Good news! Radiohead’s finally playing in Middle Tennessee, along with world music, rap and jazz acts who rarely if ever play Nashville. Bad news: they’re all playing this weekend in a pasture in Coffee County—and if you don’t have a ticket to this weekend’s sold-out Bonnaroo, it sucks to be you. But even if you’re left at home gnashing your teeth, you have to admit that Bonnaroo’s fifth anniversary lineup is one-stop shopping for music lovers—an 11-stage, live-band issue of Paste magazine. At this point, we’ll assume no one needs to be told to see Bright Eyes (4 p.m. Friday), Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers (8:30 p.m. Friday), Beck (5:30 p.m. Saturday) or Elvis Costello & the Imposters with Crescent City R&B great Allen Toussaint (3 p.m. Saturday)—especially on the first Costello tour to skip the Ryman in a decade. So take the opportunity at this bounteous festival to wander and sample. That’ll spare you the agony of arriving Thursday and choosing among E Street marauders Marah, percolating Africa-to-Asheville ensemble Toubab Krewe and riotous Japanese headbangers Electric Eel Shock—all slammed opposite each other in the same midnight slot. From there, the choices don’t get easier. Make sure you see at least a few songs by veteran soul powerhouse Bettye LaVette (12:30 p.m. Friday), even if you must duck out for the neo-cabaret stylings of Devotchka (12:45 p.m.) or Andrew Bird (1 p.m.). Maybe that’ll give you time to catch the closing number by Corn Mo (1:15 p.m.), a husky Texan who sings about Gary Busey and lollipops in a voice like Meat Loaf on helium. For a head-snapping culture clash, check out reggae titans Steel Pulse (3 p.m.), then watch Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder (5:15 p.m.) leave the hacky-sack crowd agape with their Metallica-speed bluegrass. Sometime between the Les Claypool-Stewart Copeland-Trey Anastasio supergroup Oysterhead (5:30 p.m.) and Death Cab for Cutie (6:15 p.m.), try to catch Cat Power & the Memphis Rhythm Band (6 p.m.), if just for her crack band of Al Green backup stalwarts. Greet Saturday with midnight slots by the mighty Preservation Hall Jazz Band, My Morning Jacket and red-hot Chicago rapper Common with Lyrics Born and Blackalicious. For your wake-up call, around the crack of noon, there’s 22-year-old blues-rock sensation Grace Potter & the Nocturnals (12:15 p.m.), the cooing Britpop birds of The Magic Numbers (12:30 p.m.) and the legendary Neville Brothers (12:30 p.m.), with Swedish psychedelia from Dungen (1 p.m.) for late risers. Even if you think lead singer Alec Ounsworth sounds like the B-52’s Fred Schneider with his balls in a vise, you’ve gotta admit Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (2:30 p.m. Saturday) have come a long way from The Basement. They’re up against not only Costello but jazz guitarist Bill Frisell (2 p.m.) and one of the weekend’s must-see acts, Amadou & Mariam (3:30 p.m.), the blind husband-and-wife duo from Mali whose propulsive tropical pop could outheat the sun. Bust out the bongs for cannabis-centric rappers Cypress Hill (6:15 p.m.), if you haven’t used up your stash during Blues Traveler (5:15 p.m.) or Medeski Martin & Wood (5:30 p.m.). Everything pretty much shuts down opposite Radiohead (8:30 p.m. Saturday), since no one wants to play to an audience of crickets and gnats. But Dr. John, the man who gave Bonnaroo its name, lets les bon temps roulez on a fuck-Katrina midnight bill with the Rebirth Brass Band and Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk. They’re opposite the festival’s all-star Superjam and the deviant pairing of the X-rated Bindlestiff Family Cirkus and Threepenny Opera refugees The Dresden Dolls, followed at 3:30 a.m. by a trance-inducing set from superstar British DJ Sasha. In lieu of going to church, just catch Sunday’s noon set by inexplicably hot Hassidic rapper Matisyahu, then prepare for the festival’s most unlikely religious experience: a set by Nashville phenoms Be Your Own Pet (1:25 p.m.), whose apocalyptic new LP should shut up their haters. After that, up against Dobro virtuoso Jerry Douglas (2 p.m.) and Soul Coughing frontman Mike Doughty (2:30 p.m.), step, crawl or leap over anyone in your path to see a rare U.S. appearance by the Refugee All-Stars of Sierra Leone (2 p.m.), whose lilting music surmounts a background of refugee camps and wartime atrocities. Another can’t-miss is British rapper Mike Skinner, a.k.a. The Streets (3:15 p.m.), whose skittery, scalpel-sharp flow suggests the spawn of Eminem and Billy