A+E

Come on down to the Basement tonight around 8 p.m. for an evening of music courtesy of the Claire Bent Jazz Quintet. I haven’t heard this exact line-up, but I can confirm that Ms. Bent has one of the finest and most versatile voices in the local scene, capable of bringing the right stuff to anything from soul and funk to pop and jazz, and beyond. See for yourself for free in the lovely cavern beneath the Jacoby Storehouse.

Speaking of hip hop (and for that matter, an organic, career-length artistic celebration of the fun side of weed) Houston’s screwball master MC, guest star and laid back producer Devin the Dude is posting up at Humbrews tonight at 9 p.m. on a stop on his Whole New Ballroom tour. He might be a few days late for 4/20, but I have no doubt the vibe won’t be affected in the slightest, and, although it’s easy to over-simplify his act as a rolling carnival of High Times, the Dude has got effortless flow rolling over a production style that is deceptively brilliant in its underlying smokescreen groove. He’s a peer-respected icon at the top of a game he helped develop over decades ($25).

The calendar marks the onward tapping of time, and once again the first days of the working week is capped off with a 7 p.m. installment of Metal Mondays at Savage Henry Comedy Club. Tonight’s fare includes two Midwestern touring bands, Cincinnati’s power-violence crew Slut Bomb and noise violence mercenaries Blackwater Snipers from Chicago. Local heavy hitters Malicious Algorithm and Brain Dead Rejects will bring it on as well ($5-$10 sliding scale).

Fans of ensemble vocal jazz and pop are in for a treat this afternoon when the Mad
River Transit Singers present a matinee performance at Fulkerson Hall at 2 p.m. ($10, $5 children and seniors, free to Cal Poly Humboldt students). The program will include an array of swing and jazz standards, as well as some pop gems by the likes of Willie Nelson and local hero Sara Bareilles.

I’m too far removed from cannabis culture to comment on the current street value of 4/20 as a holiday, but I have to imagine it’s been a cycle of diminished returns regarding coolness in the wake of legalization, market busts and gross spurts of venture capital. Like music festivals and world travel, the online cult of the self has turned everything spontaneous and exciting into a teeming social media world of curated projections lacking anything resembling human reflection. All populated by a hierarchy of influencers whose language is a megaton chorus of babble. I try not to think about it too much. However, I do need to think about a fun gig for today, and rather than make a list of the many hyped-up musical smoke-outs, I’m going to suggest the OTT. show at the Arcata Theatre Lounge at 9 p.m. ($25, $22 advance). This British electro artist has been pumping out his ambient dub and club tracks for more than 20 years while holding it down as a respected engineer and producer in the professional level of the industry. This show looks like a good time without any prior obligations.

I like it when a new group I haven’t heard before drops a line to let me know about an upcoming gig because I am given the chance to see what the music makers (and the dreamers of dreams, per Roald Dahl writing as Willy Wonka quoting the poet Arthur O’Shaugnessy) are up to. But things really line up and start sparking and twitching for me with the holy amperage of life when I actually love the music they send. I got treated to just that sort of galvanic shock this week when Liz, aka Trash Panda, from the new Eureka duo Hermit Crab sent me the goods: a link to their latest work, The Earth is Visible from Space. Dear lord of the deadly glowing seas, what a beautiful, stuttering mess of sputtering beats, all chopping through a tideline of battered shoreline debris and foamy toxic unguents. Samples, beats, sax, voices, all funk-scuttling over an ambient mapped fallout zone of music, land-mining Mother Nature with barbs of exploded pop culture and crooning about the mess. This trash is a blast and I love it. I beg you to see, hear and fear for yourself what I mean, which you can do at the Miniplex at 9 p.m. for $10. B. Writes provides R&B support and album cover artist Julia Finkelstein will be making live paintings. Put your ear to page and hear the thwack, because I just stamped this one with my “gig of the week” notary mallet.

Local guitar playing and soothsaying storyteller Anna Hamilton brings her trio and its blues to the Basement tonight for a free recitation at 8 p.m. I remember her tunes and chatter fondly from the good old days at the Clam Beach Inn (RIP), where she’d take over a corner and fill the barroom with her earthy magic that expanded as the beer taps flowed like the wavy drizzle in the backyard Strawberry Creek forest basin. Here’s a glass tipped to those memories and a sip in honor of those to come.

Let’s hear it for the Logger Bar again, which has positively crushed it with booking this week, finishing strong with the return of Jenny Don’t and the Spurs, Portland’s favorite stardust country and lost highway soul seekers fronted by one of the best voices in the biz. The very talented Turtle Goodwater of Barn Fire and too many good gigs to name adds his shine to the night, which starts at 8 p.m. and costs a mere $5 to help keep our brave players on the road. Folks, live music is back and hot tonight.

The Logger Bar hits us with a rare Monday night show at 7:30 p.m. and this one looks like a rip-snortin’, garage-rockin’ deal with our local lovelies Clean Girl and the Dirty Dishes cranking the amp alongside SUX from Seattle, featuring a lady named Lolli from the infamous mean-ass punk band Mommy Long Legs. The $5 is pocket change for a chance to jam out on this one with some high-nitro tunes.

Minnesota bluesman, picker, and singer-songwriter Charlie Parr is the real deal, by which I mean an artist who has sublimated the nerve-ending feedback signals of his life and the lives of those around him into a sound that captures the true essence of storytelling, that elusive place where fiction creates truth. I’m not the only one to recognize this, either. The guy has a career traveling the world with his guitar, no easy feat in the year of Our Lord 2024. He’s parked over at Humbrews tonight at 8 p.m., where he will be joined by banjo-playing singers Kendl Winter and Palmer T. Lee, also known as The Lowest Pair, an indie-grass duo minted in Olympia, Washington, a decade ago, and rolling on down the road ever since ($25, $20 advance).