Labor Day at the beach means the start of local summer. We get our beaches, roads and entertainment back.
SEP 3: OperaDelaware drives its Mobile Opera Stage to Quayside in Milton for a free Pop-Up Opera, and I want to be clear that the promised amenities include a T-shirt cannon and a bubble machine. Somebody looked at a 400-year-old art form, correctly identified the problem as insufficient bubbles and did something about it. This is either the death of high culture or its only viable business plan. Doors open at 5 p.m.; the show begins at 6 p.m. Bring a chair.
SEP 4: Historic Lewes First Friday takes place on the lawn at Sussex Tavern from 4 to 7 p.m. Then Captain Mike and the Shipwrecked perform at the Rehoboth Beach Bandstand at 8 p.m.
SEP 5: The Bandstand closes its season with Pet Sounds Live playing the Beach Boys at 8 p.m. It is worth noting that Pet Sounds is an album about being 23 and quietly convinced you have already peaked, which is a strange thing to perform outdoors to a crowd eating Thrasher’s. It’s free and the last one until June. Couldn’t ask for a better album or a better view.
SEP 10: Lower Case Blues performs at Lewes Canalfront Park at 6:30 p.m. The show is free, and chairs are encouraged. Or, indoors, the Lewes History Museum hosts “Stories of Lightships and Their Sailors,” concerning men whose entire occupation was staying anchored in one spot so other people would not hit them. There is a Gen X job-market metaphor in there, and I am choosing not to develop it.
Marissa’s Picks at The Listening Booth
SEP 18: Kevin Devine. This one’s personal for me. I spent my 20s hanging with Kevin in Brooklyn and making music in the same studio. He has released 10 albums since 2002, which in indie rock actuarial terms makes him a survivor of at least four separate eras that were each supposed to kill him off.
He funded two records at once with a Kickstarter that pulled in more than $114,000, back when that still felt like a moral position. His side project with Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull produced three more. Devine writes songs that sound like small talk but are actually picking at the scabs of wounded souls.
MORE TO HEAR AND DO AT THE BOOTH:
SEP 4: Liz Longley with Callum
SEP 11: Delaware Division of the Arts Literature Fellows
featuring The Honey Badgers
SEP 18: Kevin Devine
SEP 19: Don McCloskey
Visit listeningbooth.com/shows for tickets.
