I heard about it a few weeks ago, but it's one of those things that starts to really suck now that the show is only a couple days away and reality sets in. While I'm sure the collective Sactown music community wishes nothing but the best to Caitlin and Jon Gutenberger on their imminent relocation to L.A., the absence of their band Two Sheds is sure to make that same community shed (zing!) a few tears. Two Sheds' farewell show goes down Saturday night at 8:30 p.m. at Luigi's Fungarden, 1050 K St. (MARRS Building), with a $7 door charge. San Francisco electro-country act Birds and Batteries and Dana Gumbier open the show. This one is sure to draw a huge crop of local music fans, so get the

Well played, Sacramento. Was it the great weather? Was it the fact that it was Tuesday? Was it just that Sac just doesn't really know Delta Spirit (yet)? Was it that trainwreck of a botched tribute/preview combo that this reporter attempted to pen last week? Whatever the factors, Ace of Spades was feeling pretty sparse in the early goings of Tuesday night's Delta Spirit gig, even as opening act Waters was wrapping up their set. It had that vacuous "should have been at Harlow's" venue feeling, like you were for some reason using a punch bowl to scramble two eggs. Folks were out all about town basking in one of our first legit summer evenings, but it didn't seem like anyone was paying min

Three words: Just. Plain. Filthy. Gritty, guttural, bluesy, primal, loud, and sleazily beautiful, the Black Keys are a bullet train straight backward to the roots of rock and roll – but it’s hard to contend that they are in any way a benchmark of where rock and roll is right now. To examine some of the top grossing arena rock acts of the day (Foo Fighters, Springsteen, DMB, U2, Coldplay, and I must begrudgingly include Nickelback), rock and roll played the way the Keys play it just isn’t the type of blissful sludge that you would expect could usher in such a large and raucous crowd to a venue the size of Power Balance Pavilion. What Dan Auerbach, Patrick Carney and friends proved on Cin

Love 'em, hate 'em, or if they were just "the party jam" at some point in your life, it's impossible to imagine anyone born after 1975 (or earlier?) that didn't have at least some personal connection to the Beastie Boys. That is why Friday's news of the passing of founding member Adam "MCA" Yauch after a three year battle with cancer seemed to cast a cloud on May the Fourth for so many with memories devoted to the boys from Brooklyn. Just a few local Sactown names to Facebook their morning mourning included comedian Keith Lowell Jensen (who also noted that 93.7 was thumping "Brass Monkey" around 11:30 a.m.), Abstract Entertainment's Brian McKenna (who reminisced about a show with the Bea

With Bay Area promotions juggernaut Another Planet Entertainment having already brought Wilco to the Sacramento area, and with the Shins, Florence + the Machine and the Black Keys on the books in the coming weeks, it seemed that the powers-that-be were finally giving some much deserved love to the Sacramento concert market. But we never could have imagined (or hoped for) anything like this. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source familiar with APE has informed the Sacramento Press that the promotions firm, which handles all the booking for San Francisco's nationally renowned Outside Lands Festival, is considering launching a similar music festival in Sacramento in the summer of 2013

The Sacramento Press has approximately 2,000 contributors signed up on our site to voluntarily write articles. Without them, we wouldn’t exist. Among this group, there is a small core of writers and photographers whom we work closely with on a regular basis. These contributors go above and beyond by taking assignments from us, having their articles copy edited and making us very proud as they represent us in the community. To just tell you how great they are isn’t enough. So we’ll show you a tiny snippet of why we love them. Through next week, we will continue rolling out our “community contributor spotlight” video series featuring six of our top community contributors. Without further

It is safe to write about happenings in Roseville yet? Thanks to Shalini Chandra, we've already established on Sac Press that "not everyone in Roseville wears Ed Hardy" in an op-ed from August of last year. However, there appeared to be quite a bit of disagreement and dissention sprinkled in with those 146 (?!) comments regarding her take on the citizens of the city of Roseville, as well as the overall aim of the article itself. So, is what Shalini wrote true? How about some photographic evidence... "Around the Clock: A photojournalism exhibit of one 24 hour day in Roseville" is a collection of photographs taken by both Roseville residents and photographers from the Roseville Press Trib

Thank you, Joel Nathaniel Cummins, for hitting the nail on the head. “Thanks for making us feel like it’s South Bend back in about 2000,” Umphrey’s McGee’s keyboard player proclaimed when the band stepped back on stage for the evening’s encore, a funky take on “A Fifth of Beethoven.” In a room filled with predominantly devout followers of the road raging jam band, there was a palpable buzz throughout Harlow’s on Sunday evening not only about the band’s first ever visit to Sacramento, but about seeing them in such a small joint. Like this reporter, many folks had caught their show the night before at Oakland’s sprawling Fox Theatre. Both shows were stellar examples of this band’s unique

If you’re really bored (or a total setlist nerd who likes to look for cheeky cover songs), take a moment to peruse the meticulously curated archives of Umphrey’s McGee touring history. With a catalog of shows that numbers in the triple digits each year since 2000, you’ll find one California city that’s noticeably absent from any year in their history. Any guesses? Well, you’re not reading a news site called the Stockton Press right now, are you? They’ve tap danced around us before (San Francisco, Truckee, Tahoe, Chico, Santa Cruz), but Sunday’s show at Harlow’s will indeed be the increasingly popular jam jockeys’ first show in Sactown. Not only that, but if you look even closer at that t

It was a very tough decision to choose the winners of The Sacramento Press 2012 Journalism Open. Fifty-three community contributors shared 93 stories about the greater Sacramento area and the quality of submissions this year really impressed the judges. Thank you to all of you who made this year’s Journalism Open a success. The Sacramento Press judges were Casey Kirk, Director of Community Outreach, Brandon Darnell, Copy Editor and Reporter, and Colleen Belcher, Editor-in-Chief. Each story was judged on newsworthiness, research and sources, spelling and grammar and how interesting they were. Each winner could only win one prize. Click here to read the complete judging criteria. First