Atlanta – Rad/ATL

May 24, 2026June 29, 2026 RadATL Atlanta shows

RadATL’s Live Music & Events Calendar

A good night in Heaven at the Masquerade. Photo by Elena de Soto

Click here to submit shows and other events for consideration.

Monday, June 29
— Monday Night Creative Music Series: Colin Bragg Quartet (feat. Blake Helton, Alexandria Smith, and Jeff Albert) with Paula van Goes. $20 (suggested donation). 8 p.m. Eyedrum

Tuesday, June 30
— The Soap Girls and Warsaw Clinic. 7:30 p.m. (doors). 8 p.m. (show). $17 (advance). $20 (door). The Earl

Thursday, July 2
— Unarmed Civilians, Clavicle, and Hawt Soda. $15. 7:30 p.m. (adv). 8 p.m. (show). The Earl

Friday, July 3
— Drivin N Cryin’s Independence Eve Show. Free. 7-9 p.m. Grover Park on Marietta Square

— Afrobeats To The World. $23-$28. 9 p.m. (18+). The Masquerade (Heaven)

— Silk Daisys, Widow100s, Mirror Move, and Valley of Eyes. $15. 8 (doors). 8:30 p.m. (show). The Earl

— Misnomer w/ Unk N’ Nem. $15. 8 p.m. The Drunken Unicorn

Saturday, July 4
— A benefit for Prairieland Defenders and Jericho Movement w/ Babys1der, 36 Durags and Truth, Final First, and more. $10-$20 (nobody turned away for lack of funds). 8 p.m. South Bend Commons

Tuesday, July 7
— Boycat, Finger Foods, and Mallbangs. $15. 8 p.m. The Drunken Unicorn

— Nemophila. $35.10. 7 p.m. (doors). The Masquerade (Hell)

Click here for more show listings

May 24, 2026June 6, 2026 RadATL Atlanta shows, New music

David J of Bauhaus and Love and Rockets plays Electron Gardens on Thursday, June 18

For more than four decades, bass player, songwriter, poet, and raconteur David J Haskins has occupied a singularly mystical place in underground music. Whether anchoring the shadowy architecture of Bauhaus, shaping the widescreen dream-pop of Love and Rockets, or pursuing a rich and eclectic solo career, David J has always treated performance as something closer to ritual than mere entertainment. On June 18, he returns to Electron Gardens Studio in Avondale Estates for an intimate Summer Solstice celebration. It’s a seasonal companion to the Winter Solstice-themed performance he brought to Electron Gardens last December.

Poet Lisa King opens the show reading works that are steeped in alchemical symbolism, dreamlike themes of transformation, and imagery drawn from woodland creatures, coastal landscapes, and the unseen currents connecting them all. Her words will be accompanied by atmospheric soundscapes created by Penelope Courtney, creating an immersive prelude to the music.

The Hot Place set the music in motion with a stripped down lineup featuring King performing alongside guitar players Jeff Calder and Mike Lynn, playing a few songs from The Language of Birds and the 2022 self-titled LP.

James Hall of Mary My Hope and Pleasure Club joins the bill performing a solo set.

David J will draw from every corner of his catalog, playing older material alongside selections from his latest release,Tracks from the Attic Revisited—10 songs taken from his sprawling 2024 demo anthology, reworked, rewritten, and reinterpreted.

The Revisited album transforms decades-old home recordings into a fully realized collection shaped by four decades of artistic growth. He’ll reel through a few fan favorites that have followed him across decades and continents.

As the evening reaches its conclusion, guests will join David J on stage for a communal finale: James Hall will join in to collaborate on a handful of songs, as will King and Calder from the Hot Place, culminating in what promises to be one of the summer’s most memorable musical gatherings.

David J plays Electron Gardens Studio in Avondale Estates on Thursday, June 18. With Lisa King, James Hall, and the Hot Place. $50. 7 p.m.

If you have enjoyed reading this post, please consider donating to RadATL. Venmo to @Chad-Radford-6 or click on the PayPal link below.

