Postmodern Jukebox brings its time machine to The Senate in March

Scott Bradlee's vintage-styled cover revue, which started as basement YouTube videos, has booked Columbia's Vista room for Saturday, March 20.

Picture a Miley Cyrus song played as a doo-wop ballad, or Guns N' Roses run through a New Orleans brass arrangement. That's the whole idea behind Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox, and it's coming to Columbia.

The group plays The Senate on Saturday, March 20, 2027, with the show starting at 8 p.m. It was announced Oct. 27, and tickets are on sale now through Ticketmaster. March is a long way off, but a Saturday-night show in a 1,200-capacity room is the kind of date people plan a dinner around, so it's worth deciding before the holidays eat your calendar.

Postmodern Jukebox started small. According to Wikipedia, Bradlee launched it in 2011 as a YouTube project, filming videos with college friends in his basement apartment in Astoria, Queens. The formula was simple and it stuck: take a contemporary hit and rebuild it in a vintage style, whether ragtime, swing, jazz or Motown-era soul.

The breakout was a retro cover of "We Can't Stop" that passed four million YouTube views and got the crew onto Good Morning America and NPR, per Bradlee's Wikipedia entry. More hits followed, including a "grandpa-style" version of "Thrift Shop" and a 2014 take on "All About That Bass," with Kate Davis singing it in Bradlee's living room after about three hours of practice. Bradlee later wrote a memoir, *Outside the Jukebox*, published in 2018.

What started as videos turned into a touring company. PMJ works as a revolving cast of singers, players and the occasional tap dancer around Bradlee's arrangements, so the lineup at a given show isn't always the one from your favorite video. The group spent 2026 on its The Future Is Vintage World Tour, which also took in Australia and New Zealand this summer. The Columbia date carries them into 2027.

A contemporary hit, rebuilt as if it were 1935.

The room suits the show. The Senate sits on Senate Street in the Vista and holds about 1,200, according to the Post and Courier's Free Times. Longtime Columbia showgoers will remember it as the Music Farm. Tin Roof renamed it The Senate in 2018, as the Free Times reported at the time. It's a big-club room rather than a seated theater, so you'll be closer to the band than you would be on most PMJ tour stops.

The genres on the listing say R&B/soul and jazz, which is close enough. Expect horns, a piano doing a lot of the heavy lifting, and songs you know arriving in a costume you don't. Half the fun is the beat or two it takes to recognize the tune.

If you've got someone in your life who loves old standards and someone else who only listens to pop, this is the rare show you can buy two tickets to without anyone getting dragged along.

Sources: Postmodern Jukebox - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Scott Bradlee - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox - The Future Is Vintage World Tour - Live Nation (livenation.com); Postmodern Jukebox Announces 'The Future Is Vintage' Australian and New Zealand Tour 2026 - The Note (thenote.com.au); The Senate - Post and Courier Free Times (postandcourier.com); Goodbye, Music Farm; hello, The Senate - Free Times (free-times.com); The Senate - Live Nation (livenation.com); Postmodern Jukebox at The Senate - Ticketmaster (ticketmaster.evyy.net)