Thursday12
Toumani Diabate & the Chicago Transilience EnsembleDJ Jazzy JeffJamey JohnsonLast False HopeMetal Rouge
Friday13
Annie Get Your GunBorisCrystal CastlesRufus WainwrightWitchbanger
Saturday14
Annie Get Your GunLast False HopeLower Dens
Sunday15
Annie Get Your Gun
Tuesday17
Ty Segall
Wednesday18
Grant Park Orchestra
DJ JAZZY JEFF To the general public DJ Jazzy Jeff will always just be the dude who costarred with Will Smith in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and the video to “Parents Just Don’t Understand.” But to serious hip-hop heads he’s an elder god of the DJ scene, credited with popularizing the transformer scratch—probably the first sound that comes to mind when you think “DJ scratch”—and capable of turning the act of packing a dance floor using songs everyone knows into an expression of high art. (Check out his Michael Jackson tribute on YouTube for an example of his ability to make the most worn-out material sound fresh and new.) He’s also a high-caliber producer who’s worked with everyone from Eminem to Rhymefest, and his 2002 album The Magnificent is a high point in rap’s neosoul phase. If you can get over the novelty act-ness and Will Smith-ness of the Fresh Prince era, you’ll find that even the beats those guys were putting together back then straight-up bang. The Chaotic Good opens; the Cool Kids (see Q&A) spin. 10 PM, Beauty Bar, 1444 W. Chicago, 312-226-8828. —Miles Raymer
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JAMEY JOHNSON Jamey Johnson‘s rise to country stardom has to be one of Nashville’s most encouraging success stories. The Alabama native moved to Music City in his mid-20s without a contact or a clue and ended up writing hits for the likes of George Strait and Trace Adkins; as a performer he’s found an audience for the sort of unabashedly dark material mainstream country has largely left behind. As Kelefa Sanneh wrote in a recent New Yorker profile of Brad Paisley, “in the post-Garth era, [country] has thrived partly because of its willingness to chronicle domestic bliss in plainspoken language.” But Johnson, who scored with a song that closes with the couplet “I had a job and a piece of land and my sweet wife was my best friend / But I traded that for cocaine and a whore,” clearly never got the memo. He’ll challenge the Nashville orthodoxy again next month, releasing a 25-track double CD, The Guitar Song (Mercury), into a milieu that clings to the ten-song format—I can’t even remember the last double album by a mainstream country singer. The collection feels a little bloated despite Johnson’s stripped-down delivery, but it’s still one of the three best country records I’ve heard this year. The first disc, called “Black,” contains the stormiest tunes, mixing classic honky-tonk (including a killer take on Roger Miller’s “Mental Revenge”) with sharp originals (“Even the Skies Are Blue” puts a nice twist on an overused metaphor: “The sun might be shining / But even the skies are blue”). The second, “White,” is comparatively sunny, though hardly Pollyannaish. Though a few songs flirt with a flashy rock sound, most of the album—which he’ll surely preview at this small-club gig—is indebted to 70s country, particularly Texas outlaws Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. Craig Boyd opens. 9 PM, Joe’s, 940 W. Weed, 312-337-3486 or 866-448-7849, $25. —Peter Margasak
RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Coming after several heavily orchestrated albums, a full-blown re-creation of Judy Garland’s famous Carnegie Hall concert, and his first opera, Rufus Wainwright‘s latest record, All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu (Decca)— a collection of piano and voice performances—can’t help but feel stripped down. But Wainwright’s songs remain dense with harmony and movement, his singing is still florid, and in some ways the new album—recorded shortly after the death of his mother, idiosyncratic folk singer Kate McGarrigle—is as loaded with information as anything he’s done. A couple of tunes reflect directly on the loss, including “Martha,” a virtual phone message for his sister suggesting they visit their mother during her final days. But even songs with other subjects seem to convey a kind of unmoored emotional state: “Sad With What I Have” is a meditation on misery, while “Give Me What I Want and Give It to Me Now!” opts for angsty petulance. The record also includes three adaptations of Shakespeare sonnets, from a collaborative project with stage director Robert Wilson, and an aria from his opera, Prima Donna. As a whole the album is erratic, but Wainwright has more than enough magnetism and drama to keep the individual pieces compelling. In the first part of his set here, he’ll perform songs from the new record as a cycle with video by Scottish filmmaker Douglas Gordon. Martha Wainwright opens. 8 PM, Bank of America Theatre, 18 W. Monroe, 312-902-1400 or 866-448-7849, $48.50-$58.50. —Peter Margasak
ANNIE GET YOUR GUN See Friday. 7:30 PM, Pavilion, Ravinia Festival, Green Bay and Lake Cook, Highland Park, 847-266-5100, $20-$90.
