Our recap of this week’s live music blizzard — indoors and out — travels from Comstock Park to GR to Hudsonville to Kalamazoo, and from touring stars to local band favorites.
Wintry Musical Whimsy: Great Lakes Brass at Saturday’s beer festival. (Photo/Anthony Norkus)
SCROLL DOWN FOR PHOTO GALLERIES, VIDEOS
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Talk about an all-out fun, frolicking week of live music:
• Southern rock and country’s Whiskey Myers packed Wings Event Center in Kalamazoo on Wednesday, the same night that Kalamazoo’s own progressive bluegrass heroes Greensky Bluegrass regaled a sold-out crowd at The Intersection in Grand Rapids — all while treacherous ice and snow cascaded on West Michiganders outside.
Whiskey Myers (Photo/Derek Ketchum)
• During country singer Jo Dee Messina’s sold-out show at The Intersection on Thursday, she face-timed fellow country star Trisha Yearwood because she heard the crowd singing “She’s In Love With The Boy” between sets and thought they sounded good.
• Also on Thursday, Louisiana blues guitar phenom Tab Benoit returned to Kalamazoo to pump up about 1,000 blues fans at State Theatre, along with opener J.D. Simo.
• All three venues at The Intersection were jammed on Friday for the Jammies — WYCE’s annual awards show, held in February for the first time since 2020 with 19 acts playing three stages. Get full coverage via words, photos, a video, awards listing and more at Local Spins here.
• The Winter Beer Festival returned Saturday afternoon to the parking lots outside LMCU Ballpark in Comstock Park with hundreds of beers to taste and performances by Steve Leaf & Co. and the Jammie Award-winning Nathan Walton & The Remedy. But the show might have been stolen by the New Orleans-style zest of West Michigan’s Great Lakes Brass which roamed the grounds to the delight of gleeful beer quaffers. Check out a video here and scroll down for a photo gallery from the beer festival.
• In more than one way, award-winning Oklahoma singer-songwriter John Fullbright dazzled the audience attending Saturday night’s Music to Benefit Music dinner, auction and concert at The Pinnacle Center in Hudsonville.
John Fullbright (Photo/Local Spins)
It was a night filled with Fullbright’s transfixing songs (plus covers of John Prine, Jerry Lee Lewis and Hoyt Axton, among others), not to mention his impressive musicianship on guitar and keyboard.
The event raised about $20,000 for instruments and supplies for area music education programs, with the biggest boost coming from a raffle that sold $10,000 worth of tickets for two eighth-row seats to pop star Taylor Swift’s upcoming summer concert at Detroit’s Ford Field.
• Then there was country pop’s Danielle Bradbery (former winner of NBC’s “The Voice”) getting fans excited at The Stache inside The Intersection on Saturday, the same evening that Kalamazoo’s Mighty Big Rig played its first headlining show at Bell’s Brewery Eccentric Cafe, along with Basic Comfort and LVRS. Scroll down for all the photos.
WEDNESDAY
PHOTO GALLERY: Whiskey Myers, The Rival Sons, The Weathered Souls
Wings Event Center in Kalamazoo
Photos by Derek Ketchum
PHOTO GALLERY: Greensky Bluegrass at the Intersection in Grand Rapids
Photos by Eric Stoike
(Check out a full concert review and more Greensky Bluegrass photos here.)
THURSDAY
PHOTO GALLERY: Jo Dee Messina at The Intersection in Grand Rapids
Photos by Eric Stoike
