Nashville Responds: A Tangible Change, a benefit for victims of Hurricane Katrina, comes to North Nashville courtesy of sponsors Amun Ra Theatre, Tri-Stage Ebony Network, Village Cultural Arts Center, Family Empowerment Services and Urban Professionals. Former Titans great Eddie George and Channel 2 sports reporter John Dwyer serve as hosts, with performers including multi-platinum-selling vocal group S.W.V., songwriter Marcus Hummon, local actor and Amun Ra artistic director Jeff Obafemi Carr, New Orleans spoken-word artist Asali Devan, poet Stephanie Pruitt, the Village Drum and Dance Ensemble and others. Admission is free, but audience members are expected to contribute personal items that will be distributed to the disaster area. The list includes clothing, shoes, bottles of water, diapers, aspirin, vitamins, toiletries of all kinds, portable radios, batteries, plastic eating utensils, air mattresses, bedding, garbage bags, cleaning supplies, candles and books. The event takes place 6-8 p.m. Sept. 9 at John Henry’s Restaurant, 1036 Jefferson St. For more information, phone 506-5988. —Martin Brady • Just last weekend, the Secret Show Series, a group of recent Watkins graduates, inaugurated its new space at 310 Chestnut St. with a group show titled “Dr. Millard Fillmore.” That show’s down, and they’re ready to keep ’em coming. The next one opens this Saturday, featuring work by Nashville artist Erin Hewgley before she leaves town for Ohio State, where she’ll be earning a master’s in studio art. Titled “Beautiful and Grotesque,” the show features work that uses the human form—not to mention hair and teeth—to engage some basic but profound human questions. There’ll be an opening 7-10 p.m. Saturday, but unlike previous Secret Shows, this one will be up for a couple weeks, through Sept. 29. For more info, visit www.secretshowseries.com. And for folks who can’t get enough of the gallery’s cool industrial space—it used to be a record pressing plant—there’ll be a show Sunday night featuring the Finnish band Circle, who meld metal, Krautrock and other styles into a potent and distinctive sound. For more info on that show, see the this week's Critics’ Picks. • To the list of Nashville acts who get more love abroad than in their hometown—think Swan Dive, Dan Baird, the Cherry Blossoms—add Doug Hoekstra, who’s built a career as an independent artist through incessant gigging and a well-oiled home PR apparatus. Small wonder his recent EP Six Songs begins with the line, “We’ve been so far under the radar/ We’ve been crawling on the ocean floor.” Though he lives here with his wife Molly and young son Judah, he performs locally only a few times a year—something that’s evident on his new CD Su Casa, Mi Casa, an “official live bootleg” drawn primarily from venues as distant as Ann Arbor, Mich., and Germany. Though it’s made up of DAT, mini-disc and radio recordings that stretch back eight years, there’s no audible passage of time on Su Casa, Mi Casa—just Hoekstra’s deadpan wit and wispy murmur, well served by the intimate settings, and the piercing detail of character sketches like “Giving Up Smoking,” a son’s poignant memory of his dad’s decision to quit the habit. He’ll perform songs from Su Casa and new material from the rockier, more barbed Six Songs 9 p.m. Friday at the Five Spot in a showcase for his label WingDing Records. He’ll be joined by WingDing co-founder George Marinelli and artists Joe Croker and Charlie Degenhart, with support from bassist Mark Prentice and drummer Vinnie Santoro. For more information, see www.wingdingrecords.com.
