No matter how unpredictable things get and keep getting in the world, the one thing you can always rely on is the power of live music. We love that communal feeling, bearing witness to an artist recreating an album live on stage or improvising a whole new thing right there in the flesh for you and 100, or 1000, or 10,000 more music aficionados. Live events are now one of the few unpredictable, in-the-moment events left in this commodified life.
August served up a big-budget appetizer with all the giant happenings in Golden Gate Park. But the fall season—that’s the main course, the pièce de résistance, if you will. So here, in no particular order, are 11 shows from a mix of venue sizes that you should go out and see. Maybe you need SPF lotion for one, but for the rest, just bring a love of performance. Let’s go!
FRI/12: “ABBA ZABBA” FT. ESG, SCIENTIST, MILD UNIVERSE, & NAKED ROOMMATE AT CRYBABY, OAKLAND
So imagine you get to see the legendary, groundbreaking ESG (Emerald, Sapphire & Gold), who set it all up by fusing punk, funk, and rock in the South Bronx in 1978. And then, to complement their headlining status, you get to hear the Bay Area’s current quirky, polyrhythmic collective Naked Roommate, who lay down the no wave, post-punk grooves while speaking about the ungrooviness of the modern world.
Add to that the six- or seven-piece band Mild Universe, a San Francisco outfit that plays an amalgamation of psychedelic dance music rooted in funk, disco, and slanted jazz. All the while, Hopeton Overton Brown, aka famed dub mixer Scientist, will be twisting those nobs, making these live performances more bouncy, elongated, and that much more interesting, no matter your state of being.
It’s another show that you just gotta go to people. Grab tickets here.
SEPTEMBER 20-21: PORTOLA FESTIVAL AT PIER 80, SAN FRANCISCO
The first South Korean woman to DJ at Berlin’s techno institution Berghain, playing 200 shows worldwide in 2018 and featuring “Fluorescence,” an all-timer statement of chill from 1993 by the iconic local legends Spacetime Continuum on her 2019 DJ-Kicks mix….. You can see how Peggy Gou and “Gou-mania” took off.
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She climbed the electronic music ladder her own Gou-way. That’s the sauce of authenticity she brings to Portola Festival when it hits town Saturday, September 20, and Sunday, September 21st at San Francisco’s PIER 80.
Kelley Lee Owens, The Rapture, LCD Soundsystem, and dozens more will keep this sprawling electronic music festival clicking with the fans, for sure. Grab tickets here.
OCTOBER 3-5: HARDLY STRICTLY 25TH ANNIVERSARY AT GOLDEN GATE PARK
Yeah! I knew we would wind up back amongst the trees and birds and rocks and thangs. So many tiny details, so many large acts, but what I love most about this, can you dig it, it’s FREE. A three-day concert in Golden Gate Park (Wait, they do free concerts in Golden Gate Park?)
So once you notice Jimmie Dale Gilmore and the West Texas Exiles, Lucinda Williams, Samara Joy, Courtney Barnett, Reverend Horton Heat. Watchhouse and Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets?
You look over the list and see the name Kelly McFarling, a Bay Area-based, Atlanta-born singer-songwriter who has been building momentum with her melodic compositions that feature eclectic uses of wah-wah pedals and steel guitars. HSBG still involves everyone. Including those Bay Area singer-songwriters that we know are special, and we hope the world gets to know they are special.
More info here, but it’s FREE!
OCTOBER 6: LEDISI: “FOR DINAH” AT DAVIES SYMPHONY HALL
First, it was a tribute to the High Priestess of Soul, Nina Simone, a few years ago. And now, Ledisi will dazzle Bay Area audiences again with another tribute to a legend of song. Many remember R&B luminary Ledisi—who earned a dozen Grammy Award nominations before winning her first in 2021 for her song “Anything For You”—from her days in Oakland, when she was just pushing, striving, and achieving that goal of being exceptional. Conservatory-trained in UC Berkeley’s Young Musician Program, she’s now taking on the discography of Dinah Washington, proving that Ledisi is a true, unique talent. This performance, brought to us by SFJAZZ—under the direction and guidance of Executive Artistic Director Terence Blanchard—will feature the singer backed by her exceptional band, performing this one-night-only show and adding to her ongoing contribution to the canon of song.
Grab tickets here.
OCTOBER 9: AUTECHRE AT REGENCY BALLROOM
Here’s what’s cool about this very long-running English IDM act, consisting of Rob Brown and Sean Booth.
They take the music seriously, but not themselves. Many times, they shoved off the “Intelligent Dance Music” title and focused on how to do electronic music differently. Meaning, how do we make something that is inherently stiff move with humanity? That, right there, is intelligent.
Come see these masters of electronic music in one of the most forward-thinking electronic music cities in the States.
Grab tickets here.
OCTOBER 11: SECRET EMCHY SOCIETY AT THE KNOCKOUT
Following through on our promise of great shows in all venues, big and small: Secret Emchy Society, an act on the local Broken Clover Records imprint, packs those gothy, spaghetti western vibes, exploring identity and new uses for all the Cowboy tropes. Oakland-based Cindy M. Emch, dubbed the “First Lady of Queer Country,” accomplishes what all great musicians do. Ties the common thread that binds all forms of music while dealing out those yarns, one at a time.