May 13, 2026May 17, 2026 RadATL Atlanta shows, New music

Setting and Brainwolrds play the Earl on Thursday, May 14

The North Carolina Piedmont-based outfit Setting finds three deeply intuitive musicians—Nathan Bowles, Jaime Fennelly, and Joe Westerlund—summoning rhythms and textures from deep within the Appalachian soil.

The group’s collective resume boasts contributions to projects such as Mind Over Mirrors, Califone, Pelt, Sylvan Esso, Black Twig Pickers, Acid Birds, and Jake Xerxes Fussell. In Setting, these disparate histories are distilled into a transportive sound that unfolds like an extrasensory conversation among musicians who know when to push and when to leave space in their music.

The album’s meticulous textures underscore the warmth and flow of a group that moves as a single organic unit, blending synths, banjo, zithers, cassette loops, keyboards, and hand percussion into hypnotic patterns that drift between exploration, minimalism, and ecstatic improvisation. The song “Heard a Bubble” shimmers and expands with a patient glow. “Derring-do” builds on a locomotive pulse that gathers force until it rattles the walls and lifts the roof clean off.

“Gum Bump” swirls like a weather system gathering at the horizon. Its slowly blooming pulse of harmonium, guitar, and percussion draws listeners into a meditative state. Each number builds, illustrating a singular gift for making expansive, transcendent music that blurs the lines between ritual and revelation, culminating in an immersive journey where every rhythmic turn opens onto a new horizon.

Director Morgan Maassen’s video for “What Kind of Fish is a Turtle,” offers a visual accompaniment to the song’s slowly-moving synth waves with striking detail.

For Thursday night’s show, Atlanta guitarist Mason Brown of Maserati makes a rare appearance performing under the name Brainworlds.

With Brainworlds, Brown makes music that feels like a transmission from the outer reaches of the cosmos—propelled by a motorik Krautrock drift. Each song unfolds in hypnotic layers of pulsing rhythms and spiraling synthesizers.

Brown’s immersive soundscapes provide an ideal entry point into the night’s meditative terrain.

$20. 7:30 p.m. (doors). 8 p.m. (show). The Earl. 488 Flat Shoals Ave SE.

If you have enjoyed reading this post, please consider donating to RadATL. Venmo to @Chad-Radford-6 or click on the PayPal link below.

May 9, 2026May 12, 2026 RadATL Atlanta shows, New music

Shane Parish plays Eyedrum’s Monday Night Creative Music Series on May 11

Shane Parish. Photo by Courtney Chappell

On Monday, May 11, Athens-based guitarist, composer, and improviser Shane Parish plays two sets as part of Eyedrum’s Monday Night Creative Music Series.

The first set features Parish performing solo selections from his latest album, Autechre Guitar, a striking collection that recasts the intricate electronic structures of British duo Autechre for acoustic guitar. What seems an unlikely translation becomes, in Parish’s hands, an act of revelation—stripping away circuitry to expose the skeletal beauty of Autechre’s looping, asymmetrical phrasing and shifting repetition, rendering each number with breathtaking precision and warmth.

This kind of imaginative transformation has long defined Parish’s work. Whether fronting Ahleuchatistas or reinterpreting sea shanties on Liverpool, Shane Parish has long balanced Appalachian roots, experimental composition, and a quietly dazzling command of the guitar.

On Repertoire, he turns his attention to a wide-ranging set of compositions—from Alice Coltrane to Kraftwerk—recasting them as intricate solo guitar studies that highlight both his technical virtuosity and instinct for reinvention.

For the second set, Parish reunites with longtime collaborator and multi-instrumentalist Libro (Michael Libramento). Libro joins Parish on drums for an improvisational duo performance, offering another glimpse into the pair’s deeply expressive approach to sound.

Read more about Shane Parish’s latest album in my Flagpole Magazine feature story, “Shane Parish Bridges Wood, Steel and Circuitry with Autechre Guitar.”

