Venues in bars. Venues in record stores (Nels Cline Singers at Rough Trade, 64 North 9th Street, Brooklyn, November 10). Venues in yoga studios. Venues with impenetrable DIY video games and murals on the walls and cheap beer. Venues with regular video games and a pool table and cheap beer. Venues with sculpture studios, bedrooms, a used record store, and a barbershop. Venues that look like a landing bay from the Death Star. Venues with brunch. Venues in bowling alleys with fried chicken (Bombino at Brooklyn Bowl, 61 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn, September 7). Venues at radio stations.
See also: The 2014 Fall (Arts) Issue: An Index
Venues with balconies (Freeman at Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, October 4). Venues with ads in the Village Voice. Venues with Twitter feeds whose schedules will never end up on microfilm for future researchers. Venues in wineries. Venues at Lincoln Center. Venues at Jazz at Lincoln Center (Bill Frisell at Appel Room, Broadway at 60th Street, September 19–20).
Venues with long-running and always-gripping amateur nights (Amateur Night at the Apollo, 253 West 125th Street, all fall, check apollotheater.org). Venues with hats that get passed. Venues with grants. Venues built atop older venues (Meredith Monk Birthday Celebration at Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street, November 20).
Venues with no fixed address. Venues with no history. Venues where Bob Dylan played. Venues where Thelonious Monk played. Venues in former RCA studios where Frank Sinatra recorded (Ty Segall at Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, September 17). Venues where Pete Seeger led singalongs while blacklisted. Venues where dozens of humans whose names you will never know still play every night. Venues with pre-work sober raves. Venues across the street from looming condos (Jad Fair and Danielson at Glasslands, 289 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn, September 12).
Venues that are also basketball courts and owned by real estate management firms from Cleveland and investment groups founded by Russian billionaires (The Black Keys at Barclays Center, 620 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, September 23–24). Venues with church pews and attached music stores filled with ancient banjos and old-timers (and new-timers) with stories (Jim Kweskin at Jalopy Theatre, 315 Columbia Street, Brooklyn, September 4). Venues that used to be lawless and filled with boozing and weed-smoking and seat-hopping but that got remodeled and are a little more lame and security-obsessed now.
Venues that aren’t open yet (longtime promoter Todd Patrick’s revamping of the beloved Market Hotel, 1142 Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn). Venues and associated musicians that remain cool year after year and seem a fixed part of the city’s musical landscape (John Zorn Improv Night at the Stone, Avenue C and 2nd Street, November 14). Venues that could, at any second, be closed by the New York Police Department’s Multi-Agency Response to Community Hotspots program, established as a result of the 1990 Happy Land fire but sometimes wielded in mysterious ways. Venues that might be turned into upscale Scandinavian furniture stores. Venues you could possibly have meaningful experiences at. So many venues.
