This Sunday: Canned Acoustica Re-Emerges as Unplugged, with Jealous Creatures, Christian Kidd, Pecos Hank, & More

I’m going to hang my head and admit with sadness that no, I never got to check out the old Canned Acoustica series of shows. I know, I know; it came along at a weird time for me, when I was dealing with a toddler (who is now big enough to survive on his own, thankfully) and just didn’t leave the house much, blah, blah, blah…

That’s partly why I’m glad to see that the series has come around again this year, with a couple of shows back in the spring and now a new set going on right now. There’s been a bit of a rebranding, though, with the shows now being part of something called the “Xfinity Entertainment Series,” and a name change from “Canned Acoustica” to “Unplugged” — but hey, that’s just window dressing, really. The important part is that this awesome series of acoustic/unplugged shows, mostly featuring excellent local musicians and bands, is alive and kicking.

The latest installment, in fact, is happening this coming Sunday, September 16th up at Discovery Green, and it’s looking pretty damn cool.

Windswept Western-not-country troubadour/tornado-chaser Pecos Hank, whose music owes as much to Elvis as it does Ennio Morricone, leads things off around 5:30PM, followed by a band I’ve sadly never heard of before called SG & The Soul (anybody got any info? Googling gets me not a damn thing, oddly…), and then by Christian Kidd, frontman of longtime punk icons The Hates. I’m thinking the performance will be just Kidd by himself, rather than the whole band, seeing as its an unplugged show and all, and The Hates are a loud band, but the prospect of Kidd doing Hates songs acoustically sounds actually cooler to me.

Then there’s Jealous Creatures, who’ve long been one of my absolute favorite bands — from this town or any town, honestly — and who always seem to get overlooked, for some stupid reason. Having them play shows like Unplugged makes perfect sense to me, considering the band’s hazy, Western-tinged indie-rock rumble and frontwoman Sarah Hirsch‘s haunting vocals; I know that waaaaay back when the band got its start, it was initially just Hirsch playing songs solo, so this feels almost like a nod to the group’s past. And you should definitely, definitely make plans to see ’em play.

Nick Gaitan closes out the night, it sounds like as a solo act without his old band, The Umbrella Man; I’m hoping to hell he’s planning to just get up there with himself and his stand-up bass, but I’ve truly got no idea what it’ll be like. Whatever he does, it should be good — Gaitan’s been a hero of mine since back when he played with Los Skarnales in the early 2000s.

By the by, this isn’t the only Unplugged show scheduled for this fall/winter — future shows include good folks like Ancient Cat Society, Sara Van Buskirk(!), and John Egan, among others, so keep an eye out.

Admission to the whole thing is technically free, but the organizers are asking people who attend to consider donating to keep music going at Discovery Green, which is obviously a thing worth supporting. Fingers crossed that the storms don’t swallow us all whole and this show happens, y’all.

(Photo courtesy of Canned Acoustica.)