This Weekend: Metalcore, Steve Earle, and a Rage-Meets-Blink Tribute
Mid-August in St. Louis usually means the calendar goes soft. Not this weekend. From August 14 through 16, the city's rooms are stacked with everything from crushing metalcore to a folk legend with a half-century of songs — plus one gloriously ridiculous tribute night. Here's where to point yourself.
The Sovereign is doing the heavy lifting, in more ways than one. Friday, August 15, it hosts Haste the Day's Midwest Metalcore Tour with Still Remains — a bill built to test whether that century-old printing plant's walls can take a breakdown. Then Saturday, August 16, the room pivots hard into reverence for Steve Earle's "51 Years of Songs & Stories," with Stacey Earle. Fifty-one years is not a typo; it's a mandate. Expect the Hardcore Troubadour to earn every one of those years, one story at a time, in a listening-friendly room that suits the material.
Old Rock House opens the weekend Thursday, August 14, with Drivin' N Cryin' — the Atlanta lifers who never met a genre they couldn't bend, and who remain one of the best live bar-band bargains in America. On Friday, August 15, the downtown room turns local with Wisemary headlining, backed by The Hangovers and Buck Fever. It's the kind of hometown triple bill that reminds you Old Rock House has always kept the grit of the riverfront room it's named for.
Off Broadway starts early and finishes loud. On Wednesday, August 13 — one day before our window, but worth flagging — the Lemp Avenue garage hosts Static Dress with Blistered Spirit and Direct Measure. The one you cannot get into is Friday's Slings & Arrows record release with Soft Crisis and Hopeful Utopian on August 15: it's already sold out, which is exactly the kind of hometown-record-release story a scene should be proud of. If you've got a ticket, you're set. If you don't, let it be a lesson about sleeping on local bands.
Delmar Hall wins the weekend's best idea award. On Friday, August 15, the room throws Bags Against the Machine, a tribute night splitting the difference between Rage Against the Machine and Blink-182. On paper it makes no sense; in a sweaty club at 11 p.m. it makes perfect sense. Bring your rage and your fart jokes in equal measure.
The Pageant goes for spectacle. Thursday, August 14, the flagship hosts BOSCO in "The Marvelous Miss Gender" — a show built for the room's famous sightlines, where the whole point is that nobody stands more than 70 feet from whatever's about to happen on that stage. Of everything this weekend, it's the one most likely to be talked about for reasons that have nothing to do with the setlist.
The quick math. Thursday is a coin flip between Drivin' N Cryin's roadhouse chug at Old Rock House and BOSCO's spectacle at the Pageant. Friday is the logjam — metalcore at The Sovereign, a sold-out local blowout at Off Broadway, a hometown bill at Old Rock House, and absurdist tribute chaos at Delmar Hall, all fighting for the same hours. Saturday belongs, quietly and completely, to Steve Earle.
That's the beauty of a St. Louis weekend when it's firing: you don't get to see everything, and choosing hurts. Pick your room, commit, and let the FOMO make you a better fan next weekend. See you in the crowd.
Sources: Old Rock House; Off Broadway; The Pageant