It’s a family affair for Eisley at Crowbar, plus Peter Bjorn and John, J. Cole + more of the week’s best concerts.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22

Subhuman Beatdown Tour DJ/producers Dieselboy (aka Damian Higgins) and Steve "Smash" Gordon are drum-n-bass makers who run the DNB-geared Human Imprint label and subsidiary SubHuman, which is dedicated to dubstep and electro music. Both take the helm on their current "Subhuman Beatdown Tour," which also features BARE along with Amphitheatre residents Nerd Rage and Mr. Saturn! (Amphitheatre, Ybor City)

Buckethead w/Lynx It's easy to judge a man with a bucket on his head harshly. But Brian Caroll, the artist otherwise known as Buckethead, has performed concerts in his trademark headgear and maintained his stage persona (and anonymity) behind a freaky blank white mask ala Michael Myers since he started shredding onstage nearly 20 years ago. His skills on guitar are indisputable and he's a prolific force who's released 34 studio albums, collaborated extensively and performed with an array of artists (among them, Bootsy Collins, Iggy Pop, John Zorn, Les Claypool, Mike Patton and most famously, Guns n' Roses), and has dipped his musical toes in a multitude of genres — most frequently progressive metal, but also funk, blues, ambient and avant-rock, jazz and even bluegrass. (State Theatre, St. Petersburg)

Yip Deceiver w/Transcendent Other/Alien House/Sounduo This of Montreal-spawned side project is a partnership between musicians Davey Pierce and Nicholas Dobbratz with support from bandmates Clayton Rychlik and Paul Nunn. As Yip Deceiver, the quartet crafts experimental pop with charming '80s retro overtones and R&B dance music bounce, Pierce's distinctive elastic basslines joined by fat and zippy synths, bubbly layered vocals, and electro-glitch adornments in songs like the dance-inducing "For All the Haters" and the buoyant "Obnoxia." Both are off the band's 2011 self-titled debut EP. (Crowbar, Ybor City)

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23

Craig Campbell In his single, "Family Man," rising Nashville-by-way-of-Atlanta country music singer Craig Campbell reflects on life from the perspective of a blue collar man and the fire that drives him and keeps him going — his wife and kids. The song marked his first time on the Billboard Country charts and appeared on the 2011 eponymous debut he's promoting on his current tour. (Dallas Bull, Tampa)

Zach Deputy w/The Applebutter Express Among the throng of current one-man bands is furry-faced Deputy, who builds his mix of funk, roots, hip-hop, reggae and acoustic rock by looping and layering his guitar instrumentals, and scatting, rhyming, beat-boxing or singing over the result in a wide-ranging tone that hits a Michael Jackson high and can dip into a deeper shade of soul. (Skipper's Smokehouse, Tampa)

Emerson Drive Multi-award winning country five-piece Emerson Drive originally hails from Alberta, Canada, but re-located to Nashville early in their career and planted roots after signing to a major American label in 2001. Ten years later, the musicians are on the road celebrating the release of their first greatest hits album, Decade of Drive, which also includes three new songs. (Jannus Live, St. Petersburg)

Eisley w/Marksmen/Christie DuPree Eisley is the DuPrees — three sisters, their brother and a cousin who rise above the occasional Partridge Family stereotypes to create radio-friendly piano pop infused with just-odd-enough metaphors and symphonic twinkleliness. Their third LP, The Valley finds Eisley parting with Warner Bros. and joining the more like-minded Equal Vision to release their third LP. The Valley finds Eisley more orchestrated, more mature, and more inspiring than ever. In the four years since their last album, the DuPrees each experienced some low lows, and most of the songs reflect the shock, bitterness, resentment, and recovery from sudden heartbreak. They make you feel their raw but eventually optimistic pain with relatable lyrics crafted around airy layers of melodies. Only on a few tracks do crunchy guitars and wailing bring you down to the depths of the moment their despair hit them. Plus, Sherri and Stacy DuPree have ridiculously clear, angelic voices that even sound pretty when they're fuming at "you and all your friends who didn't like me" and "that apocryphal wedding." (Crowbar, Ybor City) —Taylor Toothman

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24

Tiny Riots w/Geri X/Grand Manor/The Wallies THX Management presents an indie rock bill that includes newbie Wisconsin quartet Tiny Riots, which has a sort of post-grunge appeal spruced up with shimmering guitar melodies and driving rhythms, as well as our own moody alt roots rock songstress Geri X, who has not only taken home yet another Best of the Bay award in the 2011 Reader's Poll, but was named "Best Of Indie 2011" by Rolling Stone in Bulgaria. (New World Brewery, Ybor City)