Bragg. Refusing to go quietly into that good night, Bonnaroo winds down Sunday with late-afternoon sets by Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks (4 p.m.) and Son Volt (3:30 p.m.), followed by the avant-punk shredding of Sonic Youth at 6 p.m. Against them, offering an object lesson in maturing gracefully, are Steve Earle (5:30 p.m.) and Bonnie Raitt (6:15 p.m.), whose breezy blues is cool comfort for a sweaty summer night. Founding Grateful Dead member Phil Lesh & Friends (8:30 p.m.; see the related pick for his Tuesday Ryman show) brings the festival full circle to its utopian counterculture roots—capping a weekend of all-inclusive, genre-melting music that marks Bonnaroo as the most ambitious and purposeful five-year-old in the world.  SOLD OUT. Manchester —JIM RIDLEY MUSIC THURSDAY, 15TH THE SPOKE FEAT. J.C., JMC, LOW PRO AND CHARLIE DUCKETS Hunnedspoke Entertainment sponsors an urban music showcase featuring some of Ca$hville’s up-and-coming talents. Justin “J.C.” Crowder delivers smoothed-out contemporary R&B on his debut LP All of Me. It’s full of middling ballads, yet J.C. is a fine singer and the record vibrates with energy during his more up-tempo dance tracks. JMC released his debut, Universitality, this year as well. With his long shaggy hair and thrift-store clothes one might mistake him for Ted Nugent’s younger brother, however he’s a MC with a sly wit and a great stage presence. He had the audience pumped during a short set at last weekend’s Planet of the Drums show. Low Pro and Charlie Duckets are two rap acts expert in booming Dirty South hip-hop. The Bar Car —MARK MAYS THE SPINTO BAND Delaware is one of those fake states. You never meet anyone from Delaware, hear stories about crazy Delaware natives or taste any of that down home Delaware cookin’. For all we know, the place might be only a legend, like Atlantis or North Dakota, except for one thing: The Spinto Band calls the tiny state home. But even they cannot cite a Delaware sound. Their infectious, all-American indie pop could place them anywhere, and their roots reach all the way to an attic in the Mississippi Delta, where band member Nick Krill found song lyrics written by his guitarist grandfather, Roy Spinto, and used them for one of the band’s first songs. Ten years later, The Spinto Band boasts six members, seven self-released albums, multiple visits to Nashville’s Alex the Great Studios and one Bar/None release, 2005’s Nice and Nicely Done. The record contains 37 minutes of perfectly crafted pop songs—not too rough, not to smooth, with catchy beats and lyrics more poignant than the usual yeah-yeah-yeah’s rock gets away with. The band shares the stage with Dr. Dog and The Lovely Feathers. Mercy Lounge —CLAIRE SUDDATH JOHN MCEUEN If Gram Parsons was the country-rock equivalent of Chet Baker, then multi-instrumentalist John McEuen is the Dizzy Gillespie. A founding member of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, McEuen set a high standard of musicianship for those who would follow in the genre, and he also taught Steve Martin how to play the banjo. The NGDB’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken was the first album by a non-country band to be well received on Music Row, and McEuen’s musical knowledge and instrumental prowess made the difference. McEuen preserves the folk legacy while expanding the vernacular that has given rise to artists like Bela Fleck and the Dixie Chicks. (www.johnmceuen.com) Station Inn —COLLIN WADE MONK MAMMATUS Wit goes a long way when you wade in the dangerous, cliché-infested waters of psychedelic stoner metal with a heavy dose of prog. Mammatus, a four-piece from Corralitos, Calif., have the good sense to figure that you might as well embrace the clichés rather than fight them, and as such they don’t try to hide their influences, which range from Sabbath to Hawkwind. That alone should set them apart, but the fact that they’re named after a massive cloud and describe their sound as “the final war between amps and sea creatures” belies an even greater distinction from the rest of the stoner rock sheep—their sense of humor. Grand Palace —SABY REYES-KULKARNI FRIDAY, 16TH LATINO SAINT W/ SAM RHANSUM, BREED AND THE AFRODIZIAKS Latino Saint is one of Nashville’s hardest-working hustlers in the rap music scene. He produces records, promotes other artists and has even worked in local film productions. More importantly, he’s always working on live performances, a model other local MCs should follow. Saint’s music ranges from slick R&B styled