Steve Connelly & Friends Ask a Bay area musician about producer and guitarist Steve Connelly, and you’ll get nothing but unanimous high praise for the 63-year-old who has appeared on the Tonight Show and also played a stadium with the Grateful Dead. A year after his friends helped raise money for his hepatitis C treatments, Connelly is back on the stage for a set with “friends” that has the potential to be one of the best Tampa Bay live sets of the year. (Hideaway Cafe, St. Petersburg) INFO
The Interventionists w/The 39 Steps/The New Legendary/DJ Mes McDonald The Tampa Bay History Center’s director of marketing, naturally majored in history at Georgia State before coming home to serve his community, but Manny Leto also minored in music. For his 40th birthday, the living encyclopedia of Tampa folklore is resurrecting one of his old bands, The Interventionists, for a reunion show. Leto even upped the ante on himself by committing his new-ish group, The New Legendary, to play an additional set of alt-country/punk-tinged rock. The icing on the cake for this birthday bill? Another reunion from The 39 Steps which features Magadog frontman Ed Lowery on drums. (New World Brewery, Ybor City) INFO
Clearwater Jazz Holiday Afterparty w/BK Jackson Tampa-native and saxophonist BK Jackson takes a break from a career that’s seen him collab with Prince, Brian McKnight, Bruno Mars and more to host an official Clearwater Jazz Holiday afterparty. Jackson is currently in the touring lineup for Jazz holiday headliner Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, so don’t be surprised if there are some special guests at this show. (Capitol Theatre, Clearwater) INFO
Love and Theft Nashville, Tennessee country dudes Eric Gunderson and Stephen Liles are famous for their booze-influenced pop anthems “Angel Eyes,” “Whiskey On My Breath” and “Night That You’ll Never Forget,” but they’ve slowed it down on their latest release, an acoustic version of slow-dancing 2016 single “Candyland.” Expect them to run through the gamut of it all at this show, and don’t be surprised if rooms like the Dallas Bull end up being too small for Love & Theft next time around. (Dallas Bull, Tampa) INFO
Ratt w/Jack Russell’s Great White For the record, this is Bobby Blotzer’s Ratt (featuring L.A. Guns guitarist Stacey Blades). It’s also the Jack Russell version of Great White. We’re going to let you 80s rock fans take it from there. (Cuban Club, Ybor City) INFO
Jensen Serf Co. w/Mushmind/Teacher Teacher In June, St. Pete’s Jensen Serf Company got out of the garage long enough to release a proper full length, June In A Field Of Flowers, online. The effort is a sweaty, speaker-breaking 35-minutes of blown out, delightfully spastic noisy psychedelia where the Company — built around guitarist Peter Kokkinakos and drummer/singer Benjamin Saylor — throw their obsession with weird, lo-fi reverb-soaked punk into a blender with some new, darker influences. The result is a jagged concoction of rock & roll that fits in at the beach and dark, sadistic dungeons all the same. This show celebrates the release of Flowers on 180-gram black, white and pink splattered vinyl all wrapped up in an eco-sleeve decorated by San Diego designer Dustyn “Dirtweed” Peterman, whose work has graced product from Volcom, Adult Swim and Burger Records. (Fubar, St. Petersburg) INFO
ALSO PLAYING
Music in the Park w/Jared Black (Seminole City Park, Seminole) INFO
Decades Rewind (Ferguson Hall at David A. Straz Center for the Performing Arts) INFO
The Florida Orchestra: The Music of Genesis (Mahaffey Theater, St. Petersburg) INFO
ABBA Tribute (Pinellas Park Performing Arts Center, Pinellas Park) INFO
Stolen Rhodes w/Scotty Bratche (Skipper’s Smokehouse) INFO
The Last Ten Seconds of Life w/Traitors (Local 662, St. Petersburg) INFO
Veiny Hands w/The Nude Party/Woolly Bushmen (he Bends, St. Petersburg) INFO
The Great Pumpkin Jam w/Deviate the Plan/Polar Summer/Sunshine & Bullets/Aegea/From This Fire/Esque (State Theatre, St. Petersburg) INFO
Say My Name (The Ritz, Ybor City) INFO
USF Fall Choral Concert (Concert Hall Stage at University of South Florida, Tampa) INFO
The Third Kind (Ella’s Americana Folk Art Cafe, Tampa) INFO
This article appears in Oct 13-20, 2016.