The Best Weekend of Tempe's Summer Is Also Its Loudest
After five weeks of the Marquee playing possum and the Yucca carrying the whole town on its back, Tempe's music calendar finally detonates all at once. The coming stretch — Thursday, Aug. 13 through Sunday, Aug. 16 — is the deepest four-day run of the summer, and it swings from tearful electro-punk farewell to spaghetti-Western punk to a full metal purge without pausing to breathe. Cancel your plans.
Thursday, Aug. 13 — Snailmate farewell, the Rebel Lounge. The Valley's most beloved electro-punk duo plays one of its last-ever hometown-circuit shows before decamping for Tirana, Albania. Doors 7, show 7:30, $26.29, with The Talking Hours and HoneyBunny. It's technically a Phoenix room, but it's a Tempe-scene occasion, and there won't be another one.
Saturday, Aug. 15 — Mike and the Molotovs, the Yucca Tap Room. The self-declared kings of "spaghetti punk" bring their swamp-punk, hardcore-honky-tonk satire back to the Southern Avenue dive that raised them. Twenty-one-plus, indoors, the coldest and funniest room in town on Saturday night.
Sunday, Aug. 16 — DevilDriver: Strike and Kill Tour, the Marquee Theatre. The heaviest booking of the Tempe summer, and a fitting cap to it. California groove-metal veterans DevilDriver bring their Strike and Kill Tour to the 1,500-cap barn north of the Mill Avenue Bridge, with Ov Sulfur opening. Show at 7. If your August has been short on catharsis, this is where you go to sweat it out under the AC with a thousand strangers in band shirts.
Zoom out and the weekend is a near-perfect cross-section of what Tempe music actually is when it's firing. You've got a DIY duo saying goodbye in a black box, a homegrown punk band throwing a party in a dive, and a national metal act filling the big room — three completely different scenes, three completely different crowds, all inside a single four-day window, all indoors because it's 110 outside and nobody's an idiot. This is the ecosystem working as designed: local roots, touring spectacle, and a small farewell that reminds everyone how fragile the whole thing is.
A few logistics, because summer punishes the unprepared. Every one of these rooms is air-conditioned, which is the only reason any of these shows exist in mid-August; dress for the venue, not the parking lot. Two of the three are 21-and-up, so bring ID. And bring cash — for merch at the Snailmate and Molotovs shows especially, where the tables are the difference between a band's rent and a band's breakup.
If you only make one, make it your temperament's choice: heart (Thursday), hometown pride (Saturday), or sheer volume (Sunday). If you make all three, you'll have seen more of the real Tempe scene in four days than most people catch in a season. The summer was slow for a reason — it was saving everything for this.
Sources: Turn it up. These are August's hottest concerts in Phoenix — Phoenix New Times; Why synth-punks Snailmate are leaving the desert for life in Europe — Phoenix New Times; DevilDriver: Strike and Kill Tour — Ticketmaster; Yucca Tap Room calendar — Songkick