Weekend forecast: Front 242, Laura Jane Grace, Gilby Clarke

Gilby Clarke. Publicity photo.

The 40-years-young industrial/EBM band from Belgium known as Front 242 recently announced that its current concert tour will be its last. That means that Friday’s Jannus Live show will likely be the final time we’ll experience programmer Daniel Bressanutti, lead vocalist Jean-Luc de Meyer and the other avant-garde industrialists in this corner of the world. Tickets are here.

Laura Jane Grace, of the band Against Me!, has a solo show Saturday at the Floridian Social. We spoke with her in 2023, prior to her first Floridian performance. Sunday tickets are here.

Guitarist Gilby Clarke, who replaced Izzy Stradlin in the original Guns ‘N Roses, brings his own band to OC Roadhouse, 10575 49th Street N. in Pinellas Park, Sunday. He also played with Slash’s Snakepit, Heart and Rock Star Supernova. Standing Room admission to the 5 p.m. show is free; VIP seats, $40, are available here. Gates open at 4.

Other concerts 

Texan Cody Jinks, the raised-on-metal country music “outlaw” singer (Lifers, After the Fire, The Wanting) has a show Saturday at Tampa’s Yuengling Center, with Jake Worthington opening. Tickets.

Another country hitmaker, Phil Vassar (“In a Real Love,” “Last Day of My Life”) is onstage Friday at the Suncoast Broadway Dinner Theatre in Hudson. Find tickets here.

Tampa’s eight-piece Hot Tonic Orchestra takes a step away from jazz and swing to perform the music of Carlos Santana, Friday at the Palladium Theater’s Side Door Cabaret. Band co-founder Josh Hindmarsh is the guitarist with the chops. Tickets are here.

Saturday night finds St. Petersburg’s bossa nova queen Daniela Soledade onstage at Hough Hall (the Palladium Theater mainstage) with Brazilian Dream. It’s a dream band, too, with Patrick Bettison, Joe Porter, Carl Amundson, Claudio Infante and Nate Najar. Tickets are here.

Puerto Rican reggaeton legend Don Omar (King of Kings; iDon) visits Amalie Arena Friday. Tickets.

Canada’s exacting (ie to-the-note) Classic Albums Live group returns to Ruth Eckerd Hall Friday to bang out every track from the first Led Zeppelin album. Tickets.

Saturday at The Studio@620, there’s a “Summertime Slam” dance party, with dance and hip hop music from the 1990s and ‘00s. Costumes are encouraged. Must be 21 or over; tickets are here.

Friday on our Arts Alive! podcast, Studio@620 artistic executive director Erica Sutherlin outlines her plans for the future, and reveals the upcoming season of in-house productions.

Legendary Ultravox singer/songwriter Midge Ure is on a brief, solo American tour (he’s a Scot, with a huge following in Europe), and he’ll be at Bayboro Brewing Tuesday (that’s Sept. 10. Find tickets for Ure’s “Band in a Box” show here.

What’s opera, Doc

Opera Tampa is back, under the baton of Robin Stamper, as always. Spanish Nights, the program the organization is presenting Friday (8 p.m.) and Sunday (2 p.m.) at the Straz Center’s Jaeb Theatre, celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month. Find tickets here.

The comedy “POTUS” is in its inaugural weekend at Jobsite Theater. Image: Stage Photography of Tampa.

On theater stages

Sunday’s matinee will be the final performance of Doug DaVita’s Fable at freeFall Theatre. It is, of course, a semi-fictionalized account of the creation of the Broadway musical Gypsy, with its centerpiece a tug-of-war between sisters Gypsy Rose Lee and June Havoc. Find showtimes and tickets here.

New at the Off-Central, St. Petersburg: The searing drama Blackbird.

New at LAB Theatre Project: The history-based psychological drama PER.

New at Jobsite Theater: The White House farce POTUS.

Here’s the Catalyst preview of all three new productions.

Four panelists from National Public Radio’s witty weekly quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me will bring the “live” version of the program to the Tampa Theatre Saturday. The “infiltered” comedians are Negin Farsad, Josh Gondelman, and Dulcé Sloan. The host is Alonzo Bodden. Tickets.

Your weekend arts forecast appears every Thursday in the Catalyst. 

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