The 14th annual Beat Farmers Hootenanny, with Stevie Salas, Bill Davis, Pete Gordon, Joe Dyke, Ed Croft and Joey Harris & The Mentals/
Celebration, not gravitas, is what one usually expects to find at the Beat Farmers Hootenanny. But this weekend’s 14th annual Hootenanny edition at the Belly Up should be steeped in both when this pioneering San Diego roots-rock band takes the stage.
Sadly, only two of its original four core members are still alive: guitarist-singer Jerry Raney and bassist Rolle Love.
Front man Country Dick Montana (real name: Dan McClain), who sang and played drums, died from an aneurysm while performing with the band at a 1995 concert in Whistler, Canada. He was 40.
Guitarist-singer Buddy Blue (real name Bernard Siegel) died at his home in La Mesa after suffering a heart attack. He was 48.
Both will be honored with music and words at Saturday’s Hootenanny. So will Mojo Nixon, a close colleague and collaborator of the band who died last year from a cardiac event at the age of 66.
Mojo Nixon, rock ‘n’ roll wild man, Sirius XM radio host and former MTV mainstay, is dead at 66
And by extension, the concert will also honor Paul Kamanski, who wrote some of the Beat Farmers’ standout songs and died last year from sudden heart failure at the age of 68.
Award-winning San Diego singer-songwriter Paul Kamanski dies at 68
One of the most influential and beloved San Diego bands of the past 50 years, the Beat Farmers blend rock, county, rockabilly and various American roots-music styles with punk-rock inspired velocity and an infectious irreverence that saw the band perform Led Zeppelin’s thundering “Immigrant Song” on kazoos.
The group’s 1985 debut album, “Tales of the New West,” earned rave reviews and more acclaimed albums and multiple tours of the U.S., Canada and Europe followed. Saturday’s concert will feature an array of musical pals.
The lineup includes former Rod Stewart/Mick Jagger guitarist Stevie Salas, former Buddy Blue Band horn section mainstays Ed Croft and Joe “ Sweet Lips” Dyke, guitarist-singer Bill Davis of Dash Rip Rock, and former Nixon band keyboardist Pete ‘Wetdawg” Gordon.
The show will open a set by Joey Harris & The Mentals, whose leader and namesake replaced Blue in the Beat Farmers in 1986. Harris will also perform with the Beat Farmers, whose ace drummer, Joel Kmak, briefly preceded Montana in the band early on.
8 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 23. Belly Up, 143 South Cedros Ave., Solana Beach. $32.55 (must be 21 or older to attend). bellyup.com
The genre-leaping band Bela Fleck & The Flecktones is returning to San Diego for the first time in more than a decade for a Sunday concert at The Magnolia. (Gemhouse Media / Courtesy Belly Up)
Bela Fleck & The Flecktones
I was delighted and dazzled the first time I heard Bela Fleck & The Flecktones perform, back in 1991, at the Playboy Jazz Festival and again few months later at San Diego Street Scene.
The four-man band’s 1993 performance here at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay was similarly scintillating, as was its 2012 gig here at Anthology.
The quadruple-Grammy Award-winning group’s singular fusion of bluegrass, jazz, classical and funk sounded like nothing else in the early 1990s. That is still the case today for banjo master Fleck, bass great Victor Wooten, harmonica and keyboard marvel Howard Levy, and percussionist Roy “Future Man” Wooten, a wizard on the Drumitar (a guitar-synthesizer he converted into a touch-sensitive “drum set,” complete with cymbals, all of which he nimbly plays with his fingers).
After disbanding in 2012, the group reunited in 2016 and has since toured on a not quite annual basis. Why no area concert promoter has been savvy enough to present Fleck and his band here even once since 2012 is a mystery. But that should make their concert this weekend even more of a genre-blurring musical treat.
8 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 24. The Magnolia, Main Street, El Cajon. $71-$82. ticketmaster.com
Colombian vocal star Kali Uchis will perform this weekend at Pechanga Arena San Diego. (Drew A. Kelley)
Kali Uchis, with Thee Sacred Souls
One of the most alluring double-bills of the summer, this Sunday concert finds multilingual Colombian vocal star Kali Uchis and San Diego’s vintage sweet-soul champions Thee Sacred Souls pairing up for what will surely be a memorable evening.
Uchis, 31, is equally adept and authoritative whether performing reggaeton or boleros, cumbia or reggae, hip-hop or dance-pop, R&B or electronica.
Fresh from their memorable April performances on back-to-back weekends at the Coachella festival, Thee Sacred Souls are growing increasingly accomplished. On Oct. 3, the group will headline for the first time at SDSU’s Cal Coast Credit Union Amphitheatre. Their ongoing tour with Uchis should earn them more than a few new fans.
8 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 24, Pechanga Arena San Diego, 3500 Sports Arena Blvd., Midway District. $77-$567.19. axs.com