Paper Foxes, Big Pete, Darts lead a big weekend of shows
Three of the Valley's treasures crank it up
HARK!
I hear…some big-time sounds …
Paper Foxes rise up for a show at the Rebel Lounge Saturday, July 30. Led by dynamic singer CJ Jacobson, this veteran band calls itself “Dark disco but kinda new wave.”
To me, they have echoes (so to speak) of Echo and the Bunnymen, Joy Division and some other new wave/post-punk bands. Someone else suggests “Nik Kershaw meets Alphaville.”
Whoever they make you think of, this is a big show for Paper Foxes, as the band is in the early phases of launching an as-yet-unnamed album.
Paper Foxes is calling this a “single release show.” (Click here for ticket info.)
The Phoenix mash-up will play new material, including the single Heartstrings. Click here to hear the new song–which comes with a creepy video.
Perhaps derailed by the pandemic, the band is preparing its first album since the 2019 Paper Foxes debut Popular Confessions, which Phoenix New Times favorably compared to Blondie.
Jacobson is backed by Patro Gaston (synths), Oliver Lemke (guitar), Robert Ciuca (bass) and Henri Benard (drums).
The living-legend Big Pete Pearson has a show Saturday night at West Side Blues and Jazz Club.
As his bio notes,
“Born in Kingston, Jamaica on October 4, 1936, Big Pete Pearson landed in Phoenix, Arizona in the 1950’s by way of Austin, Texas. He was raised by his grandparents in St. John’s Baptist community just outside Austin. His grandfather was a minister and his grandmother was a missionary. Big Pete was only 9 years of age when he gave his first performance at a local bar. …Big Pete has not left the stage since.”
He’s earned his title: The King of the Blues.
The Darts return to Phoenix after a tour that took them to Seattle, Chicago, Brooklyn, Philly and Boston.
Before hitting Paris and London, the ultra-high energy garage/punk band tunes up with a show Sunday night at the Yucca Tap Room. Believe it or not, this show is FREE. Even so, expect the star-in-the-making singer Nicole Laurenne to put on her usual mix of camp-and-roll. As a HARK Valley review of a Darts show at the Rebel noted, the singer-keyboardist was “jumping around on every song, an Energizer Bunny hopping to the infectious, garage-meets-Goth beats with underlying dark humor lyrics.
“With Laurenne’s organ notes surfing on the guitar and bass lines, the music is virtually impossible to listen to without moving around, as seen in the crowd, from head bobs to wild dancing.”
Click here to see HARK Valley video of that show.