Blues, Alt-Country and Metal: Three Nights of Live Music Headed to Mobile Stages

Mobile music fans have a full slate of shows to choose from in early September 2013, with stops at three different venues bringing blues, alt-country and hard rock to stages across the city. The stretch runs from a no-cover blues night on Government Boulevard to a sold-out-energy metal bill downtown, giving concertgoers three very different evenings within a single week.

Albert Castiglia brings touring blues chops to the Blues Tavern

Miami blues guitarist Albert Castiglia plays the Blues Tavern, 2818 Government Blvd., on Saturday, Sept. 6, at 9 p.m., with no cover charge. The west Mobile roadhouse has long been the city’s home base for touring blues acts, and a free-admission night with a guitarist of Castiglia’s pedigree is exactly the kind of booking that fills the room early. Fans are advised to arrive ahead of the 9 p.m. start if they want a seat.

Castiglia picked up the guitar at age 12 and spent years balancing a day job in South Florida social services with weekend gigs before his playing caught the ear of harmonica legend Junior Wells, who recruited him into his touring band. Touring with Wells, the Chicago blues giant best known for “Hoodoo Man” and his work with Buddy Guy, put Castiglia on stages across the country and gave him a graduate education in fronting an audience that no classroom could match.

Since launching his solo career with the 2002 debut “Burn,” Castiglia has built a steady reputation of his own, and his latest release, “Living the Dream,” has drawn praise from fans and critics alike. His style leans on a raw, unhurried vocal delivery and a guitar attack that shifts from simmering grooves to full-throated solos, drawing on both Chicago blues tradition and the swampy sounds of his home state.

Cary Hudson kicks off the Independent Music Collective season at Satori

Also on Saturday, Sept. 6, guitarist Cary Hudson opens the 2013/2014 Independent Music Collective concert season at Satori Coffee House, 5460 Old Shell Road. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., tickets are $5 at the door and free for University of South Alabama students. The Midtown coffeehouse has become the Intown listening room of choice for touring singer-songwriters, and the IMC’s season opener typically draws a full house of fans who sit close and listen hard.

The volunteer-run, donation-funded IMC series has previously hosted Eef Barzelay, Richard Buckner and Hurray for the Riff Raff in the cozy Midtown coffeehouse. Operating without corporate sponsorship, the collective pays its performers out of door donations, and its all-volunteer crew keeps ticket prices among the lowest of any concert series on the Gulf Coast.

Hudson, named one of Gibson Magazine’s “Top 10 Alt. Country Guitarists of All Time,” first gained notice fronting the Americana band Blue Mountain before establishing himself as a solo songwriter. Blue Mountain emerged from Oxford, Mississippi in the early 1990s and helped define a rural, twang-inflected strain of alternative rock that influenced a generation of bands across the South.

His Satori set will draw from across his catalog, including material from his latest album, “Mississippi Moon.” Listeners can expect the intimate setting to suit his strengths: intricate acoustic guitar work, songs rooted in Mississippi landscapes, and the kind of between-song storytelling that gets lost in bigger rooms.

Pop Evil headlines a metal triple bill at Soul Kitchen

The following week, hard rock takes over downtown when Pop Evil headlines Soul Kitchen, 219 Dauphin St., on Friday, Sept. 13. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., with tickets $14 in advance or $17 day of show through the venue, its website, area Mellow Mushroom locations or by phone. The Dauphin Street venue has anchored Mobile’s touring rock and metal circuit for years, and a Friday-night headlining slot there puts the show in the middle of the downtown entertainment district’s busiest strip.

Birmingham’s Lynam opens the night with a modern take on ’80s glam metal and recently previewed its upcoming EP “Halfway to Hell” with the single “Wrong Side Of The Grave.” The band has spent more than a decade on the Southern rock circuit, building a following with big hooks, slick harmonies and a live show that wears its Sunset Strip influences proudly.

Alabama five-piece Shallow Side follows, touring behind its EP “Home Today” with a heavy riff-driven sound. The band’s blend of hard rock and modern metal energy has made it a frequent support act for national tours passing through the Southeast, and a hometown-region crowd at Soul Kitchen gives it the kind of audience that singers dream about.

