AT STICKY FINGERZ: Australia's the bluehouse combine humor, harmony and acoustin guitar.

2nd Place Cafe is playing host to a Sharefest concert on Friday, Nov. 5, featuring four performing solo artists from the area: Mark David McKinnis (classical guitarist and producer of the TV series “SpotlightON Performing Songwriters”), Garry Bryant (solo winner of the Arkansas Acoustic Festival Showdown in 2003), trumpeter Loyd Henson and jazzy sax, flute and piano player Michael Murphy.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m.; admission is $8. Money generated from the event goes to Second Genesis, a charity to help women get their lives back together after completing prison terms.
2nd Place Cafe is at 222 E. 8th St. in Little Rock. The venue is smoke- and alcohol-free.
There’s more in the smoke-free acoustic department on Friday: Advent Arts and Acoustic Cafe in Conway will have “alternative bluegrass” by the Toad Suck Symphony, which was featured recently on “AETN presents.”
TSS consists of Will Meriwether, Bill Higgs, Chip Hager and Bill Ferguson. Opening at 7:30 p.m. will be Faril Simpson, backed by Jeff Clanton and Keith Gregson.
Advent Arts is at 900 Farris Road. Admission is $6 for adults and $3 for children 12 and under. Free child care is available as well. For more information, call 501-450-3416.
Elvis T. Busboy and the Blues Butchers will be playing Cajun’s Wharf on Thursday and Friday, Nov. 4-5.
You may be wondering where the group’s unique name came from? Well, Elvis Presley starred in the movie “King Creole,” playing a busboy who becomes a hit when nightclub fans learn he can sing. The band saw some similarity with its own career, though there’s no Presley in its set, unless the group strikes up the occasional “Little Sister.”
Frontman Stephen Shaw (or Elvis T. Busboy, if you must) started out a roadie for the P.J. Belly Band and went with Belly in 1989 to the Kerrville, Texas, Arts and Crafts Festival, where Belly asked Shaw if he wanted to get up on the stage and sing.
“I didn’t have time to think about it long enough to be nervous,” Shaw says. He sang the only tune he knew, “That’s All Right Mama.” The next year, Belly opened a club in Lubbock and Shaw worked there as a singing cook, stepping out of the kitchen occasionally to sing. He garnered the “Elvis” nickname because of his unique voice, and friends would holler “You wanna hear the busboy sing?” Hence, he became named Elvis the Busboy, which eventually morphed into Elvis T. Busboy.
Shaw worked with bands in the Lubbock area before crossing paths with the Texas Blues Butchers, a side version of Lubbock’s leading ’80s band, The Nelsons. Shaw started singing with the group in blues gigs around Lubbock, and eventually the group learned how not to butcher the blues. Now, they play blues bars from Dallas to New York.
The group’s newest member is keyboardist Tim Alexander, who had a hand in winning five Grammy Awards with the band Asleep at the Wheel.
Catch Elvis, Alexander and the rest at Cajun’s starting about 9 p.m. both nights. The cover is $5.
Sticky Fingerz in the River Market district has a diverse lineup of music starting Thursday, Nov. 4.
The bluehouse, an acoustic-folk-pop trio from Melbourne, Australia, plays an early show on Thursday, Nov. 4. Lauded as an all-around Down Under favorite, the Aussie girls, who are playing Eureka Springs on the weekend, will be doing an early 7 p.m. show, with Arkansas native Adam Hood opening. Admission is $8.
Bob Schneider, formerly of the Ugly Americans and the Scabs, has been going it alone for the past couple of years now, and has released the CD, “I’m Good Now,” which appeared in April. Schneider will be playing at on Friday, Nov. 5. The Austin rocker’s shows have sold out in his previous visits to Little Rock, so arrive early for the 9 p.m. show. The St. Louis-based Fundamentals will open.
Crescent City blues and R&B describes New Orleans native Walter “Wolfman” Washington, who was recently at the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena and who will appear at the venue Saturday, Nov. 6. He starts funking things up at 9 p.m.; cover is $8.
More to catch:
Cool cocktail music meets indie rock with a Brazilian frontwoman when the Mosquitos play at Juanita’s on 9 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 10. Admission is $5 … Pizza D’Action has local punk-girl band The Chicklettes opening for raw garage rockers Thee Fine Lines on Saturday, Nov. 6. Music starts at 10 p.m., cover is $5 … A Head’s Up: Jewish country singer, writer, activist and Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, along with Little Jewford and Washington Ratso, will play Juanita’s after helping celebrate the Clinton Library on Wednesday, Nov. 17. Tickets are on sale now at the club for $20. Friedman will also sign copies of his new book, “ ’Scuse Me While I Whip This Out: Reflections on Country Singers, Presidents, and Other Troublemakers” at 7 p.m. that same night at Barnes & Noble on Financial Centre Parkway in West Little Rock … Some CD news from local artists: Pop quartet Ho-Hum’s new CD “Now I Love You” is coming out later this month. It will be available at Anthro-pop (bassist Rod Bryan’s record store) on Nov. 18. And the Amy Garland Band is set to play at Sticky Fingerz, Nov. 13, for its new effort, “Angora.”

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