Tonight’s Concert Pick: Daniel Lanois’ Black Dub at Johnny Brenda’s

You know, we were little hesitant to make tonight’s Daniel Lanois’ Black Dub performance at Johnny Brenda’s our pick of the day. It’s not that we’re not big fans of his work—including his own original musical output in addition to his production credits with acts such as U2, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou Harris, and Neil Young—or that we think there are better shows going on. [Because a) we are, and b) there aren’t.] It’s just that, if we were to highlight this particular performance, it would be the fourth consecutive show at Johnny Brenda’s to be our concert pick this week. (And you’d better believe that tomorrow night’s Josh Olmstead Band/North Lawrence Midnight Singers/Joseph Arnold triple-CD-release bill at JB’s—an XPN Welcomes show, no less—will be tomorrow’s pick of the day.) So yeah, we love the venue and all, but we’re wary of showing signs of favoritism. Then we caught a few minutes of Lanois playing guitar downstairs in the WXPN studio for an upcoming World Cafe broadcast, and that pretty much sealed the deal. Since then, the show has sold out—but we’re sure that if you really want to see Lanois and his band (which includes drummer Brian Blade, who also blows us away) tonight, you’ll figure something out. Daniel Lanois’Black Dub performs with Rocco DeLuca at 9 p.m. at Johnny Brenda’s; tickets to the 21+ show are SOLD OUT.