The Guest List for Lou Barlow's 60th Reads Like a Valley Indie Yearbook

We told you three weeks ago the guest list wouldn't be modest. Reader, it is absurd.

On Friday, Aug. 7 (doors 6, show 7, all ages), the Shea Theater in Turners Falls hosts "Lou Barlow's 60th Birthday and Variety Show," and the bill the venue has posted is less a concert than a full-scale roast-and-tribute of the American underground — staged, fittingly, in the valley that made Barlow.

Start with the headline guest: Black Francis of the Pixies, whose own band's quiet-loud DNA runs parallel to everything Barlow ever built. Add Adam Green of the Moldy Peaches, antifolk troubadour Jeffrey Lewis, and Bobby Bare Jr. Then the deep-catalog love letters: Sick of Fun playing a set as a Deep Wound tribute — honoring the Westfield-area hardcore band a teenage Barlow started with J Mascis — and Ladybugs as a tribute to the late Sebadoh co-founder Eric Gaffney. Family's in it too, with Aleksa Atkinson and Izzy Barlow on the bill. Holding the whole thing together: cosmic drone collective Sunburned Hand of the Man as house band, with Mark Perretta as master of ceremonies.

Read that lineup twice and the geography snaps into focus. Deep Wound, Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, the Pixies' fellow-traveler energy — a huge slice of what the wider world calls "'80s and '90s indie" was, in practice, kids from around here with cheap gear and college-radio shows. Aug. 7 gathers a startling number of them onto one small-town stage to sing happy birthday to the guy who turned getting fired from Dinosaur Jr. into an entire genre.

Sixty candles, one Deep Wound reunion-by-proxy, a Pixie on backup. If the Valley's indie lineage ever needed a single-night monument, this is it. Get there for doors — a variety show this stacked does not run short.

Sources: Shea Presents: Lou Barlow's 60th Birthday and Variety Show; Tour news: Lou Barlow's 60th Birthday Party (BrooklynVegan)