FRIDAY, MARCH 20 2015 >>>
1. Fargo, North Dakota native Jonny Lang has had five albums in the Billboard top 50. He recorded his first blues guitar album, Smokin', at the tender age of 14. Two years later came Lie to Me, an album that went multi-platinum and earned raves from major critics. After a Grammy nomination for Wander the World in 1998, he won the award for Turn Around. He's toured with Aerosmith, Blues Traveler, B.B. King, the Stones, and other iconic artists. Lang's most honest testimonial came from fellow singer and guitarist Jimmy Thackery, who admitted, "He plays so good I want to break his fingers." Yowza. Catch his show at 8:30 p.m. in the Emerald Queen Casino.
2. In college, Scott Cossu immersed himself in the music of Ecuador, living in the Andes Mountains and Chota Valley while furthering his ethnomusicology studies. He then alchemized his amassed knowledge into records with shamelessly cheesy titles like Emerald Pathways, Stained Glass Memories and, simply, Mountain. Cossu's a laudable pianist, and his compositions have a playful precision to them. While his lite jazz isn't for everyone, in some circles such as the South Puget Sound Community College, Cossu's type of music is seeming less and less like a guilty pleasure, and more like an unexpected muse. Cossu performs at the college's "An Evening of Fine Jazz and Northwest Cuisine," featuring chefs Treacy Kreger and Christine Ciancetta, at 6:30 p.m. Stottle Winery will provide the wine for the evening. It's going to rock. Softly.
3. Olympia Family Theater presents Our Only May Amelia, adapted from the Newberry Award winning novel by Jennifer L. Holm, at 7 p.m. It is the coming of age story of a 13-year-old who is being raised on an isolated farm as the only girl in a family of seven brothers. In 1899, life on the Naselle River in Southwest Washington was hard for anyone, but especially for 13-year-old May Amelia Jackson, the only girl in all of the Naselle settlement. There is not another girl in her neck of the woods with whom to play or commiserate.
4. Wingman Brewers will introduce the Old Plank Pils to the world at 8 p.m., a beer head brewer Ken Thoburn and crew brewed especially for Tacoma punkgrass band, The Rusty Cleavers, who will perform at 8 p.m. during the beer release party. For full details, check out our New Beer Column.
5. Mahnhammer was a stalwart in the Tacoma metal/rock scene, but in 2014, they switched things up by swapping out their drummer and changing their name to something equally thunderous: Ex-Gods. Catch the band with Griever and Strange Wilds at 9 p.m. in The New Frontier Lounge as part of the Bleak Outlook Vol. 3 festival.