If you have enjoyed reading this post, please consider donating to RadATL. Venmo to @Chad-Radford-6 or click on the PayPal link below.

April 9, 2026April 27, 2026 RadATL Atlanta shows, New music

The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis ignite with ‘Deface the Currency’

The Messthetics (from left: Anthony Pirog, Joe Lally, and Brendan Canty) with James Brandon Lewis.
Photo by Pat Graham

The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis’ latest album, Deface the Currency (Impulse!), captures an increasingly bold and rebellious sound for the ensemble. Drop a needle on the opening number and the barreling rhythms explode with force. Drummer Brendan Canty and bass player Joe Lally have spent a lifetime honing their shared musical instincts in Fugazi. With the Messthetics, guitarist Anthony Pirog and saxophone player James Brandon Lewis elevate their collective efforts to a higher plane of consciousness, communication, and chemistry, distilling punk, hardcore, free jazz, and the avant-garde into a singularly defiant spirit.

Born from long stretches on the road and captured in a blur of first and second takes, Deface The Currency trades polish for immediacy without sacrificing precision.

Songs such as “30 Years of Knowing,” “Rules of the Game,” and “Serpent Tongue (Slight Return)” lock into grooves that are both grounded and volatile. Each song stretches, collapses, and builds again, veering from tightly coiled funk to an ecstatic squall. Pirog’s guitar fractures and refracts around Lewis’ saxophone, as both move with urgency toward chaos, but always maintain structure.

“Serpent Tongue” is the album’s grand finale, recalling moments from the Messthetics and Lewis’ previous, self-titled album. Here, everything is pushed forward by a brighter fire.

Of course, live and in the moment is when the music truly ignites.

The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis play The Earl on Monday, April 27. $20. 7:30 p.m. (doors). 8:30 p.m. (show).

If you have enjoyed reading this post, please consider donating to RadATL. Venmo to @Chad-Radford-6 or click on the PayPal link below.

March 23, 2026March 24, 2026 RadATL Atlanta shows

‘Benjamin Smoke’ screening at The Plaza Theatre on Wednesday, March 25

Twenty Six years after directors Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen released the documentary film Benjamin Smoke, the story endures, capturing a ghost in the grain of Atlanta’s underground music and mythology.

Shot throughout the 1990s in Cabbagetown, the film traces the ragged, incandescent life of Benjamin (born Robert Dickerson), a poet, drag performer, and frontman for the bands Smoke and the Opal Foxx Quartet.

What unfolds is a collage of moments—equal parts beauty and abrasion. Cohen (Fugazi Instrument) and Sillen’s lens drifts through cluttered streets, dimly lit stages, and unhinged conversations, capturing a figure who existed in defiance of permanence. Benjamin’s world is one of contradictions: confrontational yet vulnerable, self-destructive yet searching, rooted in the decaying edges of a city then teetering between neglect and reinvention.

The screening also serves as a reunion of sorts for those who orbited that era. An introduction by Film Love’s Andy Ditzler and Bill Taft (Smoke, Opal Foxx Quartet, Hubcap City, W8ing4UFOS) sets the stage, followed by a post-show discussion featuring Taft along with friends and cohorts Clare Butler, Rosser Shymanski, Laurie Stevens, and Tom Zarrilli.

For anyone who remembers—or longs to understand—Atlanta in the ‘80s and the ‘90s, this event offers a chance to sit with a life lived in fleeting moments, without apology. It’s also a chance to explore the beauty and unease of a scene that refuses to stay buried.

Wednesday, March 25. $16.49 (adult). $13.50 (seniors, children, and military) 7 p.m.

If you have enjoyed reading this post, please consider donating to RadATL. Venmo to@Chad-Radford-6or click on the PayPal link below.

March 20, 2026 RadATL Atlanta shows

Soleil Moon Frye’s ‘Werewolf in the Waves’ premieres at the Atlanta Documentary Film Festival March 19-22 at Synchronicity Theatre

Soleil Moon Frye. Photo by Amanda Demme.

