Weekend spotlight: Reggae fest and a crowded calendar

Sting is back on the bay tonight for his Reggae Rise Up headlining appearance alongside the Jamaican artist Shaggy. It’s the former Police-man’s fourth time in the St. Pete/Tampa metro since 2017 (one with Billy Joel and two with The Florida Orchestra). So maybe it’s getting to be a habit with the guy.

The collaboration between Sting and Shaggy goes back a few years, and continues with the new single “Til A Mawnin.”

Reggae Rise Up, the annual multi-day, multi-band music and lifestyle festival, is today through Sunday in St. Petersburg’s Vinoy Park. Today: Gates open at 4 p.m. Performers include Lettuce, Iration and others. Sting and Shaggy go on at 8:30. Friday: Gates open at noon. Performers on two stages include Bumpin Uglies, Matisyahu, Stephen Marley and Slightly Stoopid.

Saturday: Gates open at noon. Performers on two stages include Pepper, Soja and Rebelution. Sunday: Gates open at noon. Performers on two stages include Hirie, The Movement and Dirty Heads.

For the complete four-day, hour-by-hour schedule, visit reggaeriseup.com. There you’ll also find tickets and information about food and craft vendors, afterparties etcetera.

Violinist Alexi Kenney performs with The Florida Orchestra this weekend. Photo: Facebook.

Where’s the orchestra?

Violinist Alexi Kenney guests with The Florida Orchestra for this weekend’s concerts, performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. The program also includes Ma Vlast by Bedřich Smetana, and Leoš Janacek’s Taras Bulba. Michael Francis conducts. Read Kurt Loft’s detailed notes on the music here.

Concerts are Friday, 8 p.m. at the Straz Center (Morsani Hall); Saturday, 8 p.m., Mahaffey Theater; Sunday, 7:30 p.m., Ruth Eckerd Hall. For tickets, click here.

Band or Brand?

Today’s episode of Band or Brand? turns the spotlight on several vintage musical acts scheduled to perform in the bay area over the weekend. We’ll lay out the undisputed facts of each case, and it’s up to you, the music fan, to decide whether these are the real deal (Band) or pretenders using the famous name (Brand). Consider this a sort of “Consumer Reports” for pop music: Are they expensive tribute bands? Take from it what you will.

Jefferson Starship plays the Capitol Theatre in Clearwater tonight. Founding guitarist and songwriter Paul Kantner is dead, as is Marty Balin, the singer and songwriter of “Miracles,” the band’s best-known tune. Grace Slick has long retired from the music business, and Mickey Thomas, who replaced Balin in the late 1970s, is still making the rounds with a band of ringers called Starship. It’s all a bunch of legalese – i.e. who owns the word “Jefferson” and who doesn’t – but the 2025 reality is that David Frieberg, who joined Kantner and Slick’s band Jefferson Airplane a few seconds before it morphed into Jefferson Starship, is the last man (or woman) standing. Find tickets here.

Foreigner (original members: 0) is at the BayCare Sound amphitheater, the largest concert venue in Pinellas County, Saturday. Yes, Foreigner was a great, hit-making rock ‘n’ roll band and yes, Foreigner was not so long ago inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But not a single person who’ll be onstage at the Sound was in Foreigner when “Cold As Ice” and “Hot Blooded” and “I Want to Know What Love Is” (or any of the others) were breaking hearts and tearing up the airwaves. As a bonus, Jacksonville’s .38 Special (“Hold on Loosely,” “If I’d Been the One,” “Rockin’ Into the Night”) is opening Saturday’s show. Guitarist Don Barnes, who wrote and sang all those songs back in the 1980s, is still out front of the band. So it really is as close to classic .38 Special as we’re likely to get. Find tickets here.

The Kingston Trio hung down their heads, Tom Dooley in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, sold a million or so records and helped usher in the great American folk music revival (no Kingston Trio, no Bob Dylan … you see how it goes). The threesome that performs Monday (March 17) at the Central Park Performing Arts Center in Largo has zero original members – they’re all long dead. No, these three guys bought the name (and the trademark) in 2017. Find tickets here.

On theater stages

Stageworks’ “When the Righteous Triumph” (with Kelli Vonshay and Mark Wildman) has its final performances Saturday and Sunday. Image: Noa Michele Photography.

Stageworks Theatre’s current production of Tampa playwright Mark Leib’s When the Righteous Triumph made the New York Times this week (check it out here). A dramatized take on the early ’60s Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-ins, a major salvo in the battle over civil rights, the play continues through Sunday in the Jaeb Theatre, at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets for the remaining shows (2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday) can be found here.

Tonight and Saturday at The Studio @620: A staged reading of Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf, directed by Fanni Green. Find tickets here.

Two debuts this week, both in Tampa: Martin McDonagh’s harrowing dark comedy The Pillowman at Jobsite Theater (read more here), and at LAB Theatre Project, Trust Me, a thriller by Paula Fell (find info and tickets here).

Saying goodbye in St. Pete: The Carey Crim comedy Morning After Grace, at the Off-Central, has performances tonight through Sunday afternoon, and then it’s gone (details are here); it’s the same with the freeFall Theatre production of the Stephen Sondheim musical Road Show (click here).

Paula Fell’s “Trust Me” is entering its first weekend at LAB Theatre Project. The playwright will join the cast and creatives for a talkback following Friday’s performance. Photo provided.

The (rest of the) concert calendar

Soul/blues singer and guitarist Gary Clark Jr. is in concert tonight at the Seminole Hard Rock Event Center. Tickets.

Friday at Jannus Live: Jam band fave moe. Tickets are here.

Country and gospel perennial Larry Gatlin is in concert Friday at Central Park Performing Arts Center. Find tickets at this link.

Diana Ross appears Sunday (7:30 p.m.) at the BayCare Sound amphitheater. Find tickets at this link.

This week’s concerts at the Busch Gardens Tampa Bay Food & Wine Festival: Sister Hazel, Friday; and Flo Rida, Saturday. All info can be found here.

Big yuks

Friday (shows at 7 and 9:30 p.m.) at the Mahaffey Theater: Standup comedians Kam Patterson, Ari Matti, David Lucas and David Jolly (Killers of Kill Tony, from the popular Kill Tony podcast out of Austin, Texas). All tickets are here.

New York standup Chris Distefano plays the Tampa Theatre Friday. His popular podcasts include Chrissy Chaos, Hey Babe!, History Hyenas and Teach Me Daddy. Distefano sold out Radio City Music Hall and the Theater at Madison Square Garden on consecutive nights in 2023, and his second Netflix special is expected to drop soon. Tickets.

Larry the Cable Guy returns to git R done Saturday at the Capitol Theatre. Find tickets here.

Greg Jackson brings his popular History That Doesn’t Suck podcast to the Capitol Theatre Sunday. Jackson, who holds a PhD in history, tells the story of “The Unlikely Union” — the first 100 years of American history – in 100 minutes. However, his website promises, “this ain’t no lecture. It’s everything you love about the podcast plus lights, video, live musicians, and Professor Jackson history-telling live!” So there you go. Tickets are available at this link.

Your Weekend Spotlight appears every Thursday in the Catalyst’s CREATE section. 

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