UPDATE: As predicted, April 6 saw tickets for August 24-27 sell out in minutes. At 3:10pm on April 6, Sonic Concerts announced an additional show—on August 23—is being added to the run of dates. Run, don’t walk, to the Sonic site if you are one of the hopeful show attendees who didn’t heed my warning, below.
Ok everyone, this is not a drill: Dartmouth indie-rock regent Matt Mays announced today that his annual string of concerts at The Shore Club will be August 24-27, 2023. He’s bringing Cape Breton trad-rockers Villages along as the opening act.
An annual tradition bordering on sonic pilgrimage at this point, Mays’s Shore Club shows are the antithesis of corporate festival concerts: An intimate, anything-goes set where he and his bandmates play rock ‘n’ roll that’s found fans in the likes of The Gaslight Anthem’s Brian Fallon and seems to secure Mays’s bid on inheritor of Tom Petty’s style. The shore Club itself—a small, seaside dance hall that feels lifted from collective blue-sky memory—is the self-anointed last great dance hall, known for its lobster suppers, beachside proximity and for bringing some of the best live music to Hubbards, N.S.
The Shore Club shows are a peak way to cap off summer as the season winds down—and, honestly, the often sell out within minutes. So if you are at all on the fence about attending what is actually one of the top 10 concerts I’ve ever been to, set an alarm: Tickets go on sale at 10am sharp on April 6. They’ll be $54.70 in advance and $59.83 the day of the show (if there’s any left then—past sold-out runs would indicate that you better not sleep). Get yours via Sonic Concert’s site.
This article appears in Apr 1-30, 2023.