rap to crunked-up club bangers. While fellow act Breed may share Saint’s tastes for club bangers, his mindset seems geared towards clubs of the strip variety. Sam Rhansum is a fast-rising local talent with a pimp’s oversized confidence and ear for tight beats. He’s copped a coveted spot on a sports video game soundtrack—a gold mine for a rap artist. The Afrodiziaks stand out on this bill as having the most interesting sound, taking cues from Andre’ 3000 and Cee-Lo, expanding the Dirty South’s call-and-response rapping with ’80’s dance-pop flourishes. Springwater —MARK MAYS THE PLIMSOULS One of the great short-lived garage-pop bands of the ’80s, The Plimsouls are best known for the urgent “A Million Miles Away,” which found an audience through the cult film Valley Girl. But fans will attest that there are a dozen or so others in the Plimsouls’ catalog just as worthy. Vagabond singer-songwriter Peter Case reunites his old rock band from time to time—melodic guitar-pop obsessives should check out the 1998 one-off reunion disc Kool Trash—but venturing out across Middle America is a rarity. Make sure Case finds time to include his new protest tune, “Let’s Turn This Thing Around.” Nashville’s own power-pop heroes, Bill Lloyd and Steve Allen (the latter formerly headed The Plimsouls’ L.A. peers 20/20), open. Mercy Lounge —MICHAEL McCALL SATURDAY, 17TH METAL HEARTS Like other partially mechanized acts such as Zero 7 and Imogen Heap, Metal Hearts prove that drum machines only suck when they’re trying to sound like real drums. Sans bass guitar, the rhythm tracks on the Baltimore band’s latest, Socialize, are so whimsical and appropriate that it’s hard to imagine a human doing a better job. Songs such as “Disappeared” click along without distracting tom fills and cymbal work, their linear, cheesy patterns humanized by the occasional shaking of a tambourine. Touches of cello, saxophone and unaffected guitar also flesh out the bone-dry tracks, which are the work of engineer and programmer Sam Leiber. Along with Leiber, songwriters (and childhood enemies) Anar Badalov and Flora Wolpert Checkoff complete the group; their unhurried verses, though often jaded and melancholy, never sink into tedious self-reflection. ( www.metalheartsmusic.com ) Rcktwn ––PAUL V. GRIFFITH THE SECRET SERVICE Steve Selvidge must be well acquainted with the work of Foghat, Thin Lizzy and Montrose, even though his former group, Big Ass Truck, did little to reveal the breadth of his knowledge. The Secret Service, formed by Selvidge and singer-songwriter Justice Naczycz, resurrects the spirit of ’70’s rock from the former no-man’s-land between rock ’n’ roll and metal, where a pre-Van Halen Sammy Hagar is royalty and Poison would get a collective beat-down for looking like girls. But just because The Secret Service rarely resort to a fourth chord and seem anti-introspective does not make for dumb music. Selvidge and company tone down the self-indulgence and pretension, but pile the boogie on by the truckload. ( www.myspace.com/theserviceisspectacular ) The Basement —COLLIN WADE MONK SUNDAY, 18TH THE MAGIC NUMBERS A Brit-indie anagram of sonic bubblegum songwriting and enough syrupy harmonics to rival Mrs. Butterworth, The Magic Numbers have translated their across-the-pond success into a melodic love-in for adult-rock radio programmers. Their infectiously hoot-heavy single “Love Me Like You” has garnered de rigueur Mamas and the Papas comparisons from nostalgic music journalists. While their never-endingly sunny lyrical content can sometimes be the equivalent of a beach-pop-music coloring book, The Magic Numbers’ mastering of aesthetic soundscaping at a young age leaves quibbles about their lullaby schmaltz null and void. ( www.themagicnumbers.net ) 3rd & Lindsley —JOEY HOOD GOMEZ Gomez was a minor player in the Britpop invasion of the late ’90’s, having wowed a few critics with their first record Bring it On that featured the single “Get Myself Arrested,” a jangly blues tune with the aura of a whimsical late night jam session. Gomez played a loosely wound rock that, unlike their Beatles-inspired peers, sounded like drunken sailors armed with acoustic guitars playing lost Zeppelin B-sides, with all the charm the comparison implies. The band’s sound evolved through trying on several styles, keeping the echoes of the blues while drawing inspiration from trip-hop, dub and electronica. Their latest LP How We Operate is the culmination of all that experimentation, resulting in Gomez finding their voice. But the liquor-soaked