OKLAHOMA CITY – The touring market is about to explode across OKC.
While the summer season saw a handful of notable touring acts stopping over in the Metro, the next couple months are set for a surprisingly overloaded concert slate featuring a whole host of iconic artists.
Throughout September, fans can catch everything from emotional indie to atmospheric metal to college-rock heroes, pop-rock progenitors, and some hip-hop legends who’re already contending for Album of the Year.
Why is OKC suddenly bracing for a barrage of outstanding tours and concerts, especially at a time when industry insiders keep trying to convince us that touring is becoming unsustainable and unnecessary?
I don’t know. Maybe everyone was just waiting for the heat to die down.
Clipse – The Criterion – September 3rd
Longtime underground rap royals Clipse burst back to life this summer with their first album in over fifteen years – July’s “Let God Sort Em Out” – and it’s already generating buzz for a lot of listeners’ Album of the Year, and maybe of the decade.
So when brothers Malice and Pusha T blast through The Criterion this week, they’ll be coming as reigning champs and carrying a level of power and respect that they’ve been building toward for decades with their creatively blunt, ground-level lyricism and East Coast intensity.
And after dropping a brand new, can’t-miss track with JID over the weekend, Clipse are showing even more love to the Atlanta scene by bringing EarthGang along when they crash the Criterion gates.
For tickets and more information, visit criterionokc.com.
Pixies – Zoo Amphitheater – September 4th
Very likely one of the most important bands in the development of all modern indie rock without ever really getting their due in their heyday, the immortal Pixies have been on overdrive for the past decade-plus, with five albums, loads of touring, and some recent shake-ups.
Does any of their recent output come close to capturing the outsider weirdness, anti-mainstream coolness, and pop-rock perfection of their early classics?
Well, no. But they still sound great, fun, and surprisingly tight for how precarious and loose their style is, and you can pretty well guarantee you’ll have a blast singing along to all of those untouchable, legendary tracks of old.
For tickets and more information, visit zooamp.com.
Lucy Dacus – The Criterion – September 13th
As the post-pandemic music world was still establishing itself and new trends and sounds were taking their place at the top of indie charts and hearts in early 2022, Lucy Dacus took the stage at the Tower Theatre to one of the very first sold-out crowds since COVID.
She was singing while lying down on a couch the whole time in order to nurse a badly injured back, and audiences still hailed it as one of the concerts of the year for her passion, commitment, and trademark naked vulnerability.
When she then rejoined Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker the next year to drop the first full record as boygenius, the internet basically exploded and catapulted Dacus into the stratosphere.
Well, she’s coming back around for her first solo gig in OKC since that fateful, sold-out Tower show, and this time she’s rightfully taking the even bigger Criterion stage on the back of her cinematically romantic “Forever is a Feeling.”
Will she once again blow the roof of OKC and see that same level of praise even if she’s standing fully upright? It’s tough to say, at least in part because the songs on “Forever” are decidedly more mature and arguably more subdued.
But while Dacus might be less focused on blowing off roofs, she’s as adept as ever at tugging on heartstrings.
For tickets and more information, visit criterionokc.com.
Toad the Wet Sprocket – The Jones Assembly – September 15th
One of the most underrated acts of 90s rock radio (and one that still deserves way more acclaim and attention than they’ve ever received,) Toad the Wet Sprocket are hitting the Jones to soft-rock your face off.
The absurdly-named prime purveyors of heart-on-sleeve college-rock are riding the same wave of renewed respect for earnest 90s rocking that brought acts like Gin Blossoms and Soul Asylum through town recently and that’s propelling Bush through KATTFest next week.
But what’s always set the Wet Sprocket boys apart from their college radio contemporaries was a unique and welcome combo of evocative, literary lyricism, choral harmonies, and an oddly Southern chime that pulled more from R.E.M. than from anything out of Seattle.
Best of all, there was always a kind of considered maturity in even their early songs that have allowed them to age more gracefully than some other acts that are still singing teenage firebrand anthems in their 50s.
For tickets and more information, visit thejonesassembly.com.
Cloakroom – Resonant Head – September 19th
One of the more enigmatic and hard-to-pin acts in recent hard rock, Cloakroom have carved out a sound for themselves somewhere between grunge, shoegaze, post-rock, and full-on metal.
Cloakroom live in the slow, even crushing downtuned riffs of doom, but with a grooving edge, spacey, floating vocals and lyrics equally cryptic and clever. They’re almost impossible to easily define, and that’s what’s made them one of the most intriguing bands in American metal for the last decade.
The one thing that you can be sure of, though, is that they’ll be heavy, and they’ll be loud, especially when joined by heavy hitters Glare, Jivebomb, and Destiny Bond on OKC’s most colorful and compelling stage at Resonant Head.
For tickets and more information, visit resonanthead.com.
The Sword – Beer City Music Hall – September 27th / Deafheaven – Beer City Music Hall – September 28th
That’s right, Beer City is going all-in on high-volume, heavy-atmosphere metal with back-to-back nights for the headbanging contingent.
Saturday the 27th sees prog-tinged psych-riffers The Sword celebrating the 15th anniversary of their modern metal underground landmark concept album “Warp Riders.”
Then the very next night, the genre-straddling Deafheaven are storming the Beer City stage and blowing minds and eardrums with their largely singular sound melding seething, suffocating walls of effects-drenched metal guitars and screaming with moments of ethereal synths and thick atmospherics.
It’s enough to keep the rafters ringing all the way into October.
For tickets and more information, visit beercitymusichall.com.
You can find out about local music and performance happenings in the OKC metro weekly in this music column by Brett Fieldcamp. | Brought to you by True Sky Credit Union.
Brett Fieldcamp is our Arts and Entertainment Editor. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for 15+ years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