Michigan headliners Pop Evil close things out in support of their latest album “Onyx,” whose single “Deal With the Devil” is the second installment in a video trilogy told in reverse. The band has climbed steadily since forming in Grand Rapids, mixing radio-ready hard rock with arena-sized choruses, and “Onyx” represents its most aggressive and focused record to date. The reverse-narrative video trilogy has given the album rollout a cinematic hook that fans have followed clip by clip.

Three venues, one week, every direction

The cluster of shows highlights the range of Mobile’s live music infrastructure in the fall of 2013. The Blues Tavern serves the roots and blues crowd on the city’s western side, Satori and the Independent Music Collective nurture the singer-songwriter scene in Midtown, and Soul Kitchen plugs downtown into the national rock touring circuit. On any given weekend, a fan can move between all three worlds.

For touring musicians, Mobile has long functioned as a reliable stop on the Gulf Coast corridor between New Orleans and the Florida Panhandle, close enough to Pensacola and Gulf Shores to pair with neighboring dates. September’s calendar reflects that: a Texas-and-Mississippi-bred songwriter, a Miami blues veteran and a Michigan rock band all found their way to the Port City within eight days of each other.

Ticket-buyers should note the logistics for each show. The Blues Tavern night costs nothing but rewards early arrival; Satori’s $5 door charge and free student admission make it the cheapest concert ticket in town, though donations feed the performers; and the Soul Kitchen show rewards planning, since the $14 advance price saves $3 over the day-of-show rate. With three nights of national-caliber talent spread across the city, early September may be the strongest live music week Mobile has seen all season, and each venue offers a different answer to the same question of where the city’s musical heart beats.

Each of the three acts arrives with its own story of persistence. Castiglia spent years working a government job by day and playing clubs by night before a chance endorsement from Junior Wells changed his trajectory, and he has since become one of the hardest-touring guitarists in American blues, logging two hundred nights a year on the road in good years. Blues Tavern regulars have watched a series of players of his caliber pass through the Government Boulevard club, which has built its reputation on booking genuine working musicians rather than marquee names.

Hudson’s path runs through the college rock era and into a quieter maturity. After Blue Mountain disbanded, he settled into a solo career based in his home state, releasing records that trade amplifiers for acoustic intimacy without losing the melodic instincts that made his old band beloved. Critics have consistently singled out his guitar work, and the Gibson Magazine honor placed him in company few players ever reach. At Satori, seated feet away from the audience, those chops will be on full display.

Pop Evil represents the newest chapter in the long story of hard rock’s commercial resilience. Fronted by Leigh Kakaty, the band rode the post-grunge wave into the 2010s with a string of active rock radio hits, and its willingness to experiment with album-length concepts, like the reverse-chronology video trilogy supporting “Onyx,” has kept it relevant in an era when rock bands live or die by their online presence. Soul Kitchen’s stage, with its sight lines packed close to the crowd, suits a band that thrives on direct connection with its audience.

The local scene beneath the touring acts

Nights like these also spotlight the local acts who share the bills. Lynam and Shallow Side both carry the flag for Alabama rock, playing the same regional circuits that national bands travel and building followings one club at a time. Opening slots in front of headlining crowds are the currency by which regional bands climb, and both groups arrive with new recordings to sell at the merch table.

The Independent Music Collective, meanwhile, embodies the volunteer ethic that sustains Mobile’s quieter musical corners. Its shows run on borrowed equipment, donated door takings and word-of-mouth promotion, yet its booking history reads like a map of respected American songwriters. For University of South Alabama students, free admission with a student ID remains one of the best cultural deals in the city.

The first two weeks of September give Mobile audiences a rare chance to hear three strands of American music in their natural habitats: blues in a roadhouse, songwriting in a coffeehouse and hard rock on a main-street stage. All three shows reward arriving early, and all three depend on the same thing that keeps the city’s music scene alive week after week — people showing up, buying a ticket or dropping five dollars in a jar, and giving touring musicians a reason to keep Mobile on the route.