blues still creeps in, as with the dour country-rock of “Don’t Make Me Laugh,” a song perhaps too perfect for a late night in Nashville. ( www.gomez.co.uk ) 3rd & Lindsley —MARK MAYS WILL DOWNING Following in the footsteps of his idol Luther Vandross, Downing straddles the line between contemporary R&B balladry and smooth jazz. Typically, he’ll get airplay on “WAVE” stations by finding just the right torch songs from the ’70’s or early ’80’s to work up in his rich, spacious baritone. With the best adult-contemporary studio backing, he can make listeners hear “Superstar,” “I Go Crazy” and “Crazy Love” in anything but a frenzied mode. What’s likely to strike your ear is more akin to a tribute, as if these pop mainstays deserve to be sung with just enough mellow gravity to hold them down for another decade. When his calculated studi o sound goes outdoors, the audience might demand—and get—a bit more of a rising tide in the form of Downing’s up-front presence and his backing band’s resourcefulness on stage. (www.willdowning.com) Nashville Shores —BILL LEVINE MONDAY, 19TH TEDDY THOMPSON Thompson opens his smartly penetrating second album, Separate Ways, with a song illustrating how fame can be simultaneously alluring and repulsive. “I want to be a huge star who hangs out in hotel bars / I want to wake up at noon in somebody else’s room,” he begins, his internal rhymes capturing both the power and loneliness unique to making it big. Then, as slowly and deliberately as he can, he breathes, “I want to shine so bright it hurts.” The second-generation singer-songwriter fills his songs with similarly provocative ideas and images, sharing his father Richard Thompson’s skill at wry insightfulness and ruthless honesty. But the 30-year-old London-born American resident is his own man, too, constructing melodies as dryly potent as a martini and theatrically imaginative tunes. Live, he offers a non-plussed, non-pushy intelligence that’s the antithesis to the hyperactive, nervously self-conscious performance style of most of his peers. 3rd & Lindsley —MICHAEL McCALL TUESDAY, 20TH PHIL LESH & FRIENDS During the Grateful Dead’s 30-year run, Phil Lesh’s singular bass playing served as the foil to Jerry Garcia’s serpentine guitar lines, the two weaving around each other like a musical double helix. The repetitive bass line, a staple of most rock ’n’ roll, never held sway in the Dead camp—in fact, Lesh’s rumbling improvisations were as crucial to the group’s sound as were Garcia’s twisted riffs. There’s probably never been a bass player more beloved by his band’s fans—many Deadheads wanted to get their tickets on the “Phil side” of the venue, where his bass playing was most audible. His own band, Phil Lesh & Friends, features a revolving cast of luminaries from the rock and jazz worlds. The current lineup looks especially enticing, with guitarists John Scofield (one of the most inventive and prolific jazz guitarists alive) and Larry Campbell (a longtime member of Bob Dylan’s band), vocalist Joan Osborne, keyboardist Rob Barraco and drummer John Molo. Many Deadheads find Phil & Friends to be the best Dead offshoot of the post-Jerry era, and hearing Scofield’s angular musings applied to the Dead catalog promises to be a riot. Ryman Auditorium —JACK SILVERMAN WEDNESDAY, 21ST UNCLE EARL The Uncle Earl gals are a fetching bunch, but while a realistic observer might attribute some of the buzz garnered by their Rounder debut, She Waits For Night, to the quintet’s comeliness, the fact remains that there’s a healthy dose of musical substance here. Fiddler Rayna Gellert’s an especially strong supplier, with a solid grounding in old-time styles and a bow arm that just won’t quit. But all of the members pull their own weight, and there’s even talent to spare, with bassist Sharon Gilchrist (who pulls double duty as Peter Rowan’s mandolinist) yet to be fully integrated in the group. Stylistically, Uncle Earl ranges from punctilious old-time fiddle music to moody originals, and whatever scholastic or excessively emotive tendencies they might have are more than offset by a sometimes ribald but always boisterous hilarity. If old-time string band music is enjoying a new revival among younger listeners, Uncle Earl deserves more than a bit of the credit. Station Inn —JON WEISBERGER UNCLE EARL The Uncle Earl gals are a fetching bunch, but while a realistic observer might attribute some of the buzz garnered by their Rounder debut, She Waits For Night, to the quintet’s comeliness, the fact remains that there’s a healthy dose of