J. Cole Hip-hop artist and producer J. Cole is on the verge of blowing up. He's earned a wave of positive buzz for his mixtapes; his first, 2007's The Come Up, caught the attention of Jay-Z and got him signed to the heavyweight's Roc Nation label, and this year's Friday Night Lights featured production credits by Timbaland and Kanye West. His debut studio LP, Cole World: The Sideline Story, is primed to top the charts with guest spots by Jay-Z, Missy Elliott, Drake, and Trey Songz, the latter singign in the bumpin' first single, "Can't Get Enough." CL onsite reporter Andrew Silverstein called J. Cole's 2011 Bonnaroo set electric and engaging. "J. Cole spit from the heart like he had no other choice," he wrote. "Every syllable, every word, the gestures, the stories, it all melded and became a testament to how much J. Cole wants you to hear how a young, black male gets by in the world." (Jannus Live, St. Petersburg)

"Honda Civic Tour": Blink-182 / My Chemical Romance w/Matt and Kim When you see tour match-ups like this, you have to wonder how the fans feel, since Blink-182 and My Chemical Romance are two very different beasts in the mainstream rock pantheon and probably don't have a lot of crossover audiences. Pop punk vets Blink-182 formed in 1995, ascended to superstardom with hits like "What's My Age Again" and "All the Small Things," went on hiatus in 2005, and following their return in 2009, have been touring and working on their sixth studio album, Neighborhoods, due out next week. My Chemical Romance (est. 2001) doled out dark and gothic-leaning post-hardcore/punk through 2006's smash Black Parade, but took a theatrical-meets-anthemic alt rock route in 2010 with their conceptual fourth LP, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. Tack on rambunctious indie pop/dance punk favorites Matt and Kim, and you're sure to have a motley assortment of people sweating and bopping and bouncing and thrashing all over each other. (1-800 Ask-Gary Amphitheatre, Tampa)

Peter, Bjorn and John The Swedish trio who took the world by storm with the heart-squeezing whistle-fueled balladry of "Young Folks" hits town in support of their 2011 LP, Gimme Some. While CL writer Deborah Ramos initially dismissed it as a crappy follow up to 2009's Living Thing ("which was really just a half-assed attempt to re-capture the magic of Writer's Block"), she re-evaluated her opinion after giving it another listen and admitted that when taken out of context from PB&J's older material "it's a pretty solid album. My main complaint is the stylistic inconsistency; most of the album still sounds like they're trying to mimic the success of Writer's Block … The only song I absolutely hate is the 1980's Caribbean-influenced 'Dig a Little Deeper' while the real surprise is the hidden gems; two tracks that delve into post-punk, '(Don't Let Them) Cool Off' and 'I Know You Don't Love Me,' both gorgeously dark, yet somehow still catchy, which I absolutely adore." (Czar, Ybor City)

Bogus Pomp The Tampa Bay area's respected Frank Zappa tribute band led by consummate guitar shredder Jerry Outlaw returns for another round of avant garde wizardry. (Capitol Theatre, Clearwater)

Tab Benoit w/Beth McKee This past April, recent Louisiana Music Hall of Fame inductee Tab Benoit issued his seventh studio release of Cajun blues rock, Medicine, collaborating with singer-songwriter Anders Osborne and calling on the talents of fiddler/singer Michael Doucet of Beausoleil, and keyboardist Ivan Neville to flesh the groove-oriented tracks.(Skipper's Smokehouse, Tampa)

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25

The Joy Formidable w/Fang Island Female-fronted Welsh trio The Joy Formidable walks a tightrope between melody and noise with their use of keys and guitar, but it's the metal-ready drumming that makes their sound so powerful. Most of the songs off their 2011 album, The Big Roar, are fairly short except for two. The opener, "The Everchanging Spectrum Of a Lie," and album centerpiece, "Whirring," each build slowly before evolving into a cacophony of noise; the latter track is particularly awesome as the double-kick breakdowns set the pace during the lengthy, chaotic closing solo before the band members presumably collapse into an exhausted heap. After finishing this song, I want to do the same. However, the album is only half over by this point — and the rest of it is pretty damn good, too. (Orpheum, Ybor City) —Joel Weiss

