8/31: Artvoice Pick: Light the Lakes

Seven towns across Chautauqua County will be holding what they hope to be “the largest collective fireworks display in North America”—a spectacle that will be visible from space during Labor Day weekend. The fireworks show will be held Sunday, August 31 at 10pm and will cover a 20-mile stretch along the shores of Lake Chautauqua and Lake Findley. Bemus Point, Findley Lake, Jamestown, Lakewood, Mayville, Chautauqua, Westfield, and Barcelona are the participating towns, all located on the lake. There will be activities held all weekend including live music, winery tours, a countywide yard sale, and even an OHL preseason hockey game between the Erie Otters and the Niagara Ice Dogs. There will be entertainment for all ages and interests, all along the beautiful shores of Lake Chautauqua. For a more comprehensive list of events visit ilovenylakes.com and click on the “Take Off Locations” link.

—justin sondel

10pm. All around Lake Chautauqua. FREE.

8/29: Rock for Food

Come out and party for a good cause at the seventh annual “Rock for Food” event at the Pearl Street Grill & Brewery. A plethora of performers will take to two stages, including such local artists as the Scott Celani Band, Mo Porter, Dee Adams, Skyjuice, Korki & Lori, the Fated Grey, Melissa Kate, Rob Falgiano, Lenny Revell, and more. Enjoy drinks served by celebrity bartenders Mary Friona, Jodi Johnston and Matt Pearl from WGRZ Channel 2, Janet Snyder from Kiss 98.5, and Buffalo’s “Wing King” Drew Cerza. Tickets are $7 at the door, but discounts will be given to those who come bearing nonperishable food items. Included in the price of admission will be complimentary appetizers and drink specials. All proceeds benefit the Food Bank of Western New York. Additional information can be found at foodbankwny.org or scottcelani.com/RFF2008.html.

—justin sondel

4pm. Pearl Street Grill & Brewery, 76 Pearl Street (849-0839 / pearlstreetgrill.com). $7, or $5 with donation of non-perishable food item.

8/29: Nick Gordon CD Release

London vs. New York’s Nick Gordon is set to launch his sophomore release on Harvest Sum Records, City Where You Love To Lose Your Mind (see review in Left of the Dial, this issue). This is his second solo release this year, a follow up to last winter’s debut, It’s a Chemical Drag, But It’s Not That Bad. So far, as a solo artist Gordon has been as prolific as he’s been as guitarist for London vs. New York, with whom he’ll start recording a new album this month, a second release for them as well. City Where You Love To Lose Your Mind features an ensemble cast of local musicians as guest stars, and includes a tribute to his London vs. NY bandmate entitled “Stephen Goss is a Good Friend-a Mine.” Gordon may be charting his own path here, but he’s certainly not one to forget his roots. CDs will be on sale for “the very special price of $10 if you’ve got it, or $5 if you don’t.” Gordon will be joined by Shock Cousteau, Matt Frank, Al Larsen and Sleeping Kings of Iona, who’ll play the clean up set at 1am.

—k. o’day

9pm. Mohawk Place, 47 E Mohawk St. (855-3931 / www.mohawkplace.com). $5

8/29 & 8/30: Four Mad Humors Dance Project

Pounds Per Square Inch Performance and the New Alt Performance Group present a staged workshop this weekend, the end result of the Theater’s first summer residency. Four Mad Humours is an “international, inter-disciplinary, real time networked dance work,” the brainchild of choreographer Gerry Trentham, media design artist Jamie O’Neil, and filmmaker Michael Stecky. The project has formed over the past two years and counts 11 collaborators in all. The performances will be presented simultaneously in four different cities: Alt Theater director Amy Taravalla will perform the piece here in Buffalo, Trentham will perform in Toronto. Dancers/choreographers James Morrow and Deborah Dunn will present it in Chicago and Montreal, respectively. Taravella’s piece, with a working title of Ann, is the second in the four solo, four city series. This complicated, collaborative endeavor is probably best explained by the artists themselves, so stick around for the discussion following each night’s performance.

—k. o’day

7pm. ALT Theatre, 255 Great Arrow Ave. (868-6847 / www.alttheatre.com). $15/general; $10/students

8/30: The Hi-Risers

Mick Jagger has described rock-n-roll as “energy and three chords.” Rochester band the Hi-Risers embody Jagger’s observation, and their recent release Once We Get Started (Spinout) is like a blast from the Mersey Beat past. They’ve got a look and sound that’s so authentic to the period you can practically smell the Adorn hairspray in the air—and it’s all delivered with such wry enthusiasm and humor that if you don’t dig it, you must be strictly L7. Standout tunes include clever rockers like “One Note Joe,” complete with a twangy—you guessed it—one note guitar solo. The band—Greg Townson on vocals/guitar, Todd Bradley on vocals/bass, and Jason Smay on drums—has built a solid following over the past decade, transforming every bar and festival they’ve played into a packed, sweaty, high school gymnasium or wild beach party with the very first chord.

