with their messages, though. Each song is approached with the same exuberant explosiveness, musically as well as lyrically. {REV. AM}

THE MORMON TRANNYS, 10 p.m., Le Voyeur, 404 E. Fourth Ave., Olympia, no cover, 360.943.5710