The Mike Pinto Band Mike Pinto Band pays homage to their West Coast home in the just-released dub-fused reggae rock EP, The West Is Still Wild. Pinto plays with the idea of how people are still drawn to the west, and attempts to capture his culmination of experiences and discoveries about what it feels like to be there — "from how wild it was, to how wild it is and to how wild it will always be." (Jannus Live, St. Petersburg)

POGO w/That 1 Guy Pogo is an electronic music artist who takes small audio clips from TV shows and films to create new pieces of music. His work using samples from Disney (most famously Alice in Wonderland, but also Mary Poppins, Snow White, Toy Story and others) has attracted him the most attention. His most recent project is a "real world" mix that he dubbed "Gardyn," which splices together samples of his mother's voice with sounds from her garden. The video attracted more than 1.2 million views since it was uploaded to YouTube in May. That 1 Guy is an inventor/one-man band who has his own handcrafted collection of instruments (like the seven-foot-tall Magic Pipe) and creates his futuristic prog-funk rock sound using lots of effects pedals, sound boxes and random gadgetry. (Crowbar, Ybor City)

Rock Bottom Tribute w/St. Pete Blues Allstars/Sandy Atkinson/Ronny Elliott/Lounge Cat/TC Carr/Greg Poulos/J.P. "Bullmoose" Coley/Pete Gallagher/Rev. Boneshaker/Big Dick Magee/TBone Hamilton/Jimmy Griswold/Johnny & The Wranglers/many more You won't find nary a mention of gritty soulful harmonica great Rock Bottom on Wikipedia, but he played a significant role in our state's blues music circuit, and had his start performing in roadhouses and juke joints across Central Florida nearly 30 years ago. WMNF and the Suncoast Blues Society have assembled a large group of Bay area blues and roots artists pay tribute to Rock Bottom on the 10th anniversary of his death at this special showcase. Among the performers are musicians who played with Rock or who were friends, fans or inspired by the musician. (Skippers Smokehouse, Tampa)

Modern English "I Melt with You" has been used in commercials by Hershey's chocolate, Ritz crackers, Taco Bell, M&M's and Burger King, among others, and is likely the one hit everyone knows by UK New Wave post punk outfit Modern English. The original 80's line up re-formed in 2010, and are currently touring while writing new material. (The Venue, Clearwater)

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26

Pepper w/The Expendables/Ballyhoo! Nearly a year after their last stop at Jannus, reggae punk-rock trio Pepper returns for another night of their Hawaiian dub sunshine and party-inducing antics. (Jannus Live, St. Petersburg)

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28

Slaughter The Hard Rock@Nite entertainment series launches its official return with a concert by heavy metal band Slaughter, which rose to fame with their multi-platinum 1990 debut LP, Stick It to Ya, lead singer Mark Slaughter wailing through such post-glam hits as "Fly To The Angels" and "Up All Night." (Hard Rock Café, Tampa)

Langhorne Slim and The Law w/Matrimony His high-toned vocals are warm, slightly twangy and endearingly sweet with a hoarseness that emerges as he gets more passionate. His delivery style, while all his own, hints at his Springsteen and Dylan influences. His rambling Americana and easy-going folk rock is paired with poignant lyrics that strike a chord with their simple clarity or bittersweet but curiously upbeat melancholy. Whether he's offering encouragement, like in "Diamonds and Gold" ("You can have all the diamonds, all the gold, but someday you're still gonna get old / You gotta learn to get happy along the way…"), pondering the end of a relationship from the perspective of the person left behind, as in "I Love You, But Goodbye," or, more often than not, doling out earnest expressions of affection via his tender balladry, Langhorne Slim manages to come off as genuine and has a fedora for every occasion. You might know him from "Worries" — the 2009 theme song for the Travelers Insurance commercials — and the rest of his fare is just as solid. (Crowbar, Ybor City)

Ingram Hill w/Kat McGivern/Rachel Platten The Memphis-based outfit purveys the sort of easy-on-the-ears AC alt rock that punctuates the previews of feel good B-grade films; gentle and melodic with a driving edge. Ingram Hill hits town on the heels of putting out an acoustic album featuring re-freshened and stripped-down versions of past hits and fan favorites, Blue Room Afternoon. McGivern is a Boston-based singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist of the same ilk, but with a little more pop fire in her delivery and a keytar in her instrument arsenal. (World of Beer, Tampa)

CLICK HERE to see a complete rundown of shows taking place this week and in the coming weeks.

This article appears in Sep 22-28, 2011.