Sir Richard Bishop, Tashi Dorji
September 6
A double bill of two modern guitar masters, forging singular voices that occupy states between beauty and challenge. A product of the tradition-repurposing Sun City Girls, Richard Bishop’s solo guitar work, prone to mystic scales and reverberating star splatter whether on acoustic or electric, builds on an unimpeachable bed of Django Reinhardt–inspired counterpoints. Dorji, whose improvised acoustic structures dance from atonal flutters to patient revelation, is a young gun with only a few cassettes and one proper debut to his discography, but no less potent. Issue Project Room, 22 Boerum Place, Brooklyn, issueprojectroom.org
Bombino
September 7
Making the jump from the enthused esoterica of the independent ethnographic label Sublime Frequencies to the vaunted Nonesuch Records in 2013, Tuareg guitarist Omara “Bombino” Moctar brings political jams from Agadez to the world stage. But it’s the sweet harmonies, note-bending choruses, cascading guitar figures, laidback swing, and rich rhythmic layers that earn Bombino and crew distinction as excellent contemporary pop, no matter their continent or tumultuous region of origin. Brooklyn Bowl, 61 Wythe Avenue, brooklynbowl.com
Caetano Veloso
September 25-26
A leader of Brazilian tropicalismo in the late ’60s, Caetano Veloso remains every bit the forward-pushing songwriter, witty thinker, and remarkable stage presence at 72 that he was almost a half-century ago. Touring behind the 2012 Abraçaço, Veloso’s recent work has found him recording with a stripped-down rock trio and, even more enchantingly, sometimes performing songs totally solo with his tender, unmistakable knowingness. With a loyal Brazilian fan base in New York, Veloso shows are rare and exquisite affairs, reverential but mostly safe from nostalgia. Brooklyn Academy of Music, 321 Ashland Place, bam.org
Freeman
October 4
A refugee from alt-rock weirdos Ween, Aaron Freeman launches his solo career with a new band named after himself, new album, and new alias. Following a public falling-out with Ween and an ill-received (but achingly weird) album of Rod McKuen covers, 2012’s Marvelous Clouds, Freeman’s debut returns to the familiar funny voices, playful arrangements, and rock reference points of his old band, presented live by a hot new combo unafraid to dig deep into the catalog of favorites Freeman penned when his fans knew him as Gene Ween. Bowery Ballroom, 7 Delancey Street, boweryballroom.com
Bassnectar
October 4
If any group of music-loving barbarians can bring the mojo back to the depressing, awful, lifeless, unfun remodeling and crammed-ass seats of the new suck-ass Madison Square Garden, it’s revered hippie producer Bassnectar and his eager-to-throw-down EDM following. Bass Center VIII will feature the Burning Man DJ and others, alongside light shows, multimedia installations, probably a bunch of drugs, and (one hopes, if they’re worth their molly) an audience that will ecstatically ignore the ushers and dance where they want to dance. Madison Square Garden, 4 Pennsylvania Plaza, thegarden.com
Allman Brothers Band
October 21-22, 24-25, 27-28
The Allman Brothers haven’t been such since 1971, of course, when brother Duane perished in a motorcycle crash, or maybe it was 1972 when Berry Oakley did the same. And the bro-dom was definitely over by 2000, when the remaining members fired Dickey Betts, the third of the group’s original visionaries. But in October, the band known as the Allmans will play their farewell shows at the Beacon Theatre, their longtime Manhattan home. Gregg’s attendance record has been spotty lately, the drummers a bit sluggish, and some of the vocalists a bit session-y, but the very right-on reason to see the Allmans in the 21st century remains the brilliant young slide guitarist Derek Trucks, and the hope they’ll have the good sense to invite Betts back. Beacon Theatre, 2124 Broadway, beacontheatre.com
Exposed: Songs for Unseen Warhol Films
November 6-8
Andy Warhol’s 15 decades of fame continue as a quintet of off-screen underground A-listers—Television’s Tom Verlaine, Suicide’s Martin Rev, Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox, the Fiery Furnaces’ Eleanor Friedberger, and Galaxie 500’s Dean Wareham—present their solo scores for 15 newly restored Warhol films from the ’60s. The on-screen underground A-listers featured in Warhol’s silent productions include (but aren’t limited to) Edie Sedgwick, Marcel Duchamp, Donovan, and Warhol himself. Brooklyn Academy of Music, 321 Ashland Place, bam.org
Nels Cline Singers
November 10
Once the Wilco machine fires up again and guitarist Nels Cline returns to duty matching fractured squiggle arcs to Jeff Tweedy’s always aching, breaking heart, Cline’s long-running instrumentally jamming Singers will likely once again go mum. Balancing Cline’s soaring lyricism with muscular and left-turning propulsion by Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista, the Singers (playing two sets in the shipping container haven of the Rough Trade shop) stalk the sublime by one of the more traditional and endangered routes available: nimble and brilliant eggheaded improvisation. Rough Trade, 64 North 9th Street, Brooklyn, roughtradenyc.com