The New Times Music Awards is always a little bittersweet because I want everyone to win. After all, I’m not a music critic; I’m a music cheerleader, and anyone who makes music is a goddamn American hero in my book. But at the end of the night on Friday, Nov. 21, someone is going to be awarded Best Live Performance. Who will it be?
If you join me at SLO Brew Rock at Rod & Hammer’s you’ll be treated to performances by some of our best local musicians—Dubwise Collective, Gehrig Kniffen, Harmony Chabot, Hot 45, Miss Leo, Pete Pidgeon, The Flower Machine, and The Vargo Paradox. These are the first-place winners in the various genre categories: Rock/Alternative, Country/Americana/Folk, Hip-Hop, R&B/Blues, Open, and Covers; as well as Youth, Album of the Year, and Best Songwriter
In between their performances, second and third place genre winners will receive their awards. You’ll also find out who this year’s Local Legend Award goes to as well as who you voted for during our annual Readers Poll. As usual, Ernie Ball has generously donated a guitar that we’re raffling off, and you can find raffle tickets online until Nov. 20 at 7 p.m., or at the event.
Come celebrate our vibrant local music scene at the New Times Music Awards at SLO Brew Rock at Rod & Hammer’s on Friday, Nov. 21 (7 p.m.; all ages; $15 at my805tix.com).
Also, this week at SLO Brew, see L’éclair on Friday, Nov. 14 (doors at 7 p.m.; 18-and-older; $23.88 at ticketweb.com). Brothers Stef and Yavor Lilov grew up in Bulgaria in the late 1990s and were influenced by the folk music of the region. They now call Switzerland home, and they’re touring in support of their fourth album, Cloud Drifter.
“We really wanted to finally be able to capture in the studio the feeling that people had listening to us live,” Yavor said in press materials. “Part of that involved really taking the time to polish the music between recording and mixing. Can we make this more impactful? How can we make it more attention-grabbing? Putting in that work and really dissecting the production helped us achieve the sonic result we were looking for.”
Local live EDM duo Elysian Moon opens.
Grammy-nominated country singer-songwriter Brent Cobb plays on Saturday, Nov. 15 (doors at 7 p.m.; all ages; $27.21 at ticketweb.com). His newest is Ain’t Rocked in a While, the first project he’s recorded with his band, The Fixins. Me Like Bees opens.
Indie rockers The Stews were a pandemic band, and they used “their ample free time” to hone their songwriting and musical skills, according to their bio. They quickly went from a college band to national touring act. See them on Thursday, Nov. 20 (doors at 7 p.m.; 18-and-older; $27.21 at ticketweb.com). Margo Sinclair opens.
Queer is cool
When I first met Caleb Nichols, he was a nerdy Los Osos kid who was wicked smart and a very talented musician, but I never imagined he’d become Dr. Caleb Nichols, SLO County poet laureate, Kill Rock Stars recording artist, and proudly gay artist!
After five releases on Kill Rock Stars, his newest album, Stone Age Is Back, is out on Royal Oakie Records and available as a digital download, a CD, a limited-edition cassette tape, and limited-edition vinyl record. He’ll be at a vinyl listening party in Jan’s Vinyl Bar on Friday, Nov. 14 (7 p.m.), and he’s the main attraction at the Gala Pride & Diversity Center’s Queer Indie Night in SLO’s The Libertine Brewing Company on Saturday, Nov. 22 (doors at 7, show at 7:30 p.m.; $14.70 presale at my805tix.com).
“I’m very excited to be working with Gala on presenting a night of queer indie music at the Libertine, featuring me, Wryn (from Santa Barbara and recently signed to Righteous Babe Records), and my Kill Rock Stars labelmate Joh Chase from Los Angeles,” Nichols said. “We’re fundraising for Gala as well.”
Nichols’ new album is an indie rock treasure described as “a Ph.D. dissertation in contemporary indie rock and alt-folk” that “pulls from disparate strands of Nichols’ universe to form an amalgam of queer ecology, rustic punk, existential folk, frenetic indie pop, spoken word, experimental jazz, and Neil Young-esque shredding,” his bio explains. It’s “a meditation on grief—but not in the ways you’d expect.
