This week, next week and well into the season, some notable music acts are drifting into our territory, some to take in right away, plus three big names coming to the King Center that are worth nailing down the best seats for before they sell out.
First, two acts that require fast action. Kenny Rogers, at 76, the winner of Country Music Association’s lifetime achievement award, is achieving a little bit more, playing this Friday at the Sunrise Theatre in downtown Fort Pierce. Considering that in 2012, he joined Phish for a rendition of “The Gambler” at the music festival Bonnaroo, his cross-over pop country talent is crossing over into yet another generation.
Then tomorrow night, Sunrise hosts Melissa Etheridge. A two-time Grammy Award winner in the mid-1990s and more recently, winner of an Academy Award for her original song in “An Inconvenient Truth,” she has just released her first independent album, “This is M.E.,” having left Island Records to form her own label. So far, the album is getting great reviews with some listeners calling it more R&B than her usual roots rock. And all are calling it “lusty,” including Rolling Stone, remarking that her recent marriage to Linda Wallem, creator of the Showtime series “Nurse Jackie,” may have inspired a whole new sound.
For information go to www.sunrisetheatre.com or call 772-461-4884.
Then next weekend at Dodgertown, country music lovers can enjoy the three song-writing, shaggy-haired, stylish siblings from Mobile, AL, who perform as the Band Perry.
If you don’t know that name, you haven’t been watching country music awards. They have been showered with wins and nominations – including a Grammy nomination – since they burst on the scene in 2010.
Young as they were then, they already had a decade of experience, with Kimberly having started her own band at 15, and her two younger brothers, Reid, and Neil, then 10 and 8, playing as her warm-up act. Their parents had zero experience in the music industry, but completely got that their kids were born to perform, and eventually, they all piled into a motor home and started playing malls and county fairs.
When the manager for Garth Brooks saw them in 2008, he recorded some tracks and passed them around. The Band Perry signed with Universal Republic the next year, and generated their explosive hit ballad, “If I Die Young,” written by Kimberly. It climbed to No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart and eventually went quadruple platinum. Another hit, “You Lie,” went platinum, and “All Your Life” was Country No. 1.
Other hits include a rock-inspired anthem, “DONE.” Written by Neil and Reid, for their second album, Pioneer, released last year.
The band plays at 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 6 at Dodgertown as part of a fundraiser for a national organization that provides scholarship for children of military, first responders and law enforcement, with part of the proceeds going to the Navy Seal Trident House in Sebastian.
The festival schedule begins at 3 p.m. that day and includes a brief set by Vero’s own Kurt Stevens, with various patriotic tributes and the Texas-born artist JT Hodges as the warmup act.
For more information go to www.etix.com.
And for something long-term to look forward to, or a great Christmas gift: Get online or pick up the phone to Melbourne’s King Center to get the best tickets possible to see Jackson Browne, Diana Krall or Harry Connick Jr. later this season.
Of course, you might want to read the reviews of recent efforts by all three, unless you’re already such a fan that just being in the same room is worth the ticket price.
If you loved early Diana Krall, her new album “Wallflower” might make you wonder how she could let her jazz edge go so pop. The Canadian jazz pianist with the smoky contralto has won five Grammys and has sold 15 million albums worldwide. Now the wife of Elvis Costello (they were married at Elton John’s estate) and mother of twin 7-year-old boys, she released her first album in 1993, after graduating from Boston’s Berklee School of Music and heading to L.A. to play jazz. Her third album, “All for You,” earned her a Grammy nomination and spent 70 weeks on Billboard’s jazz charts. Her 2001 “Live in Paris” album won “Best Jazz Vocal Album.” To see Krall live, even if it’s Melbourne, not Paris, is probably well worth the drive.
Meanwhile, 1970s country-folk rock icon Jackson Browne’s new album, “Standing in the Breach,” is turning out to be a winner. It is his 14th, and his first in six years. Anthony Decurtis writing in Rolling Stone called it a “superb, inspiring album,” that has him “once again waiting on everyman,” wondering which is worse, Citizens United or the BP oil spill. Now 66, he is optimistic: “The change the world needs now is there, in everyone,” an appeal to activism that might deliver a few pangs of guilt among an audience of ex-hippies driving Escalades.
As for Harry Connick Jr., his last album, “Every Man Should Know,” marked a return to song-writing, a not-so-successful one in the opinion of the L.A. Times music critic who called it “overloaded with dreary soft-pop ballads.” But then, the jazz pianist and vocalist has such an aura of celebrity now, he can probably sing anything and give fans the chills. The darling of stage, screen and “American Idol” – he’s judging again come January – he just appeared in the movie, “Dolphin Tale II” along with Vero Beach barrier island resident and distressed marine mammal first-responder Steve McCulloch.
For more information go to www.kingcenter.com or call 321-242-2219.