This Week's Best Concerts

From the “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die” Dept: Rosanna Pansino, host of the food-focused “Nerdy Nummies” YouTube channel and the podcast “Rodiculous,” has shared online that she has been growing a marijuana plant out of soil mixed with her late father’s ashes. Wonder what that particular strain is called – Dank Dad?

Characterized as “quite a little rebel,” Mr. Pansino – aka “Poppa Pizza,” his online moniker – stated as his dying wish that his daughter memorialize him in an herbal fashion, and she has successfully discharged this responsibility, firing up a fatty on-camera, taking a major hit, and then dissolving in a coughing fit. Rosanna – maybe more fertilizer and less dad on the next grow?

Ticket Alert

Acoustic guitar whiz Leo Kottke will play at the Heights Theater on Sunday, April 27. Tickets are on sale now, and this guy doesn’t tour all that often, so don’t miss out. It will be an evening of guitar virtuosity and some funny as hell raps between songs. And if you are not familiar with Kottke, check out this performance of “Vaseline Machine Gun.”

It appears that Ryan Adams is attempting to manage a career resurrection after some “Me Too” allegations a few years ago. He will be touring next year to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his Heartbreaker album, with a show set for Saturday, May 24, at the Heights Theater, and tickets are on sale now.

Looking way ahead, the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Summer Anthem” tour will stop at the Smart Financial Centre on Thursday, July 17, with Dashboard Confessional opening. There are a number of VIP packages available, but the primo deal includes a Taylor acoustic guitar that will be played onstage by John Rzeznik the night of the show. Presales are up now, with the general sale set for Friday.

Attention OG punk rockers: The Damned will perform on Tuesday, May 20, at the House of Blues. It is worth noting that these guys managed to get thrown off of a UK tour with the Sex Pistols in 1976. How’s that for cred? Tickets go on official sale Friday, with the presales active now.

Concerts This Week

Country queen Kacey Musgraves will perform at Toyota Center on Thursday as part of a tour supporting her album Deeper Well. The video for the title song is worth checking out, as it was shot in a desolate part of Iceland that has a Hobbit-esque vibe about it. In the video, Musgraves walks along the edge of some mountains before her huge head appears, peering at us from among a bunch of boulders. Extra points for the song’s reference to a homemade gravity bong, a device which doesn’t often factor in country music lyrics.

God knows that there have been a bunch of bands with weird names. Strawberry Alarm Clock. Chocolate Watch Band. Butthole Surfers. Hoobastank. Then there’s Better Than Ezra. The Crescent City quartet will play at the House of Blues on Thursday, with a bunch of new tunes from its latest release, Super Magick. So what about Ezra? Where did that come from? ‘Cause Knowledge is Power: The name Better Than Ezra allegedly has a literary origin, derived from a passage in Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, when the narrator observes that a vexing sound is “no worse than other noises, certainly better than Ezra learning to play the bassoon.”

When it comes to revered singer-songwriters, John Hiatt is at the head of the pack, and the legend is scheduled to play on Friday at the House of Blues. While it may have been kind of cool to watch Pete Townshend pulverize a Gibson SG, within each guitar player who watched the spectacle was a slight (or not-so-slight) wince. Hence the partially universal appeal of Hiatt’s song “Perfectly Good Guitar.” Which is certainly not to slight “Thing Called Love,” “Memphis in the Meantime” or “Riding with the King.”

British musician Joanne Shaw Taylor has, as they say, mad skills on the guitar, but she’s more than just another blues shredder, with strong vocals and a great batch of original songs, as showcased on her latest release, Heavy Soul. Catch her act on Saturday at the Heights Theater.

And just prior to deadline, it was announced that Jim Lauderdale’s engagement on Thursday at the Continental Club has been postponed to Thursday, May 15. Yes, that’s a while. No specific reason was given for the delay, aside from “unforeseen circumstances.” It will be a full-band show, with Lauderdale backed by The Game Changers.