“Across 13 dynamic and lovingly produced indie gems, Nichols interrogates the grief, guilt, complicity, joy, anger, fear, and dissociative feelings that come along with living through a mass extinction event. Stone Age Is Back isn’t really a political album, or an album explicitly about the climate crisis—rather, it’s an album that explores what it means to be living and dying right now, in this moment of extraordinary change.”
She shredder
Electric blues guitarist Debbie Davies learned from some of the best blues masters including John Mayall, Duke Robillard, and Coco Montoya. She also spent several years on the road with Albert Collins.
“I don’t often give endorsements or references, but once in a rare while I hear a musician of such talent that I want people to know,” John Mayall said of Davies. “I believe my reputation backs up my ability to recognize exceptional blues guitarists. Such a one is Debbie Davies. Hear her now.”
The SLO Blues Society presents Debbie Davies in the SLO Vets Hall on Saturday, Nov. 15 (doors at 6:30, show at 7 p.m.; 21-and-older; $37.50 in advance at sloblues.org/buy-ticket or $45 at the door).
Japanese metal and American rock god
Good Vibez and the Fremont Theater has a crazy one-two punch coming at you this week starting with Lovebites on Friday, Nov. 14 (doors at 7, show at 8 p.m.; all ages; $33.96 at prekindle.com). Formed in 2016, the all-female Japanese heavy metal band led with a self-titled EP before delivering their full-length debut, Awakening from Abyss (2017), which led to a series of shows in Japan and the UK. They released Judgement Day, their fifth studio album, in 2023, but their most recent recording is an EP, Lovebites EP II, released last year.
LA-based cinematic hard rockers Edge of Paradise open the show. They’re touring in support of their sixth studio album, Prophecy, whose first single, “Death Note,” is making waves in the heavy metal scene.
Also at Fremont is rock icon Todd Rundgren, who got his start way back in 1967 when he formed the psychedelic rock act Nazz and later the progressive rock act Utopia. Rundgren was also on the cutting edge of technology, using computers long before they were commonplace and the internet for music distribution.
His hits include “We Gotta Get You a Woman,” “Hello It’s Me,” “I Saw the Light,” “Can We Still Be Friends,” “Bang the Drum All Day,” and “Couldn’t I Just Tell You.” See Todd Rundgren on Saturday, Nov. 15 (doors at 7, show at 8 p.m.; all ages; $50.44 to $93.70 at prekindle.com).
Two collectives
Numbskull and Good Medicine have a couple of great shows this week, and headlining both are collaborative ensembles.
“This band feels like the old family farm,” Sam Doores, one of five songwriters and multi-instrumentalists in The Deslondes, said in press materials. “It’s a place where we can meet for the Fourth of July, bring our families, grill some burgers, and make some music together. It’s always going to be there, and we know it’s going to work and feel good.”
They’ve been together more than 15 years and have recorded four albums and played countless live shows.
“Founded less as a band than as a neighborhood hang at Doores’ home on Deslonde Street, the band devised an anything-goes philosophy that allowed them to incorporate sounds they picked up on their travels and everything they heard at home: classic country, hobo folk, crust punk, rural blues, Third Ward jazz, rockabilly, R&B, Fats Domino, and Allen Toussaint but also George Jones and the Band,” their bio explains.
See The Deslondes in Club Car Bar on Friday, Nov. 14 (8 p.m.; all ages; $24.41 at goodmedicinepresents.com). Desirée Cannon opens.
Moonshiner Collective plays in The Siren on Friday, Nov. 14 (6:30 p.m.; 21-and-older; $23.69 at tixr.com). Led by Dan Curcio, Moonshiner formed out of his college band, Still Time, and has always been a band that blends rock, blues, and soulful Americana to create a groovy jam vibe with introspective lyrics.
If you missed Live Oak this summer, you missed a retro set with former Still Time members Chris “Haircut” Arntzen (guitar/mandolin) and Nick Bilich (lead guitar) joining Curcio and the rest of Moonshiner. But fear not, they’ll both play this show.
“This one feels like a full-circle-moment kinda night and one that shouldn’t be missed,” Curcio said.
Max MacLaury & The Compromisers open. ∆
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Nov 13-23, 2025.