Flora Algera caps a family affair at the Silhouette Lounge on Monday, 20 May 2024.

The Cherry Fog and The Cheap Dates open the triplestack bill in the backroom.

The Jamaica Plain Music Festival is coming!

Also known as the JP Music Fest. That’s got more zing.

It will be the 12th edition, coming your way in September, and each year is organized with tender love and care by a neighborhood community that loves live music and knows how to have a good time. This is a bottom-up affair, by and for the people, and it needs your support.

If you missed the annual Smell The Love fundraiser, you can still donate below!

If you missed the fundraiser show in March at the American Legion Hall with Rick Berlin, Colonel Broccoli and the Legion Basement Band, and Fantastic Trees, you can still donate below!

And if you won’t or didn’t make it out to Midway Cafe on June 4 in time to catch the annual classic fundraiser John Casey’s JP Bar Wars, you can still donate below!

Do your part to keep Jamaica Plain fresh AND funky.

Hump Nights

Nov 30

WORM | Presidential Disgrace | Screw Cart | Neponset Monastary

Dec 3

ONCE Presents: Ezra Furman Doing What She Wants

Dec 4

The Ladybug Transistor / Lightheaded / Mark Robinson (of Cotton Candy)

Dec 7

The Lotusheads / The Dead Flowers / Music Farm / The Pretty Fears

Dec 13

The 4th Wall: Nectarine Girl, Special Guest, Exit 18, Wulfer

Dec 13

Big Ol’ Dirty Bucket / Funk Safari

Dec 14

ONCE Presents: Scream Along Blue Xmas w/ Billy Hough

$Fat Togue Holiday Bash: Give Up!, Love City Dirt, BAD\\VERB$

Dec 16

Fat Togue Holiday Bash: Give Up!, Love City Dirt, BAD\\VERB

Dec 26

Bohemian Rhapsody Sing-Along

Dec 31

Bohemian Rhapsody Sing-Along

Sometimes, some nights, some bills at the smaller local venues feel like they’ve been transformed into a big family reunion. With all the smiles, hugs, and backslapping you might expect.

Of course, it's a completely normal operating procedure for friends and family to come out to see their loved ones play a set. Friends and family are the first ones to sign up.

But that whole situation levels up a notch when it’s all friends and family on both sides of the stage, in the audience and behind the instruments. It’s like you’ve all of a sudden stumbled into somebody else’s wedding party or a private karaoke room. It’s a party, for sure, though you vaguely feel like you're impinging on some other people’s good time.

The Cheap Dates played through a good times, good feels set of new rock classics, including bangers from Velvet Underground and the Pixies.

If you were paying attention, you were going to see some or all of these musicians again by the end of the night.

A rootin’, tootin’ blues rock outfit. The Cherry Fog performed as a duo, though they appear as a trio elsewhere on The Internet. The bass player called out sick. With two-pieces, the group communicated a kind of fuzzed out Black Keys vibe.

If you were paying attention, you were going to see the drummer again by the end of the night.

Like a Transformer (or really more like Voltron, if you can remember back that far) the closing band of the night reconstituted itself into a whole out of the parts of the previous two bands. Take a bassist and guitarist from The Cheap Dates, grab the drummer from The Cherry Fog, and add a guitar-toting, keys-playing frontwoman, and – BAM! – you’ve got Flora Algera.

Don’t let the cowboy hats throw you off the scent. Monday night’s bill was reducing, reusing, and recycling its musicians. Which is a beautiful thing. But it occurred so seamlessly that you just sort of figure that all these people are related, and have been hammering away these tunes out of the same garage for a while now. A family that rocks out together, stays together.

Extra points for releasing an album on January 6th, of all days.