musical substance here. Fiddler Rayna Gellert’s an especially strong supplier, with a solid grounding in old-time styles and a bow arm that just won’t quit. But all of the members pull their own weight, and there’s even talent to spare, with bassist Sharon Gilchrist (who pulls double duty as Peter Rowan’s mandolinist) yet to be fully integrated in the group. Stylistically, Uncle Earl ranges from punctilious old-time fiddle music to moody originals, and whatever scholastic or excessively emotive tendencies they might have are more than offset by a sometimes ribald but always boisterous hilarity. If old-time string band music is enjoying a new revival among younger listeners, Uncle Earl deserves more than a bit of the credit. Station Inn —JON WEISBERGERWARPED TOUR Though the inked-and-pierced throngs that flock to this annual punk-rock road show probably don’t include many folks given to clipping coupons, the Warped Tour offers one of the best values in music today: dozens of bands spread over several stages for an entrance fee of less than 25 bucks. This summer’s package offers the typical blend of good, bad and ugly, but the Warped experience is less about catching your favorite groups than it is about soaking in the atmosphere, a pungent swirl of teenage alienation, booth-born activism and good old mosh-pit misbehavior; the key to a swell time is doing away with a game plan and savoring the unexpected. That said, this year’s must-sees include Florida folk-punks Against Me!, touring in advance of their 2007 major-label debut; Every Time I Die, a bunch of sarcastic metalcore brats from upstate New York; old-school garage babe Joan Jett, as sharp as she’s been in 20 years; New Jersey screamo scholars Thursday; Christian emo-metal dudes Underoath; ancient skate punks NOFX; and recently reunited noise-rock veterans Helmet, whose frontman Page Hamilton is old enough to have fathered plenty of the kids who’ll watch him play. ( www.warpedtour.com ) Starwood Amphitheatre —MIKAEL WOOD CLASSICAL NASHVILLE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA SUMMER FESTIVAL Summer’s here and the time is right for pre-concert picnicking in and around the War Memorial. What was formerly the NSO’s Summer Beethoven Festival has been re-christened to reflect its broadened program. In this year’s festival, running through July 8, the arch-Romantic composer’s symphonies will be counterpointed by a few standard and surprising selections from the Mozart canon. This weekend, guest conductor and pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn will lead the Symphony in Mozart’s unconventional Serenade No. 12, composed in a minor key with somber, complex movements that rub against the grain of this conventionally diverting genre. After the conductor takes the featured solo role on Mozart’s more typically operatic Piano Concerto in B Flat, the second half of the concert will turn to the pastoral voice of Beethoven in his Fourth Symphony, which was commissioned in 1806 while he was in the process of writing the monumental Fifth. Here, a gracious string melody is interspersed with multiple wind instruments trading parts on the folkish secondary theme. ( www.nashvillesymphony.org ) War Memorial Auditorium —BILL LEVINE DANCE TALES AT TWILIGHT The busy Chinese Arts Alliance of Nashville (CAAN) promotes Asian culture and offers opportunities for performers of diverse backgrounds, including local children and adults as well as new immigrants from Taiwan, India and China. This free program, under the direction of Jen-Jen Lin, will present colorful, traditionally inspired pieces—including “Long Scarf Dance,” “Girls from the Village,” “Happy Melody” and “Double Swords Dance”—followed by an exhibition by the CAAN’s Chinese Lion Dance Team. The hour-long, family-friendly event includes an interactive workshop designed to instruct the audience on the specific movements of Chinese dance. Show time is 7 p.m. June 16 at the Bellevue Red Caboose Amphitheater (656 Colice Jeanne Road). For more information, e-mail jojo_ChineseArts@comcast.net or visit www.ChineseArtsAlliance.org. —MARTIN BRADY THEATER MY SECRET WEAPON Rhubarb Theatre producer/director Julie Alexander recently found herself in an interesting but potentially anxious situation: she had space booked at the Darkhorse Theater, but no play to produce. Then, by chance, she met Carol Caldwell at the Nashville Film Festival. Caldwell, a Nashville native who’d recently returned to town after serious stints as a journalist in New York and Atlanta and as a Los