It’s the first Friday of the month and the downtown areas of both Fort Pierce and Vero spring to life. Around the marina in Fort Pierce, the ghosts of Edgartown have receded from their annual Halloween tour appearance, and the Flat Natural Band plays from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. In Vero, while there is still – STILL – no outdoor live music, not even buskers from the local arts high school, the galleries diligently open for the public. To the north of the main gallery district, Vero artist Barry Shapiro opens his new show Friday at the Center for Spiritual Care, at 1550 24th Street.
Vocalist, flutist and trumpeter Longineu Parsons and soulful guitarist Ted Shumate play the Sunrise Theatre’s Black Box stage Friday night with their band, 21 Blue. World-class musicians, they’ve put together a set that offers a historical look at American blues music, from Louis Armstrong to Miles Davis. The show starts at 7 p.m. in an intimate space including a full bar and cabaret tables along the back wall.
A heads-up for the David Crosby concert at the Lyric in Stuart Nov. 22. He’s promoting the release of his new solo album, “Lighthouse,” performing with his band on what they’re calling the Lighthouse tour. His origins in folk music generated “Turn, Turn, Turn” long ago as well as a very famous cover of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.” His last album “Croz,” released in 2014, was his first solo effort and featured guest appearances by Wynton Marsalis and Mark Knopfler.
The Nouveaux Honkies Welcome Home Party promises to be a regional draw Saturday at Terra Fermata in Stuart.
Starting at 4 p.m., the three-band soirée starts with the dexterous one-man-band Ben Prestage. Raised on a rural dirt road between Martin and Okeechobee counties, he now lives with his own family in Vero Beach.
Prestage’s roots music is followed the stirring original music of country artist Abby Owens, who traces her origins to an Indiantown orange grove; born at home, she was “weighed on a vegetable scale,” as one of her best tunes puts it.
Abby just got back from Nashville and yet another shot at a recording contract.
Then the road-rambling Americana duo the Nouveaux Honkies take over.
Guitarist and vocalist Tim O’Donnell and violinist Rebecca Dawkins returned home from a stint circulating the South in their solar-powered RV.
They set up for a spell near Austin to record a new album. They take the stage at 7:30, then Abby steps in again at 10:15 for the rest of the evening.
If you like Johnny Cash, you should make the drive up to Vero’s Riverside Theatre for an excellent production of “Ring of Fire.” The jukebox musical, like all the shows at Riverside, is staged with professional actors. They include Jason Edwards, who performed in the show on Broadway and directs the Vero production. The show focuses more on the music than on retelling Cash’s story and recreating his character; the result is more like a concert-in-costume that features very fine musicians and some gorgeous vocals. “Ring of Fire” runs through Nov. 13.
The spotlight will shine brightly on the elegant Kaitlin Ruby in the title role when “Evita” opens in Vero next week.
The ambitious Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice musical is being staged at the newly expanded Vero Beach Theatre Guild.
On-stage president Juan Perón is played by Australian singer/songwriter Rob Kenna. Peron’s much younger bride Eva works her populist magic with the oppressed Argentine masses, stirring a national movement to fight against poverty and for social justice.
“Evita” runs through Nov. 27.
Palm Beach Dramaworks’ production of “The Night of the Iguana” has drawn solid reviews as the theater’s first Tennessee Williams play in its 17-year history.
The drama concerns a defrocked minister with a thing for under-aged girls who finds sanctuary in a run-down hotel in Mexico. There he meets a classically Williams-ian cast of characters, including one lonely woman who shows him kindness; she may be his ticket to salvation.
The theater, located at the end of Clematis Street in West Palm Beach, is known for excellence in its staging of this sort of play. There’s also a South Florida component to “Iguana’s” lineage: Williams workshopped the play at Miami’s Coconut Grove Playhouse in 1960.
The play runs through next weekend.