James McMurtry
April 3 at Daryl’s House in Pawling
James McMurtry writes songs the way some people file police reports: precise, unsentimental, and devastating on close reading. A master of compressed storytelling, McMurtry has built a career out of narratives that reveal whole lives in a few carefully chosen lines. Live, he’s sharp, dryly funny, and uninterested in theatrics—which makes the songs land even harder. Tickets
Disco Dance Party with the Gentleman Brawlers
April 4 at the Local in Saugerties
Brooklyn collective Gentleman Brawlers turns The Local into a full-body proposition with a disco dance party that leans as much on groove as it does on community. Led by Becca Fox and Matt Walsh, the band builds its sound from disco rhythms, Afrobeat polyrhythms, and highlife guitar, creating something that feels both global and immediate. A pre-show dance lesson sets the tone, with live visuals by B.A. Miale extending the sensory field beyond the stage. By the time the band hits, the room is already in motion—less concert than shared ritual, driven by rhythm, repetition, and collective release. Tickets
Mike Doughty
April 4 at City Winery Hudson Valley in Montgomery
Mike Doughty’s great trick has always been rhythmic speech masquerading as melody, and “Super Bon Bon” remains the Rosetta Stone: beat-driven, absurd, and weirdly philosophical all at once. As the former frontman of Soul Coughing, Doughty built a cult following on that elastic phrasing—half hip-hop cadence, half downtown beat poetry. His solo career has wandered through folk, indie pop, and spoken-word confessionals, but that conversational flow remains the engine. Live, Doughty bends songs midstream—rephrasing lines, shifting emphasis—so even the familiar arrives slightly rearranged. (Billy Bragg and Lyle Lovett were just announced for dates in June.) 7:30pm. $33-$36. Tickets
Luna
April 5 at Assembly in Kingston
For Luna devotees, Penthouse (1995) remains the gold standard: a record where Dean Wareham’s hushed vocals, velour guitar tones, and nocturnal pacing fully clicked into place. The songs move with unforced confidence—romantic without sentimentality, cool without detachment—each one calibrated for late-night listening. That sensibility carries into their live shows, which favor atmosphere over flash. Luna doesn’t rush you or raise its voice; it draws you in and trusts the spell will hold. Tickets
Lake Street Dive
April 7 at the Palace Theater in Albany
Lake Street Dive has built one of the most joyful hybrid sounds in modern pop—part soul, part jazz, part classic ’60s-flavored pop, all delivered with impeccable musicianship and irresistible groove. Fronted by Rachael Price’s richly expressive vocals and anchored by Bridget Kearney’s upright bass, the band turns every song into an invitation: to dance, sing along, or simply let the rhythms reshape your mood. Whether it’s the playful exuberance of newer songs or the seamless blend of funk, R&B, and melodic pop they’ve honed over two decades, their shows feel like a celebration of connection and joy. (Fetty Wap performs his melodic, hook-driven trap rap on April 16.) 8pm. $67-$186. Tickets
Graham Nash
April 8 at Tarrytown Music Hall
There are only a handful of classic rock figures still standing who feel this essential, this uncorroded by time. Graham Nash is one of them. His songs helped define what harmony could do—emotionally, politically, communally—and he’s carried that clarity forward without calcifying into myth. The voice remains unmistakable, the songwriting humane and direct. This isn’t nostalgia so much as continuity: an artist who shaped the culture and somehow stayed present inside it. Tickets
Fantastic Cat
April 11 at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock
Fantastic Cat is a four-headed Americana hydra: singer-songwriters trading vocals, instruments, and bad ideas in real time. Dubbed the “Harlem Globetrotters of Americana” (Rolling Stone) and the “Wu-Tang Clan of folk rock” (Village Voice), the band thrives on craft colliding with chaos. Their new album, Cat Out of Hell, leans hard into that energy—big hooks, group harmonies, and songs packed with desperate romantics and barstool philosophers. Better witnessed than explained. Tickets
Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Mary Halvorson
April 17 at the Cuneen-Hackett Center in Poughkeepsie
“Strings & Things” pairs two restless improvisers at the top of their respective games: harmolodic bass innovator Jamaaladeen Tacuma and guitarist Mary Halvorson, whose angular phrasing and pitch-bending lines have reshaped contemporary jazz guitar. Their collaboration, born from years of shared stages, thrives on contrast—Tacuma’s percussive, funk-rooted attack meeting Halvorson’s oblique, slippery melodicism. Presented by Elysium Furnace Works at the VBI Theatre, the set promises less a fixed program than a live-wire exchange, where structure dissolves into conversation. Expect a performance that moves fast, listens hard, and builds its logic in real time, one unpredictable turn after another. Tickets