Angeles-based screenwriter, mentioned that she had a dramatic idea she’d been toying with. A scant six weeks later, Caldwell completed this original script, which attempts to get inside the minds of our most recent first ladies—Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush. Actress Trish Moalla has been tapped for the tour de force one-woman performance, striving not so much to capture anyone’s exact physical persona, but more to provide insight into personalities, feelings and thought processes. Performed June 16-24. For tickets and reservations, phone 386-3551. —MARTIN BRADY THE MAGIC HAT SUMMER VARIETY SHOW Since 1995, the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus has kept alive the traditions of vaudeville, burlesque and sideshow acts. The company, under the guidance of co-founders Stephanie Monseu and Keith Nelson, has toured extensively to theaters, clubs, colleges and festivals across the country, and gained favor with critics with its New York City performances, which have rekindled the spirit of vaudeville in Times Square. This edition features a classic sampling of what the company does best: original and wide-ranging “variety arts,” which can encompass anything from clownish pratfalls, fire magic and sword-swallowing to plate-spinning, a precision bullwhipping demonstration and live accordion music. Performances are June 19-20 at the Darkhorse Theater, 297-7113. —MARTIN BRADY HOT L BALTIMORE Lanford Wilson’s play about the residents of a dilapidated old hotel opened in New York in 1973, successfully helping to launch the Circle Repertory Company and setting an Off-Broadway record with 1,166 performances. After garnering plenty of important awards and making Wilson a household theatrical name, the play was adapted in 1975 into an ABC-TV sitcom produced by Norman Lear, scoring high points for craft but eluding a wide audience. Here, the hotel’s denizens mill about the lobby, engaging in a series of colorful conversations, all of them forced to contemplate uncertain futures in the face of the hotel’s imminent demolition. The production is under the direction of Bob Roberts, who successfully staged the one-acts Line and Adaptation at Bongo After Hours Theatre two seasons ago. Hot L Baltimore runs through June 18 at the Murfreesboro Little Theatre. For tickets and information, phone 893-9825. —MARTIN BRADY THE BALD SOPRANO Out Front Productions concludes its two-weekend performance of this classic theater piece by Eugene Ionesco with shows June 15-17 at the Center for the Arts in Murfreesboro. Ionesco originally set out to concoct this “anti-play,” or parody, in order to express his own distressing belief that human discourse had descended at last into the no-man’s land of empty platitudes and self-evident truisms. Yet, after receiving its initial Paris production in 1950, the play evolved into something to be enacted with utmost seriousness, à la Ibsen, eventually claiming its place as a seminal work in the theater of the absurd. Despite its cultural importance, The Bald Soprano is rarely done around Nashville, so this one might be worth a serious look. For tickets, phone 904-ARTS. —MARTIN BRADY ART WES SHERMAN: “RECYLCING THE HISTORY OF PAINTING” Painter Wes Sherman, based in the New York area but a Tennessee native, is headed back to the state to serve as visiting artist at Lipscomb in 2007. He is also a gallery artist at The Arts Company, and his latest show there features a series of abstract paintings derived from “natural and body landscapes” by Old Master painters. His genial abstractions reflect key details of their sources, like color tones, light/dark contrasts, or shapes and gestures. The Arts Company’s upstairs spaces will showcase nude sketches by some of the gallery artists. The show opens with a reception, from 2 to 6 p.m. June 17. —DAVID MADDOX THE THIRD THURSDAY GALLERY CRAWL This one-night gallery crawl features stops at some of our city’s most intriguing viewing spaces: The Art House, Plowhaus, The Walnut Exchange Gallery, Art & Invention Gallery & Allegria. These eclectic exhibition spaces will display work from a variety of artists from diverse backgrounds and regions. Whether you are pulled more toward the fine arts or commercially focused spaces, this event should be able to satisfy your artistic tastes. Admission is free. A shuttle will run between the various galleries; passe can be purchased for $20. For information, call 262-2089. The event runs from 6 to 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 15. —ARMON MEANS