New Wave Nostalgia, a Cat-Themed Showcase and 813 Day: Your Mid-August in the Rooms
The dog days are supposed to be dead days for live music. Somebody forgot to tell Tampa Bay. The stretch from August 6 through 13 is stacked with the kind of programming that makes this region quietly one of the better small-club towns in the Southeast. Here's where to be.
The George, album release — Thursday, August 6, The Orpheum. We start local and loud. The George headline an album-release blowout at the Orpheum with a genuinely deep Bay-area bill: The Pleasantries, The Tilt, Fly Trap and Kingsley III. Album-release nights are the scene's love language, and this one's a five-band argument for Tampa's rock underground. (Same night, if you want it outdoors and free, Rock The Park brings The Band Solstice to Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park.)
Grit & Rumble launch feat. Kitty Kitty Meow Meow — Friday, August 8, Suite E Studios. St. Pete's Warehouse Arts District hosts the launch of Grit & Rumble, a night spotlighting femme, queer and BIPOC bands, headlined by the excellently named Kitty Kitty Meow Meow with Cozy In The Black, Hovercar and Julep. This is what a scene investing in itself looks like — new platforms for the artists the mainstream circuit too often overlooks.
Totally Tubular Festival — Wednesday, August 12, Ferg's Concert Pavilion. The nostalgia play of the season, and a good one: Thomas Dolby & The Lost Toy People headline a genuine new-wave package tour alongside A Flock of Seagulls, The Motels and more, landing at Ferg's outdoor pavilion in St. Pete. "She Blinded Me With Science" and "I Ran (So Far Away)" under the Florida sky — bring your synth-pop parents; they've earned it.
813 Day — Thursday, August 13, Skatepark of Tampa. Tampa celebrates its own area code the only correct way: a hometown hardcore and hip-hop throwdown at the legendary Skatepark of Tampa, with Exit Strategy, Actions Speak Louder, Outworld and more. If you want to understand the actual, unglamorous engine of Tampa's DIY scene, this is your field trip.
A few more for the completists: electro-funk pioneer Egyptian Lover brings the 808 to Ybor's Zodiac on Friday the 7th; Grateful Dead tribute Uncle John's Band plays Skipper's the same night for the Deadheads who can't wait for the next Dead Set Florida gig; and on Wednesday the 12th, Daddy Kool Records downtown hosts a Phoebe Bridgers listening party for the record-shop faithful. Roots-rock lifer Chuck Prophet closes the window at Skipper's on the 13th.
The theme, if you're looking for one: range. In eight days you can catch a local album release, a queer-and-BIPOC showcase, a legit '80s reunion tour, an area-code hardcore blowout, an 808 legend and a Deadhead sing-along — all in independent Tampa Bay rooms, most for less than the price of parking at an arena. That's not a coincidence; it's the whole case for this scene. The big tours come and go through the amphitheater and the arena. The identity of a music town lives in weeks exactly like this one.
Crowbar's gone, and we'll feel that absence for a while. But look at this calendar. The Orpheum, Suite E, Ferg's, the skatepark, Skipper's, Daddy Kool — the rooms are still here, still booking, still betting on local. Reward them. Pick two nights, at minimum. Bring a friend to at least one. The scene doesn't run on nostalgia; it runs on turnout.
Sources: Tampa Bay's best live music happening August 6-13 — Creative Loafing Tampa; Tampa Bay's best live music happening July 30-August 6 — Creative Loafing Tampa