The 21st Atlanta Documentary Film Festival returns to Synchronicity Theatre March 19–21, bringing a weekend of nonfiction storytelling that draws from the full spectrum of human experience. It’s a festival that’s hand-curated for Atlanta audiences—intimate, unvarnished, and driven by voices that linger long after the credits roll.

This year’s slate casts a wide net, pulling together films that examine identity, memory, and the fragile architecture of human connection. The centerpiece takes place on closing night with Werewolf in the Waves, the latest from director Soleil Moon Frye.

Frye is best known as the former child actress who played the title role in Punky Brewster on NBC from 1984 to 1986. More recently, Frye’s diaristic approach in Kid 90 resonated with critics and audiences alike, its unguarded intimacy doubling as a time-capsule portrait of youth, memory, and the cost of growing up in public.

With Werewolf in the Waves, Frye once again turns the camera inward, tracing her reconnection with childhood friend Seth Binzer—better known as Shifty Shellshock of the band Crazy Town—during the band’s attempted comeback tour. Shot largely on an iPhone, the film reveals a more painful narrative, as Binzer struggles with relapse. The result is an unflinching look at addiction’s pull and the emotional wreckage it leaves behind.

Frye will introduce the film’s premiere Sunday night. Afterward, she will take part in a 45-minute Q&A session.

Werewolf in the waves screens on Sunday, March 22, at 7:05 p.m.

Check out the rest of the weekend’s schedule and line up here.

If you have enjoyed reading this post, please consider donating to RadATL. Venmo to@Chad-Radford-6or click on the PayPal link below.

March 17, 2026March 18, 2026 RadATL Atlanta shows

An evening with Marc Ribot at the Garden Club at Wild Heaven West End on Friday, March 20

Marc Ribot is a shape-shifting guitar player whose style dissolves the boundaries between genres as quickly as it defines them. When Ribot takes the stage at the Garden Club on Friday, March 20, expect nothing less than a musical séance performed on six strings.

Ribot’s solo work stretches across a body of stark, deeply personal recordings, ranging from interpretations like Plays the Works of Frantz Casseus to the haunted drift of Silent Movies, and his latest release, 2025’s Map of A Blue City.

Ribot’s live sets rarely settle into anything so fixed. Rather, they unfold in real time: fragments of melody, bursts of free improvisation, and ghostly echoes of everything from Haitian classical music to downtown New York noise. It’s a language that Ribot has spent decades refining alongside collaborators like Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Robert Plant, and John Zorn, helping shape records that are as strange as they are timeless.

That restless spirit traces back to Ribot’s early days studying under Frantz Casseus and cutting his teeth in New York’s late-’70s underground before surfacing as a defining voice in projects like John Lurie’s the Lounge Lizards. Since then, he’s become a connective thread between worlds, jumping from avant-garde jazz to roots music, film scores, and beyond.

On Friday night, Ribot will perform solo on acoustic and electric guitar, stripping everything down to instinct and possibility. It’s an all-seated, first-come affair—fitting for a night that rewards close listening. With Ribot, the only certainty is that nothing will unfold quite the way you expect, and that’s exactly the point.

$30 (adv. + fees). $35 (door + fees). 8 p.m. The Garden Club at Wild Heaven West End.

If you have enjoyed reading this post, please consider donating to RadATL. Venmo to@Chad-Radford-6or click on the PayPal link below.

February 23, 2026February 24, 2026 RadATL Atlanta shows, New music

Anna Jensen’s ‘Let’s Go Dancing’ celebrates the songs of Kevn Kinney and Drivin N Cryin at The Sun ATL April 10-May 23

Artwork for Edwin McCain’s cover of Drivin N Cryin’s ‘Rush Hour.’ By Anna Jensen.

On Friday, April 10, The Sun ATL premieres “Let’s Go Dancing: Artwork celebrating the songs of Kevn Kinney and Drivin N Cryin.” The show features a colorful and deeply personal collection of works by Anna Jensen, who transforms music and songwriting into a visual language.

