Concerts with Peter Petty, Jackie Greene and more light up Sacramento’s holiday season | The Sacramento Beat
Like giving the present under the tree a shake and trying to guess what’s in it, a midtown Sacramento holiday season favorite is trying to guess just where showstopper Peter Petty will be hosting his annual Hepcat’s Holla’Daze Swingin’ Yuletide Revue this year.
Petty and his 12-piece “Mercenaries of Merry” jazz orchestra have hopscotched throughout the capital region with this ebullient soiree, returning to the Sofia in revue’s ninth year. Loaded with madcap jazz, burlesque, drag and more than a few martinis (or a “peterpettytini,” a Petty signature firewater they’ll have at the bar), the holiday smorgasbord features a number of familiar faces as guest performers. Katie Knipp, Dana Moret, Coco Lamarr, Geoffrey Miller, Omari Tau, multi-instrumentalists Richie Lawrence and Robert Armstrong, drag queen A La Mode, burlesque performers Mone’t Ha-Sidi, Jean Heart and Rebel Rose and many more are all on deck for a humdinger that, well, is probably best just for the grown-ups. (7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 21. $50. bstreettheatre.org).
There remain a few tickets left for Pink Martini’s “Holiday Spectacular,” which also marks the seminal classical/jazz crossover group’s 30th anniversary tour. Piercing songstress China Forbes has been the featured pipes of the group for decades, but eye-opening was the collaboration the group released earlier this year: a take on the 1947 single “I Told Ya I Love Ya, Now Get Out,” with vocals from American bombshell Mamie Van Doren, who celebrated her 93rd birthday earlier this year (7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 4, at Mondavi Center, UC Davis. mondaviarts.org)
The Chicago flavor is pouring so thick out of Nick Moss Band’s 2023 record “Get Your Back Into It,” you may as well just top it with giardiniera and serve it au jus (I start watching “The Bear” if that lost you). Flanked by Dennis Gruenling on the harp, Moss nabbed 2024 “Band of the Year” Blues Music Awards hardware for his Windy Cindy-rooted blues barrage, and the Sacramento Blues Society nabbed him for this year’s annual holiday gala (7 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 8, at Harlow’s. $38.25. harlows.com).
We’ll go out on a limb and guess that local garage rock royalty Th’ Losin’ Streaks could trace a fair amount of influence back to Atlanta legends the Woggles. Slap the two of them together on one bill, and it figures to be a relentless rock show. From a pilot light lit 30 years ago, that effervescent garage/surf/rockabilly/soul still smolders white hot on the Woggles’ stinging new release, 2024’s expeditions romp “Time Has Come” (8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 11, at the Torch Club. torchclub.net)
Sultan of the refuse pile of rock ‘n’ roll, Jon Spencer is the quintessential reclaimer. Nothing thrown on the scrap heap would go unnoticed or unloved by the gritty axe slinger — his primal-scream brand of alternative blues rock could feel anthemic to every sordid saloon on the planet, but it’s as much the hymn of the beer bottle that shattered on the floor as of the bar itself. With previous projects like Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Pussy Galore and Heavy Trash now defunct, Spencer is recording and touring under his own moniker, having coughed up the tumbling nine-track throat punch of an LP “Sick of Being Sick” earlier this year. Local fireballers the Snares open (8 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 15, at Harlow’s. $25.65. harlows.com).
August saw the release of the zippy “Smoke & Fiction,” the ninth and purportedly final album from seminal punk pioneers X — recorded with the original lineup of torchbearers Exene Cervenka, John Doe, Billy Zoom and DJ Bonebrake. Befitting an act of their longevity, it’s slightly more polished than the sweat-drenched early ’80s blues-tingled club punk that catapulted the group to the immortality it now enjoys. If this truly is the final wax they ever press, it offers a welcoming and vibrant capstone to a legendary career. The original lineup remains at the helm for X’s “Putting the X Back in Xmas” tour (With Dead Rock West. 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 18, at Goldfield Roseville, 238 Vernon St. $35. goldfieldtradingpost.com).
The thinner-blooded of the world may shun me for it, but I find drinking beer outside in cold weather to be one of life’s finer experiences — there’s plenty of room in my flock for those who agree. The good folks at the Barn get it; they’re wrapping up their 2024 with “Brrr at the Barn: A Winter Music Experience,” with heat courtesy of a quintet of electronic music performers: Yotto, Marsh, Shingo Nakamura, Massane, and Cassie Vega (4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 29. instagram.com/drakesthebarn).
Wouldn’t really be New Year’s Eve without Jackie Greene getting spicy on K Street, now would it? Whether you’re willing to accept it (not sure I am), his eponymous debut “Gone Wanderin’” was released 22 years ago — a record that still somehow feels to locals like it bears a “Property of Sacramento, California” stamp on the cover, emblazoned across that photo of the wiry-haired wunderkind. Since then, he’s wandered around with his band and as a member of the Black Crowes and the dearly departed Phil Lesh & Friends, but rarely has any notable chunk of time passed when he hasn’t sauntered back home (10 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 31, at the Crest Theatre. crestsacramento.com).