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10 Events for Your Labor Day Weekend

Labor-Day-Weekend-VanTrip
Labor-Day-Weekend-VanTrip

At the beginning of the season, Labor Day seems far in the distance. And then, all of a sudden, it’s summer’s last call and you forgot to make plans. Your friends are all out of town, the beach bungalows are booked up, and you’re lucky if you can snag an empty lounge chair near the community pool.

Avoid that with 11 Labor Day weekend events around the country. From harvest dinners to shows to goat yoga, take advantage of summer’s last hurrah. If you don’t find what you’re looking for in this list, search events near you.

Food and Beverage Events

1.Uncommon Grounds Harvest Dinner – Chicago, IL
Savor the last of rooftop weather. Enjoy a cocktail reception on the rooftop farm followed by a five-course dinner (paired with Greenstar beer, Illinois’ first certified organic brewery) at Uncommon Ground Devon.

2. Staycation Social Dinner
It’s a well-known fact that “everyone” leaves New York for the holiday weekend. So don’t. Instead, enjoy a relatively empty Manhattan and socialize at this special Tribeca’s Kitchen staycation dinner.

Shows & Theater

3. Golden Girls Lost Episodes – Chicago, IL
The Golden Girls never get old. Dorthy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia are back on stage in the Lost Episodes. Enjoy this parody, featuring original scripts “that go where they couldn’t go on television.”

4. I Saw You – Real Personal Ads – Chicago, IL
Personal ads and missed connection tributes are sometimes funny, sometimes, poetic, always best shared. Hear them read aloud at this comedy show, the perfect show if your summer romance went awry or if you’re a lone heart looking for solace in a crowd.

5. Tom Gun – Live – Los Angeles, CA
You know what makes summer feel like summer? 80’s movies. At this event, three (yes three) Tom Cruise fans will be chosen from the audience to read Cruise’s classic Top Gun lines off of cue cards. Come dressed as your favorite Tom from any point in his career. Tickets include a taco meal.

Tours 6

6. Fun Things to Do in Hollywood Tour – Los Angeles, CA
Head off of the star-studded beaten path and sample Hollywood tacos and pizza, while hearing celebrity stories and learning about historic architecture. Customer-voted one of the best tours to take in Hollywood.

Miscellaneous

7. Goat Yoga – Paulsbo, Washington
Need peace of mind? How about yoga with kids? When we say kids, we mean kids, as in goats and they’ve practiced for this event for months. After the yoga, you’ll have 45 minutes to just hang out and pet the limber ruminants.

8. A Magicienne Among the Spirits – New York, NY
Witness Magicienne Belinda Sinclair’s miracles in her own secret “conjuring” room. This is a thrilling, two-and-a-half hour journey into the New York a century prior, a time when sorceresses conjured the dead and mediums performed impossible feats of magic. If you still need convincing, read this New York Times article about Belinda Sinclair and her fascinating Hell’s Kitchen lair.

Music Events

9. Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival – Woodstown, NJ
You can never go wrong with live music. The Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival in Woodstown, New Jersey is one of the “oldest such events devoted to bluegrass music in the world.” This world-recognized 3-day festival draws bluegrass performers from around the world. And it’s a family affair, featuring a kid’s stage and plenty for the little ones to do. Campers welcome. Note: online sales ended, but you can still buy passes at the gate.

10. Johnny Cash Now Concert – Abingdon, VA
Take it back to ’68 with a Johnny Cash tribute band. You’ll hear both old songs and modern and there’s even a June Carter cameo.

Didn’t find your perfect event? Find hundreds of events on Brown Paper Tickets.

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Artist Ticket Picks: A Lou Reed Tribute, An iPhone Film Festival, A Bluegrass Christmas Musical and More!

297276-250Welcome to this week’s Artist Ticket Picks! The Artist Ticket program gives our customers a way to donate to causes that we care about.

If you’re an event producer, you can allow your ticket buyers to purchase limited-edition tickets printed with original artwork in your event settings. The ticket buyer will pay a small, additional charge of $0.25 and receive a limited edition, collectible ticket imprinted with original artwork. The current charity of our choosing will receive 100% of the additional charge. Physical tickets must be enabled on the event.

If you’re a ticket buyer, you can check to see if the limited edition ticket is available to you at the beginning of the ticket checkout process or by visiting the Artist Ticket page. You receive a small piece of collectible art and support a valuable cause just by checking the box in the Artist Ticket widget when you’re purchasing your tickets!

See a full list of events carrying the tickets on the Artist Ticket page, as well as find out more about the beneficiary for the current run of Artist Tickets.

So, without further ado, here are this week’s Artist Ticket picks:

Friday, November 29 I A Tribute to Lou Reed and the Velvet UndergroundSeattle, Washington   Almost a month ago, we lost a seminal force in rock music: Lou Reed. We paid our own tribute to Lou here on the blog but tributes to Lou and his music with the Velvet Underground and solo are starting to pop up all over the country. This one at Columbia City Theater promises to be especially good with performances by Hounds of the Wild Hunt (Acoustic), Gibraltar, Bigfoot Wallace, Ruler, Ian and Rian of Invisible Shivers, Kevin Sur and guests.

Head out and pay tribute to a true pioneer in the world of rock and roll.

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The Mid-Week Beat: The Varied Sounds of Folk Music Today

lomax-jp-1-popup1Music is as old as civilization itself. From Day One people have been banging on drums, strumming strings and blowing through hollowed out plants, bones and whatever else they could find. Thousands of styles of music have been born from cultures all over the world. They speak to the heartbeat of the people, the environment, the times.

“Folk Music” as a genre is an attempt to classify all these varied musical cultural traditions under one over-arching banner. Most American’s think of the likes of Woody Guthrie (pictured), Pete Seeger, early Bob Dylan or Joan Baez, which was decidedly “American” folk music but, the genre continues to thrive. Many artists around the country keep the fire alive by offering their own interpretations to “folk” as a genre but modern day folk artists tend to incorporate more global influences than their predecessors in the 1950s and 60s. Which makes sense as American culture becomes increasingly multi-cultural.

This week’s Midweek Beat explores three folk acts that are currently haunting the gardens and bars, concert halls and pubs of modern day America.

Simple Gifts

simple giftsWho or what is Simple Gifts?

Simple Gifts is two women and twelve instruments that draw upon an impressive variety of ethnic folk styles. Simple Gifts is all tuned up and ready to go TONIGHT, Wednesday, May 15, for their gig in Warsaw, New York.

Get in the mood for lively Irish jigs, down home American reels, hard-driving Klezmer frailachs and haunting gypsy melodies. But it doesn’t stop there. The ladies will also be spicing it up with the distinctive rhythms of Balkan dance music, the lush sounds of Scandinavian twin fiddling, and original compositions written in traditional styles.

Combining tradition, culture and innovation, Simple Gifts creates some of the finest arrangements in folk music today. Listen closely as a swing fiddle creeps into a Romanian dance, spoons show up in an Irish reel and the concertina ventures far beyond styles considered traditional for that instrument.

Based in the hills of central Pennsylvania, Simple Gifts plays an amazing array of instruments, sounds and styles that borrow from folk traditions from around the world.


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