Cover art for Puddles Pity Party’s single by Anna Jensen.

Running through May 23, the show draws from a sprawling series of six LPs and dozens of online singles featuring artists playing Kinney’s songs from his solo releases and his work as the lyricist and frontman with Drivin N Cryin.

Jensen conceived, curated, and produced “Let’s Go Dancing” via Tasty Good Records. She is also married to Kinney. The show features roughly 75 of her acrylic paintings, each one created as a direct response to the cover songs that appear throughout the series, performed by artists such as Abe Partridge, Amy Ray Band feat. Emily Saliers (of the Indigo Girls), Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish, Fang of Gore (a Gang of Four), Gordon Gano (of the Violent Femmes), Peter Buck and Mike Mills (of R.E.M.), and dozens more.

The cover art for Abe Partridge’s single by Anna Jensen.

Varying in size and mood, the paintings function as emotional translations—snapshots of how a photograph, a story, a lyrical phrase, a chord change, or a simple melody lands in Jensen’s imagination.

The show is a traditional gallery presentation and a map of devotion. Each canvas is tethered to a song, and each song becomes a jumping-off point for color, gesture, and abstraction steeped in Southern punk rock imagery. The cumulative effect mirrors Kinney’s catalog: wide-ranging, deeply felt, and guided by instinct rather than rigid structure.

The six week span of the exhibition will feature live performances by some of the artists who contributed to “Let’s Go Dancing,” giving immediate life to the songs that inspired the paintings. It’s a full-circle moment—music inspiring art, art reframing music, and community binding it all together.

Check back soon for details.

If you have enjoyed reading this post, please consider donating to RadATL. Venmo to@Chad-Radford-6or click on the PayPal link below.

January 31, 2026January 31, 2026 RadATL Atlanta shows

Michael Almereyda’s 1994 film ‘Nadja’ screening in 4k at The Plaza Theater on Thursday, February 19

On Thursday, February 19, Plazadrome digs deep into the ’90s art-house underground with a screening of Michael Almereyda’s sleek and chilly 1994 vampire film Nadja.

The film takes shape as a soft, postmodern reimagining of Dracula’s Daughter (1936), transplanting familiar nocturnal lore—alienation, desire, and immortality—into 1990s Brooklyn.

This screening features a newly released 4K restoration (Arbelos and Grasshopper), the highest quality presentation Nadja has received yet—an ideal excuse to revisit a film that has long existed in the margins.

Before the lights go down, Videodrome’s Jordan Kady will offer a short video introduction that digs into the film’s famously fraught production history. Chief among the hurdles: the sudden departure of actor Eric Stoltz just days before shooting was set to begin, which resulted in the film’s financiers bailing on the project. Executive producer David Lynch stepped in and personally financed the film, a rare act of filmmaker solidarity.

Stylistically, Nadja is as striking as it is unconventional. Almereyda’s use of the Fisher-Price PXL2000 aka Pixelvision toy camera in select scenes gives the film a ghostly, degraded texture, nodding to the expressionist techniques of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece Nosferatu, while firmly rooting it in the DIY aesthetics of the ’90s.

Composer Simon Fisher Turner’s haunting score adds to the film’s hypnotic pull, while the film’s soundtrack—featuring music by My Bloody Valentine, Portishead, Verve, and Spacehog—anchors Nadja firmly in its era. As Kady puts it, “Almereyda once described the film as ‘sucking the blood out of all other vampire movies,’” reconstituting centuries of lore into something singularly stylish and deeply strange. Three decades later, these sensibilities still feel radical and irresistibly seductive. Nadja is a must-see on the Plaza Theater’s big screen.

$16.49 (+tax). 9 p.m. The Plaza Theater, 1049 Ponce De Leon Ave NE.

If you have enjoyed reading this post, please consider donating to RadATL. Venmo to @Chad-Radford-6 or click on the PayPal link below.