AMERICAN ARTISAN FESTIVAL IN THE PARK The 36th installment of this Nashville tradition will take place over Father’s Day weekend this year. Featuring more than 160 artisans specializing in glass, jewelry, painting, furniture, baskets, clay, wood and metal, the family-friendly event includes live music, food and activities for the kids. Determined to keep the festival fresh and interesting, American Artisan has invited 25 new craft artists to the event, which benefits Gilda’s Club through support from the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and the Tennessee Breast Cancer Coalition. This don’t-miss springtime happening takes place June 16-18 in Centennial Park; hours are noon to 7 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. —JOE NOLAN "THE ART OF RECOVERY" According to the 1998 National Household Survey on Teen Drug Abuse, nearly 10 percent of teens between the ages of 12 and 17 use illegal drugs. This exhibit features works by Community High School students recovering from drug and alcohol addictions, and represents a visual strategy in the fight against teenage substance abuse­­: art-making as therapy, as a healthy way to process the turbulent adolescent emotions and experiences that sometimes fuel addiction problems. “Art of Recovery” will be on view at the Thompson Lane Branch Library, 380 Thompson Lane, from June 19 to 30. An artist reception will be held from 2 to 3 p.m. June 19.—ARMON MEANS BOOKS MICHAEL KOSSER Kosser’s book, How Nashville Became Music City, U.S.A., traces our town’s evolution from a slightly important river port into the country music capital of the world. Using first-person accounts, the book explores the musical, cultural and geographical forces that conspired to turn two nondescript Nashville avenues into the center of a $6.4 billion industry. Included are sections on Owen Bradley’s Quonset hut (a corrugated metal building that, during the ’50s, was Music Row’s first established recording studio) and a discussion of The Everly Brothers’ and Elvis Presley’s effect on traditional country music. Though Kosser’s book gives an insider’s view, it doesn’t shy away from debates like the latter, which still resonate down on the Row. Kosser discusses and signs How Nashville Became Music City U.S.A. at Davis-Kidd Booksellers at 6 p.m. June 19. Call 385-2645 for more information. —PAUL V. GRIFFITH FILM DISTRICT B13 This martial-arts knockout is the definition of a water-cooler movie—if you see this on Saturday, you’ll be standing around Monday morning telling everyone, “Holy crap, the dude runs horizontally across the face of a building!” David Belle, founder of the extreme sport known as parkour, and veteran stuntman Cyril Raffaelli star in this warp-speed futuristic action thriller from the pen of La Femme Nikita creator Luc Besson. Yes, it’s French; yes, it’s subtitled—and no, you won’t need them. It opens Friday at the Belcourt, where A Prairie Home Companion continues to break every box-office record in the theater’s recent history.  —JIM RIDLEY FANAA Aamir Khan, leading man of the Bollywood blockbuster Lagaan, returns in this smash starring vehicle about a tour guide and a blind girl whose romance is thwarted by violence. In Hindi with English subtitles, the movie plays 3 p.m. Sunday only at the Belcourt; if you’ve never been to one of these afternoon screenings, arrive early—sellouts are common. —JIM RIDLEY THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT Am I wrong for thinking this third helping of hot rides and hotter babes looks awesome? (Brainless, sure, but awesome nonetheless.) Street racers turn skidding into an art form in Justin Lin’s action sequel, one of several major-studio releases opening Friday after a bone-dry spell. Also opening: the Jack Black wrestling comedy Nacho Libre (see the review in Film); the supernatural romance The Lake House with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock; and the feline lust-for-lasagna spectacle Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties. —JIM RIDLEY TELEVISION THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN A celebration of all-American iconoclasm in the face of regional prejudice, Taggart Siegel’s documentary profiles organic farmer John Peterson, a third-generation grower whose unconventional methods and wardrobe—he’s shown atop his tractor in a feather boa—made him a target for superstitious locals. A hit at the 2005 Nashville Film Festival, the film runs 8 p.m. Friday on NPT-Channel 8 as part of the Independent Lens series. —JIM RIDLEY