Slide Rules: Davy Knowles Kicks Off a Blues-Soaked Stretch at Moe's Alley
If you want to know what a music scene actually believes in, look at what its roadhouse books when nobody's forcing it to. Moe's Alley (1535 Commercial Way; 21+) spends its whole calendar making the case for blues, funk, and roots as living music rather than museum pieces, and the stretch beginning next week is the thesis statement.
The anchor arrives Wednesday, August 12: British-born, Chicago-schooled guitarist Davy Knowles, with the Alternative Zen Blues Trio. Knowles is one of those players who got the Clapton-and-Rory-Gallagher lineage into his hands young and never let go — a slide-and-string technician who can make a 200-cap room feel like a stadium and vice versa. Doors 7, show 8; $30 advance, $35 day-of. It's the kind of ticket that looks like a bargain about four songs in.
But one show doesn't make a case; a calendar does. The days around it show exactly how promiscuous Moe's is in the best way. Thursday, Aug 14, the room goes global with Afrolicious w/ Papiba & Friends, all Afrobeat and dance-floor sweat. Friday, Aug 15 is El Sol, a salsa and Latin dance night with a lesson at 8:30 for those of us who lead with our foreheads. Sunday, Aug 16 pivots to a matinee with The Blues Project (doors 3, show 4) — a Sunday-afternoon blues set being one of civilization's underrated pleasures.
And it keeps going. Later in the month the room hosts reggae with Samory I & The Wise Dem Band (Aug 20), a genuine local milestone as West Coast blues fixture Mighty Mike Schermer throws a 60th-birthday celebration (Aug 23), and a marquee closer with funk institution The Greyboy Allstars (Aug 29). Between them: Western Wednesday two-step nights, a burlesque-adjacent booking or two, and enough stylistic whiplash to keep a purist permanently annoyed.
That range is the point. Moe's isn't a blues club that occasionally books other things; it's a roots club with a working definition of "roots" broad enough to hold Delta slide guitar, Nigerian polyrhythm, Puerto Rican clave, and San Diego funk in a single week. In a region that can tilt precious about its jazz heritage, Moe's is the sweaty, unpretentious corrective — the place that remembers this music was made for dancing before it was made for sitting quietly.
A note for planners: it's a 21+ room, most nights run doors-at-7 with an early-ish show, and the Sunday matinees are your move if you have anything resembling a Monday. Bring cash for the merch table; road-dog bluesmen like Knowles make most of their living there, and buying the record is the closest thing this scene has to a sacrament.
Come Wednesday, let the man play the slide. Then come back Thursday, Friday, and Sunday, because the roadhouse is open and the roadhouse is right.
Sources: Moe's Alley Calendar; Moe's Alley — JamBase