Indoor music to make you forget you want to be outdoors.
There’s something about Nashville (I’m partial to my neighborhood of Lockeland Springs, but this applies to the city as a whole) that happens when the weather gets warm: almost overnight, we become a walking city again, a place where drinks outside at 3 p.m. seem a totally reasonable idea, and porches become the best places for rehearsal, rather than the dusty confines of our basements and attics. I put on a favorite spring record: Carl Broemel‘s All Birds Say, Wild Light’s “California on My Mind,” Island’s Return to the Sea.
Most of all, I become itchy for outdoor music — spending a saturday with a snowball and Musician’s Corner; fighting the crowds at Live on the Green, toting a six-string to the Full Moon Pickin’ Parties or just wasting an afternoon (in the best possible way) in the backyard of a friend, where someone, anyone, picks up a guitar between duty flipping burgers.
But until then, we’ve still got music, it’s just mostly indoors. Though not if you’re my neighbor – we’ve already moved the portable record player outside — and you’re going to be hearing records all night. Sorry, neighbors. Anyhow, here are my picks for tonight :::
– Jabe Beyer at the Family Wash ::: if you spend enough time around East Nashville, you’re likely to see Jabe pop up here or there. I first saw him at the Family Wash, the same place where he’ll play tonight. Though it’s a small venue, Jabe wasn’t shy about bringing his full-force rock/roots sound to the folks casually spooning in Shepherd’s pies. Amps were turned up, guitars were aggressively played, and all of the sudden we were at a Jabe Beyer concert, not just sipping beers at the Wash with a band in the background. 
The room was transformed. Jabe’s won numerous songwriting awards and has his hands in many arenas of the musical sphere, so you get the impression he plays at the Wash, to smallish crowds, because he likes it. For fun, maybe. And in an idea world, that’s how it always should be. Family Wash, 9 p.m.
– R. Stevie Moore is playing the Stone Fox with Bad Friend and Action. R. Stevie Moore is one of those that defy categorization, but can best be defined as a forefather of lo-fi yet poppy, trip-infused weirdness that can now be detected in the music of Guides by Voices and Pavement. I love his tune “Why Should I Love You” that blends some of his best elements with a spastic-but-containted drumline. Catch him with Bad Friend, another favorite Nashvillian, who likely takes a good deal of inspiration from Moore himself.
– On the opposite end of the spectrum: blow out yer ears at Springwater with locals Black Tar Prophet, because that’s just fine too.
But now, it’s time for a walk in the sunlight.
Lockeland Springsteen 