Come in, come down for those stories. More info and tix here.
OCTOBER 21: MAKAYA MCCRAVEN AT GREAT AMERICAN MUSIC HALL
This Chicago-based drummer, composer, and producer has released mixtapes, EPs, and albums that modernize the way jazz can be played, used, inspired by, or just made to be far-reaching experimental.
McCraven is also a part of that 21st Century Jazz vanguard who is, as Miles Davis once put it, playing where the ears are at. His melodies can take center stage rather than solely the kinetic rhythmic attack McCraven can unleash whenever he pleases. And when he pleases, his percussion charts can hit with a ferocity that shudders like drum licks plucked from a lengthy Fela meets James Brown after-hours live session.
Modernity never felt so present. Go see this generational, culture-breaking jazz drummer.
Grab tix here.
OCTOBER 28: PACHYMAN & MNDSGN AT THE CHAPEL
Yes, Lawd, to this two-fer. You could almost call this show “Brothers in Beat United” if you wanted to. Puerto Rican-born, Los Angeles-based musician Pachy Garcia has been dazzling ears and eyes for the past five years through TikToks and music videos, deliberately showing himself at the keyboard, playing bass, picking and strumming guitar, on drums, at the tape machine, and behind those mixing boards—letting a new generation know how this sacred music called dub was made when he was young.
His recent album Another Place sees this artist take dub into rock, disco, cinematic charts, and post-punk.
Mndsgn, aka Ringgo Ancheta, first blew my mind with his 2019 album/beat tape, Snaxx. Equal parts deep hip-hop record digging excavation, experimental soundscapes, auditory comfort food, that felt psychedelic, ambient, and cosmic all at once. He’s moved on to make some of the most sensual live music to date.
Rare Pleasure from 2021, a career-shifting project featuring Carlos Niño (percussion), Fousheé, Devin Morrison, and Anna Wise (vocals), Miguel Atwood Ferguson (strings), and other contemporaries influenced by soft jazz, wavy library music, and most definitely more slo-mo than uptempo, is filled with warm grooves constructed by R&B, soundtrack music, psychedelia, and jazz.
I’ll say it again, for the cheap seats: This is one of those nights, San Francisco—heed the call and attend. Make your city, and respect yourself, look intelligent by digging into some top-flight music.
Grab tix here.
NOVEMBER 6 + 7: LA LUZ AT THE CHAPEL
Producer and local engineering wizard Maryam Qudus likes to keep it busy and told me once that the studio (she’d be classified as a “gym rat” in the sports world) is her major happy place. She produced local band Sour Widows and La Luz, which received many Best Album nods for 2024’s News of The Universe, and from a very reliable venue booking source, she’s also now actually joined La Luz. So Friday, on the November 7 show, she will be opening as Spacemoth, her artistic identity in performance, which is a dizzying display of imaginative astral-pop feelings that teeter between opaque Bowie moments and synth-pop Berlin creations. Then, she’s turning right around and playing with the headliner.
And that is more than enough reason to see La Luz on either night.
Grab tickets here.
NOVEMBER 9 + 10: FREDDIE GIBBS & THE ALCHEMIST AT THE REGENCY BALLROOM
The best emcees can tell the best stories in their own voice. Besides relaying the experience of MJ returning to Gary, Indiana, Freddie Gibbs has been, for a while, one of those grand storytellers. For some reason, he makes incredible producers sound exceptional. The first round of this magic came when he worked with Madlib. But now with Alfredo 2, he and Alchemist have their own sacred bond. An album that features Anderson .Paak, and SF’s own Larry June?
Keep eyes on these shows in the Bay for numerous cameos. Grab tickets here.
NOVEMBER 15: KAMASI WASHINGTON AT GOLDEN GATE THEATER
Ethnomusicology major from UCLA and anime enthusiast Kamasi Washington returns for his first engagement for SFJAZZ in 10 years. Beyond being just a well-known musician and bandleader. He’s a generational figure, importing modernity to America’s classical music. Updating the jazz canon with ideas from the outlook of Black America in the 21st Century. Pushing the art form, with his tenor sax, further into the now. He’s heavily studied in the jazz tradition—but also a member of the generation he keeps on inspiring. Movements happen through and by the community.
Kamasi Washington can walk into a room with Robert Glasper, Terrace Martin, and 9th Wonder, make jokes, and then compose. Or assemble a soundtrack that reflects Michele Obama’s rise to prominence, and then cover a Metallica song.
What can you expect from Washington live?
Just like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane used to elongate, riff, and write new compositions based on standards or show tunes and other things in their cultural zeitgeist—Kamasi will unleash the Kraken’s worth of his touch points. One moment, it could be a chorus from Parliament Funkadelics’ “Flashlight,” or the latter part of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” updated, recontextualized, aggressive, in an eager sort of way.
Kamasi Washington is not the next so-and-so, he’s here. Get tickets here.