—buck quigley

9:30pm Sportsmen’s Tavern, 326 Amherst Street (874-7734 / sportsmenstavern.com)

8/31: American Scholar Day

At the start of a new academic year, on August 31, 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson read a speech to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was entitled “The American Scholar.” Nineteenth-century poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., would later describe it as America’s “Intellectual Declaration of Independence.” So moved by the piece was architect Frank Lloyd Wright, that he felt the date of its initial delivery should have been made a national holiday. For the past nine years, the Graycliff Conservancy, the group overseeing the restoration of the beautiful, Wright-designed, summer estate of the Darwin D. Martin family, has been saving us eyestrain by staging a reading of the classic essay on the picturesque grounds. Orators include John Conlin, Clarence Picard, and Russell Baker—Editor, Assistant Editor, and Marketing Director of Western New York Heritage Magazine, respectively—as well as Ruth Ellen Bunis of Hospice Buffalo. Tours of the estate are remain ongoing, but this year’s reading will be the last one fronted by noted local historian Conlin. Don’t miss it.

—buck quigley

5:30pm. Graycliff Estate. 6472 Old Lake Shore Road, Derby. (947-9217 / graycliff.bfn.org) Free.

9/2: Buffalo Film Seminars

Aside from one semester in which the films were selected by patrons from the best of previous seasons, the Buffalo Film Seminar has never repeated a film. And while I wouldn’t mind seeing them bend the rule to bring back, say, a Sergio Leone film or two (have you ever tried to watch one of those on television? Yuck), it’s nice to know that Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian, of whose UB class the seminar is an outgrowth, have an apparently limitless number of movies that improve when seen on a big screen with other involved film buffs. Open to anyone with the price of a movie ticket, the seminar meets every Tuesday for screening and discussion at the Market Arcade Film and Arts Center. This season’s schedule includes Trouble in Paradise (1932) by the sublime Ernst Lubitsch, this Tuesday, September 2; it continues the following Tuesday with the Marx Brothers’ hilarious Duck Soup (1933). For the complete schedule, visit buffalofilmseminars.com.

—m. faust

7pm. Market Arcade Film & Arts Centre, 639 Main Street. $8.50 regular, $6 62 & over, $6.50 students.

9/3: Deke Dickerson and the Eco-Fonics

Born in the late 1960s, Deke Dickerson discovered rockabilly and surf music at a very young age, thanks to his parents’ record collection and their gift of a Fisher Price Record Player. By the time he was a teenager, Dickerson was a walking historian of said genres as well as country, rhythm and blues, and doo-wop. After a few false starts, Dickerson garnered attention as a member of Untamed Youth, a rockabilly garage punk band that was set apart from the others by Dickerson’s guitar virtuosity. With the dissolution of Untamed Youth, Dickerson turned his attention to his own band, Deke Dickerson and the Eco-Fonics, a culmination of all his hillbilly, surf, and rockabilly influences. Recently, Dickerson has been appearing on Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour, supplying instrumental passages and trivia to the host. Opening are Mohawk Place mainstays Pete Worden and the Hardtimers.

—eric boucher

8pm. Mohawk Place, 47 E. Mohawk Street

(855-3931 / mohawkplace.com)

9/3: Mr. Gnome

Born out of Cleveland earlier this decade but virtually homeless in the past few years, Mr. Gnome is finally beginning to attract attention with their un-ironic blend of psychedelia, prog-rock, and dark beats. Possessed by the tribal drumming of Sam Meister and the soulful yet desperate vocals of Nicole Barille, Mr. Gnome brings to mind such pioneering artists as Blonde Redhead, Portishead, and PJ Harvey. However they have a style and sensibility all their own, meshing genres many of their contemporaries have never thought to combine. On their debut full-length, Deliver This Creature, guitar noise competes with the subtle nuances of near silence. creating something beautiful and yet ominous. In recent months, Mr. Gnome has received rave reviews in Rolling Stone, Spin, Pitchfork, and Paste, with many more to come. The Mom and Dad Parade and Mallory Mordaunt open the show.

—eric boucher

8pm. Mohawk Place, 47 E. Mohawk Street

(855-3931 / mohawkplace.com).

Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber

This is not your father’s Arkestra. Whatever celestial kinship the members of Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber may feel with the late great cosmonaut Sun Ra, this 13-member outfit’s music is decidedly earthbound, tethered by funk and blues and hard rock and clubland jazz—by guitars that punch and scream, by organs that spiral heavenward and then crash to the ground, by voices that shout and croon, brass that squints and flows and dissects everything. The ensemble first assembled with the notion of creating a Bitches Brew for the new century, inspired by Miles Davis’ mashup of electric and acoustic improvisation tangling with modern studio manipulations. Burnt Sugar’s musicians are top shelf, and make use of Butch Morris’ avant conduction system to compose their performances on the spot. They claim the result channels influences from Hendrix to Holiday, Steve Reich to Brian Eno, Parliament to Wu Tang. Whatever. This self-described “multiracial jam army” is unlike anything you’ve heard before.

—geoff kelly

9pm. Soundlab, 110 Pearl Street (bigorbitgallery.org/soundlab). $10, $8 Hallwalls members, students, seniors.