Thomas Dolby with Gail Ann Dorsey
April 16 at Assembly in Kingston
Thomas Dolby’s music has always treated pop as a laboratory—playful and brainy. But this show gets an added charge from his opener, Gail Ann Dorsey, a Hudson Valley–based force with one of the most compelling under-the-radar solo careers in recent memory. After decades as David Bowie’s bassist and vocalist, she’s finally stepping into her own spotlight with music that channels 1970s AM warmth and lyrical grace, offering something tender and direct before Dolby’s brain-friendly synth architecture even lands. (Dean Wareham’s dream-pop outfit Luna lounges on April 5.) 8pm. $36-$42. Tickets
Jane Monheit
April 17 at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington
Jazz vocalist Jane Monheit brings her deep command of the Great American Songbook to the intimate Indigo Room at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center on April 17. Over more than two decades, Monheit has built a reputation for technical precision paired with emotional clarity, moving easily between standards, contemporary material, and Brazilian-influenced repertoire. Her phrasing is supple, her tone warm but exacting, and her live performances lean into nuance. In a room this size, those details matter—the kind of setting where a well-turned lyric or subtle shift in tempo can carry the entire night. Sold out
They Might Be Giants
April 17-18 at Bearsville Theater in Woodstock
Renowned for their infamously great live shows, They Might Be Giants are now touring as an eight-piece band with a three-horn section and zero interest in coasting. Each night unfolds in two acts: one album, front to back, followed by a career-spanning set that ricochets from Dial-A-Song brainiacs to Flood classics to brand-new material. Sprawling, playful, and endlessly mutable, these shows prove that TMBG’s songbook—and their appetite for reinvention—remains inexhaustible. It hurts that this one is sold out. Sold out
Mickey Dolenz
April 18 at Tarrytown Music Hall
Let’s retire the tired notion that the Monkees weren’t “real” musicians. Yes, the band was assembled for a TV show, and yes, the packaging was cynical—but the music that followed was anything but. Dolenz, in particular, brought a drummer’s instincts and a singer’s elasticity to songs that remain exquisitely constructed pop: witty, adventurous, and melodically bulletproof. Strip away the sneer, and what’s left is craft, joy, and a catalog that’s aged better than most of its so-called authentic peers. Tickets
The Afghan Whigs
April 25 at the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock
Forty years in, the Afghan Whigs still sound like a band with unfinished business. Formed in Cincinnati in 1986 and led by the ever-smoldering Greg Dulli, the group carved a singular niche in alternative rock by braiding soul and R&B melodrama into guitar-driven rock at a time when flannel orthodoxy ruled the airwaves. Albums like Gentlemen and Black Love made the Whigs cult heroes of the ’90s underground, and their post-2012 reunion has yielded a string of strong late-career records. This 40th-anniversary tour kicks off at Bearsville with psychedelic indie explorers Mercury Rev opening. (They Might Be Giants two-night stand is sold-out April 17-18.) 8pm. $50 to $350. Tickets
Joe McPhee Quartet
April 26 at Reason and Ruckus in Poughkeepsie
Free-jazz titan Joe McPhee—long a fixture of the Hudson Valley’s improvised-music underground—heads a new monthly Sunday jazz series at Reason and Ruckus. For the inaugural night, the Poughkeepsie-based saxophonist and trumpeter leads a quartet with bassist Michael Bisio, drummer Jay Rosen, and guitarist-curator James Keepnews, promising a set of searching, high-wire improvisation. Opening the evening is guitarist and vocalist Ava Mendoza, a recent Hudson Valley arrival whose solo performances blur avant-rock, noise, and jazz. 7:30pm. $20 at the door.
Ty Segall
April 29 at Basilica Hudson
Few contemporary garage-rock figures are as relentlessly prolific—or as electrifying onstage—as Ty Segall. Since emerging from the Southern California psych-punk underground in the late 2000s, Segall has released a torrent of records that veer from blown-out garage rock to glam stomp, acoustic folk, and Sabbath-sized riffage. Albums like Manipulator, Freedom’s Goblin, and last year’s Three Bells show a songwriter equally comfortable with melody and distortion. At Basilica Hudson’s cavernous waterfront factory, Segall’s band brings that shape-shifting catalog to life in what’s likely to be a loud, sweat-slick night of modern psych-rock mayhem. (Thievery Corporation brings the urbane chill groove April 2.) 8pm. $45. Tickets
This article appears in April 2026.
