Weekend Updates

After only four years, the Americana Music Association's annual convention has become the kind of must-attend music-industry gathering Nashville has attempted without success for two decades. Maybe it's because this grass-roots coalition of don't-call-it-alt-country champions has never wavered its focus on the music. Or, more likely, it's because the music is so good. For the duration of this year's convention, which runs through Saturday at the Nashville Convention Center, registrants can see and hear the likes of Steve Earle, Jason Ringenberg, Buddy Miller, Tony Joe White & Shelby Lynne, Dave Alvin, Delbert McClinton, Adrienne Young, and Nashville Scene Music Awards winner Mindy Smith.

What does this mean for you, the non-registrant? It means a weekend bounty of amazing showcase performances has fallen into your lap. Friday night's show at the Mercy Lounge climaxes with midnight sets by honkytonk heroes Billy Joe Shaver and Junior Brown, while Tres Chicas and Ray Wylie Hubbard hold court at 12th & Porter. On Saturday, try choosing among Asleep at the Wheel, BR5-49 and Aussie phenom Anne McCue at Mercy Lounge; Bruce Robison, Shawn Camp and Gurf Morlix at the Station Inn; or Arthur Godfrey, Jay Farrar, Bernie Leadon and Michelle Shocked at 12th & Porter.

Not that the good stuff's confined to the convention. At 3 p.m. Saturday, Grimey's hosts its second annual AMA Appreciation Party, featuring the triumphant Nashville return of Hayseed and performances by Otis Gibbs, Jimmy Ryan and Nels Andrews. The show is presented by Catamount Records, the hardest-working people in showbiz. (Catamount also hosts a midnight screening Friday of the locally produced feature Blackbirds & Blazersat the Radio Café.)

Rest up for the monthly Alt-Country Hoedown at The End, starting at 9:30 p.m. with Suzette & the Neon Angels and featuring Stacie Collins, CADDLE, and the new band from Scorchers drummer Perry Baggs, the Shotgun Club. Meanwhile, at Blue Sky Court, the all-star assemblage known as Sin City promises performers such as Kim Richey, Jim Lauderdale and Cowboy Jack Clement. For more information on the convention, see http://www.americanamusic.org.

♦ It's good clean family fun at the Belcourt this weekend. Make that outside the Belcourt, which hosts its first Belcourt Drive-In Sit-In 6:15 p.m. Saturday in its parking lot. Projected on the outside wall will be classic cartoons and shorts, followed by Hitchcock's The 39 Steps at 7 p.m. and Roger Corman's original The Little Shop of Horrors at 9. Projected inside will be John Waters' new NC-17 comedy A Dirty Shame, which opens today and amounts to an encyclopedia of perversions. We can only hope someone will mix up the reels. The drive-in night is free and open to everyone; bring lawn chairs and snack on Cajun chow from Bro's.

♦ Of course, if you're a drive-in purist, you can always make the 45-minute haul to Watertown's Stardust Drive-In, which has changed its showtimes to reflect the season. This week's attraction is the double bill you've been waiting for, Without a Paddle and Collateral. The real attraction, though, is the concession stand's surprisingly awesome Philly cheese steak, which is worth the hell you'll go through to get one during the drive-in's mobbed weekend shows. For extra entertainment value, try catching the bullfrogs that periodically hop through the lot from the neighboring field. See www.stardustdrivein.com for more information.

♦ The Belcourt takes an excursion this week in India's other celluloid export, Telugu-language cinema. (That's "Tollywood" to you, bub.) Gudumba Shankar, a musical action comedy about a streetwise gadabout whose new love insists on plotting her life by astrological charts. The feature screens one time only, in unsubtitled Telugu, 3:30 p.m. Sunday.

—Jim Ridley