Junior Brown boasts a long record of diverse, innovative guitar work, but the Indiana native’s laid-back honky-tonk, Americana and country have found an audience really in only the past couple of decades. Brown, creator of the double-necked “guit-steel” guitar, plays tonight at the Fox Theatre with Hillbilly Hellcats. $25.
Nightshark’s music falls somewhere between a post-apocalyptic solar eclipse and jazzy, experimental noise. Sure, there’s guitar, bass, drums and various electronics, but you’ll be hard-pressed to divine how they fit together in the exhilarating cacophony. Tonight at the Hi- Dive with Itchy-O, Pink Hawks and Married in Berdichev. $6. hi-dive.com
Reel Big Fish is another in the skankin’ ska-punk acts to visit Denver in recent months, proving that a genre continually written off as dead is as active as ever — if less trendy than during its commercial peak in the 1990s. The cheerfully snotty band plays the Ogden Theatre on Thursday with Streetlight Manifesto and One Pin Short. $18.50-$20. Ticketmaster
John Wenzel: 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com
