This Weekend: A Beach-Music Legend on Main, and Two Nights of Tribute Thunder
The best and worst weekend of the summer is the one where everything happens at once. This is that weekend. Choose wisely.
Tonight — Music on Main, The Horseshoe (North Myrtle Beach), 6:30–8:30 p.m. Do not sleep on this one. The free Thursday series books Jim Quick & Coastline, one of the genuine anchors of the Carolina beach-music circuit, onto the open-air Main Street stage with the ocean behind them. This is the real repertoire — horn-driven, shuffle-heavy soul built for the shag — played by a band that gigs this coast for a living, and it costs nothing but a folding chair. If you've spent all summer meaning to finally watch a proper shag floor in motion, this is your night.
Fri, Aug 14 — House of Blues (Barefoot Landing). The Nashville Nights Band brings "The Ultimate 90's Country Experience" to the Music Hall — Garth-through-Shania singalong country for a room that will absolutely oblige. The Strand's flagship, aimed squarely at the crowd that wants to hear the ones they know.
Sat, Aug 15 — House of Blues. The big swing: a double tribute bill of Down Rodeo (Rage Against the Machine) and Stone Tribute Pilots (Stone Temple Pilots). Two very different flavors of '90s rock fury on the beach's best stage. Loud, cathartic, worth the ticket.
Any night — the reliable standbys. The Bowery keeps the Bounty Hunters and cheap drafts going in Alabama's old room. Twenty minutes south, the Murrells Inlet MarshWalk — Dead Dog Saloon and its boardwalk neighbors — offers the Strand's easiest free live-music crawl over the marsh. And Fat Harold's runs its nightly DJs on the O.D. for anyone who'd rather dance than watch.
The strategic play: go free and soulful tonight, pick your tribute flavor over the weekend, and let the MarshWalk mop up whatever energy's left. Six weeks of summer down, the whole coast still playing. Pace yourself — Labor Day's closer than it looks.
Sources: Music on Main, North Myrtle Beach; Jim Quick & Coastline — Beach Music Online; House of Blues Myrtle Beach — JamBase; House of Blues — Concertfix schedule