ERIC JONES TRIO FEATURING DAVE RICHARDS
FRI AUG 14 | 8 PM | NICKEL & OAK LOUNGE
When Good Times Jazz Bar closed in 2024, it left a massive hole in the city’s live jazz scene. Touring artists and local mainstays played regularly, including various combos led by local jazz pianist Eric Jones.
After much hype and a confusing lack of location information, Nickel & Oak Lounge has opened on Congress Street, between Kay’s Pizza and Barrelhouse South. It’s a gorgeous room with a loaded calendar dedicated to a similar blend of touring acts and local music, along with comedy, burlesque, and cover bands.
There aren’t many businesses more welcome in Savannah right now than new live music venues, so let’s hope the obvious investment here pays off. Take Five will do what it can.
In this case, a Friday night with the Eric Jones Trio is a very safe bet for a good time. The band typically features Savannah’s bassmaster general Marc Chesanow and drummer Robert Britton Saunders, but the lineup is subject to change. Whoever it is, expect a top-notch rhythm section to underpin Jones’ deft piano work.
Special guest Dave Richards, who plays tenor saxophone and clarinet with the Savannah Jazz Orchestra, sits in to sprinkle some woodwinds on the ivory tickling.
NORTH STATE GRASS
THU AUG 13 | ALL DAY | OVER YONDER
The 2026 bluegrass avalanche continues unabated with another all-day gig at Over Yonder. Steven Davidson, formerly of the Charlotte Bluegrass Allstars, revamped the lineup around his dizzying mandolin work in 2025. Since then, North State Grass has played a Doc Watson birthday celebration with his longtime guitarist Jack Lawrence. They’ve also opened for Leftover Salmon, Andy Falco, and Travis Book of the Infamous Stringdusters.
North State Grass links the traditional influence of Jimmy Martin and the Tony Rice Unit with contemporary cues from Sierra Hull and madman superstar Billy Strings.
The group promotes itself as progressive bluegrass, and while that description may be nearing cliché, you can hear it on the edges. The foundation is solid, expertly performed bluegrass with incredible picking on every string they play. The curveballs come in the form of longer and wilder solos, exploratory instrumental passages that border on jams, a looser rhythmic feel on occasion, and a heavier guitar-banjo attack that justifies their claim of metal influence.
Again, those parts decorate rather than reinterpret the core of stellar bluegrass. Looks like you picked the wrong week to quit downing Lone Stars by the score.
KAIJU + GUILLOTINE CODE + SORRY FOR THE MESS + LILYPAD + SOULMIRROR + BLISS
SUN AUG 16 | 5 PM | COASTAL EMPIRE BEER CO.
Math isn’t exactly fun until you calculate that this $10 six-act banger works out to $1.666 per band. Don’t ignore supernatural hints when they land on your face and wiggle. In this case, headliner Kaiju lands on multi-story office buildings and stomps them into low-slung ranches. The Savannah deathcore extremists, a redundancy if there ever was one, are simply relentless.
Heavy as it gets, the chaotic rhythms feel industrial and non-human. The vocals are monstrous and guttural, like a giant reptile on a nine-hour rampage. Suffice to say, it’s probably not the best choice for a quiet first date filled with flirty banter, unless you met them on serialkillerhookup.com.
Fellow locals Sorry For The Mess aren’t all that different from Kaiju. There’s just a little more room to breathe for beastly breakdowns, backing vocals you can comprehend, and an emphasis on stop-start mosh parts. The ridiculously heavy riffs remain discernible instead of dissolving into a complete blur.
Atlanta sends a trio of crushers to max out the fun. Lilypad offers a break from the deathcore with some old-fashioned metallic hardcore in the vein of Hatebreed and Sheer Terror. It’s also a break from the ocean of testosterone, but lead singer Ana (aka Little Lotus Flower) is just as pissed off and every bit as threatening as any tattooed, bearded bruiser frontman.
Guillotine Code swerve from their death metal wheelhouse to hints of deathcore, which admittedly aren’t that far apart. If anything, their breakdown-forward style shares traits of Kaiju and Sorry For The Mess, with sharper guitars that cut like Freddy’s glove.
The real outlier on the bill is Bliss. The heavy rock/shoegaze quartet can turn it up and tear it up, but they’ll be supplying 98% of the quieter moments. Their cover of Zombie by The Cranberries is unexpected and nearly spot-on, quite an achievement from the versatile vocalist Ash.
Last, but not least, Soulmirror from Connecticut will undoubtedly win the night’s beauty contest. The deathcore quintet is just as relentless and brutal as the style gets, if not more. The twist is added drama and creative aesthetics from masks that fall somewhere between Slipknot and Phantom of the Opera, if the opera was in the loudest pit in Hell.
THE SNOZZBERRIES
SAT AUG 15 | 8 PM | BROUGHTON STREET BOWL & BREW
A plethora of genres are tossed around to cover all the things The Snozzberries do. None are filler, and a turning point in their history may explain it. The Asheville combo wasn’t taking their project too seriously, playing covers at bars but getting a strong response. After a year, they landed a plum gig opening for Here Come The Mummies at the city’s iconic Orange Peel venue. The response to that show was enough to make the band take itself a lot more seriously.
Their initial originals mirrored the styles they had been covering. The jam angle and lengthy improvisations were nailed down with Grateful Dead and Phish. Danceable funk and rhythm came from Parliament-Funkadelic and Talking Heads. Classic rock and psychedelic chops were exhibited on Hendrix and Pink Floyd covers.
All this and more made its way into their own songs, with the “more” being Frank Zappa quirkiness, intricate progressive rock, and metal. That last one is no exaggeration. Some passages would be all-out Maiden-Priest proto-thrash if not for the Hammond B3 putting a proggy spin on it.
EXPIRATION DATE + ORCHESTRA + CEILINGS + FIGHT!FIGHT!HARM! + CROCABEARMOOSE + MONTAUK
SUN AUG 16 | 7 PM | THE PORTAL ARCADE
Fair or not, any band from D.C. that claims to represent straight edge will immediately be compared to Minor Threat, the undisputed godfathers of that scene. Those legends perfected first-wave hardcore punk with a thick Les Paul guitar tone and Ian MacKaye’s unmistakable voice.
Expiration Date may share the ethos, but the sound is their own. It’s a frantic mix of math rock, metal, and interesting tempo changes all propelled by old-school skramz that, we can only assume, are emo AF. Don’t even try to make out the words.
Ceilings, from Florida, use screamo judiciously. It’s more of an alternative rock and post-hardcore act, with many slower, moodier, pretty parts that set the crowd up for the next spastic fit of emoting. With plenty of heaviness on tap at this six-band extravaganza, their atmospheric passages will supply some relief from the onslaught.
You’ll get a similar vibe from Orchestra, only swap out the alt-rock for metal, keep the emo intact, and turn the screaming up to 11. Tallahassee’s FIGHT!FIGHT!HARM! blend a bunch of hardcore, metal, and noise, matching it with even screamier, demonic vocals that might remind you of the shrieking of the Deadites in horror classic The Evil Dead.
Winners of a fictitious “Best Cryptozoological Band Name” contest, Crocabearmoose chomp, claw, and trample eardrums with “flamboyant mathcore.” Montauk, the newest Savannah emo rockers who made their debut last month at the memorial Bobbyfest show, open up.
By Frank Ricci