Carson City outdoor music series welcomes Tommy Castro and the Painkillers this Saturday
Submitted by Arianna Schmidt on Tue, 07/20/2021 - 4:01pm
Event Date:
July 24, 2021 - 7:00pm
The Levitt AMP Carson City Music Series presented by The Change Companies is back and better than ever. So grab your family, friends and neighbors and get ready to experience the power of free, live music to bring our community together.
Sponsored in part by the Mortimer & Mimi Levitt Foundation, a national funder of creative placemaking that empowers communities to inject new life into underused public spaces through free, outdoor concerts, the Levitt AMP Carson City Music Series will present eight free, family-friendly concerts to the public this summer at The Change Companies stage at the Brewery Arts Center.
Scheduled to perform this week on The Change Companies stage is openers Carolyn Dolan & Big Red and headlining is blues legend Tommy Castro and his band, the Painkillers.
Tommy Castro he began playing guitar at age 10 and was influenced and inspired by electric blues, Chicago blues, West Coast blues, soul music, 1960s rock and roll and Southern rock. He gained popularity in the eighties and nineties playing professionally all over the Bay Area and joined Warner Brothers Records.
Since 1991, he has led his own bands and The Tommy Castro Band served as the house band for three seasons on NBC Television’s Comedy Showcase (airing right after Saturday Night Live), bringing him in front of millions of viewers every week. In 2001 and 2002, B.B. King asked Castro to open his summer concert tours. Castro received an open invitation to join King on stage for the nightly finale.
In 2008 he was awarded the Blues Music Award for Entertainer of the Year and in May 2010, The Blues Foundation awarded Castro multiple Blues Music Award honors for Blues Male Artist of the Year, Contemporary Blues Album of the Year, B.B. King Entertainer of the Year, and with his band, Band of the Year.
The Painkillers first formed in 2012, and the current line-up — consisting of Tommy Castro, bassist Randy McDonald, drummer Bowen Brown, and keyboardist Michael Emerson — Tommy believes to be the best band he’s ever played with. After hundreds of shows, the four-piece has coalesced into a telepathically tight music group that can play deep blues, funky soul, and jam out on the stage.
Opening for Tommy Castro is Carolyn Dolan and Big Red. Carolyn Dolan has been entertaining audiences for over twenty-five years.Her ability to cross over many genres has made her very versatile and in demand as a professional singer, harmonica player, and performer. She has a gift of combing her passion of American roots music (jazz, blues, country) in her vocal style, matched by soulful harmonica licks that accompanies her on stage.
The remaining headlining acts also scheduled to perform are Loud as Folk takeover night with Spike McGuire, the Rainbow Girls and the Sam Chase Trio on July 31. The Fire will bring their high energy Celtic show to the stage on August 7, Southern Drawl Band with Keith Alan Barnett opening will return to Carson City for the first time in four years on August 14, emerging artists Los Coast will take the stage August 21 after an amazing year with their 2020 hi, a re-release of “A Change is Gonna Come” with Gary Clark, Jr. We will wrap up the series on August 28 with the band who opened our very first Levitt AMP concert in 2016, Mumbo Gumbo with Moons of Jupiter opening.
The public is invited to bring their own picnics, blankets and lawn chairs to the concerts, which has an open setting. There will be food trucks, drink vendors and kids activities at every concert. The Levitt AMP concert series is located at 449 West King Street at the corner of King and Minnesota Streets. Admission is free.
We appreciate the public’s cooperation as we follow and enforce the current COVID-19 safety guidelines for each show as we know that these guidelines may change throughout the season. Visit breweryarts.org for a full schedule of concerts, directions and information on parking and wheelchair accessibility.
Since 2016, Carson City was named one of 18 small to mid-sized towns and cities across America to win a Levitt AMP [Your City] Grant Award of $25K in matching funds to present a free concert series
at what is now, The Change Companies stage in 2021. The Brewery Arts Center submitted the Levitt AMP proposal and is presenting the concert series. In an effort to inspire and engage communities across the country around the power of creative placemaking, the Levitt Foundation invited the public to choose the Top 25 finalists through online voting. Learn more about the winners and the 180 free Levitt AMP concerts across America at http://levittamp.org.
About the Brewery Arts Center
The mission of the Brewery Arts Center is to enrich the quality of life by cultivating arts and culture for all. Founded in 1975, by a group of artists yearning for a space of their own, who raised $300,000 to purchase the Historic Carson Brewing Building and turn it into a community gathering space for artists. They then proceeded to build an annex for a gallery, art classroom, a black box theater and the Brewery Arts Center (BAC) a Nevada non-profit organization was born. In 2000, the organization purchased the St. Teresa Catholic Church building and converted it into a 250 seat Performance hall and in 2015 was able to close the road to traffic in between the two buildings to create a two city block arts campus complete with facilities for visual arts, theatrical arts, dance and music, and outdoor art to include a Harmony Sculpture Park, murals, rotating sculptures and in the summer months, an outdoor amphitheater.
The Change Companies has come on board once again as this year’s title sponsor. The Brewery Arts Center is proud to be aligned with such an important company comprised of a team full of warm, hard-working and talented individuals, driven by their shared mission of promoting positive behavior change. It’s a perfect fit for this series.
About Mortimer & Mimi Levitt Foundation
The Mortimer & Mimi Levitt Foundation is a national funder of creative placemaking that empowers towns and cities across America to transform underused public spaces into thriving destinations through the power of free, live music. In 2019, more than 550 free Levitt concerts will take place in 26 towns and cities, all featuring a rich array of music genres and high-caliber talent. Learn more at levitt.org.
