Events on Central

JD Nash gets a 45-minute Soundwave NM slot at Tractor Brewing's Wells Park taproom. That room can turn chatty fast, so a set this short rewards showing up on time and standing closer than your usual beer-run distance.

Opera performed up close inside the Albuquerque Museum, where the architecture and gallery spaces become part of the staging rather than just a backdrop. Museum admission covers it, which means you could wander the permanent collection beforehand and walk into a live operatic performance without buying a separate ticket. Old Town on a September evening...

The Bands of Enchantment festival closes out its run at the KiMo, a 1927 Pueblo Deco landmark on Central that is worth the visit on architectural merit alone before a single note plays. This particular listing covers the final night, starting at 10 p.m., so you are looking at a late set in one of...

Albuquerque Nuevo Teatro is stepping outside its usual theatrical programming for a late-night 80s dance party on the Central corridor. The theater format means a proper stage and sightlines you won't get in a typical bar setup, which tends to make the whole thing feel a little more like a show and a little less...

Galactic, the New Orleans funk band that has been making a legitimate case for themselves since the mid-90s, headlines this free outdoor festival on Central with Jelly Joseph in tow. The KiMo's exterior and the surrounding Downtown block create a genuinely good setting for this kind of show, and late September in Albuquerque usually cooperates...

Five acts across a late-night satellite slot for Bands of Enchantment, the festival that tends to use Insideout as an overflow room when the main stages are packed. That satellite designation matters: this is the crowd that either couldn't get into the headliner or knew exactly what they were doing by skipping it, and the...

The Isotopes host Salt Lake in a late-season Triple-A Pacific Coast League game at one of the better mid-level ballparks in the country, with sightlines that are genuinely good from almost every seat. A Friday night start at 6:35 local time means the Sandia Mountains are lit up behind right field for the first few...

Built To Spill, the Boise outfit that helped define what overdriven, melodically obsessive indie rock could be in the '90s, plays El Rey with local singer-songwriter Paul Schalda opening. El Rey's long room and solid sound system suit this band well, since their live sets tend to stretch and wander in ways that reward a...