Those Mysterious Secret Saturday Shows

Been meaning to mention this for a while now, but I wasn’t actually sure what the deal was — it’s a little hard to plug/describe, seeing as the participants are, well, pretty much anonymous (although ADR over at Skyline seems to know who’s gonna be playing from time to time, via his vast network of spies and informants). There’s a new show series going on called Secret Saturday Shows that takes places each Saturday (rain or shine, apparently) up at Shady Tavern in the Heights (1206 W. 20th St.).

‘Til yesterday, that was literally all I knew about this quirky little thing — heck, I’d even kinda been avoiding listing the shows in the show listings, since, hey, who the hell’s playing? — but then yesterday I got an email from the SSS organizer that explains it a bit better:

hello there. i have started a new series of shows every single saturday called Secret Saturday Shows. its every week at the shady tavern in the heights. each week there is 3-4 bands that play between 2 and 5. the bands dont know who they are playing with or what time they play till they show up. the genres are always mixed. anyways i was hoping i could get you to put the shows on your show listing. again, it is every saturday so you know dec 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd so on till bands quit being involved but right now we will be going till at least feb. there is always vegetarian food for donation and beer and wine is sold.

It sounds pretty neat, really, as an attempt to get honest-to-God music lovers to come out and see somebody play, whoever it is. (In a lot of cities, that’s what’s known as a “music scene,” believe it or not. Go fig.) It’s a grab-bag of bands — you never know what you’ll get, and going by the list of past performers so far (incl. The Factory Party, Sabra Laval, Perseph One, Thane Matcek(!), & a bunch more good local folk), odds are that they’ll be damn good.

Anyway, I’m gonna try to make it out one of these days, although being as I live way out in the Meyerland ‘hood, it ain’t as easy as I’d like to drive on up to the Heights at noon on a Saturday. sigh. One of these days, though, I swear. Hopefully the SSS folks will keep it going and bands will keep playing ’til then…