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You don't go into a Night Ranger show expecting a lot of surprises. The band hits the stage with a deep catalog of hits at their disposal, and that's what they deliver, with few new tunes or unusual choices mixed in. The Bay Area rockers are the very definition of meat-and-potatoes American rock — hard enough to appeal to the "rock dudes," poppy enough to soundtrack decades of high-school reunion slow dances.

While predictability might be a detriment for many music experiences, it's a highly valued commodity among the so-called "legacy acts" still on the road. Nothing is more frustrating for fans than going to see a long-time favorite and the singer can no longer, you know, sing. Or for fans to show up and the only recognizable member of the band is the bass player (no offense, bass folks).

Night Ranger is pretty high-quality when it comes to these kind of gigs. I've seen them twice in my life, both long after their '80s MTV- and radio airwave-hogging heyday. And both times they band's been rock solid.

Cali punks Pennywise have spent the better part of three decades playing songs that touch on the political and social ills of society.

You think they'll have much to work with on their new tunes?

Actually, their latest collection is a set of old Pennywise songs originally penned in the late '80s when the band was getting its start. The group is re-recording the songs, most of them written by bassist Jason Thirsk who died in 1996, as a means of paying homage to their former bandmate and restarting Pennywise after a brief split with singer Jim Lindberg.

The Pennywise tour in support of the "new, old album" stops by The Knitting Factory in Spokane March 11. Tickets are $27.50 in advance, $30 day of show, and available through The Knit's website starting Friday at 10 am. Strung Out opens the show.

“Losing Jason was a terrible tragedy for all of us and he was such a big part of the Pennywise spirit, so us going back and recording these songs was a huge inspiration because it reminded of us of where we were when we started and why people responded to the band in such a powerful way,” Lindberg said about Yesterdays. “These songs are Pennywise in our purest form and it’s really as much of a gift to us as it is to our fans, many of whom have been waiting for real recordings of these tracks for years. It marks a new chapter for the band while still staying true to the way we started twenty-six years ago.”

After announcing upcoming shows by the Eagles, Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, the Spokane Arena continues adding to its lineup of classic rock shows with iconic Latin-blues guitarist Carlos Santana and his namesake band, who hit the Inland Northwest on March 4.

Santana has had a remarkable and varied career: He played Woodstock, has had breakthrough pop hits in multiple decades, has won 10 Grammys (including an armful for his 1999 crossover smash Supernatural) and is frequently name-checked on lists of the greatest guitarists of all time.

Tickets for the concert range from $65.50 to $85.50, and go on sale this Saturday at 10 am through TicketsWest.

Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers are embarking on a co-headlining tour this summer, and one of their stops will be Spokane. The classic rock icons will play the Arena on June 7, one of 37 shows they'll perform during their Summer of Living Dangerously Tour.

It might seem like an odd pairing at first, but both bands have had remarkably long shelf lives and have seamlessly changed styles and musical identities over the years.

The Doobies started life as a California blues-rock outfit in 1970, producing radio staples like "Listen to the Music," "Jesus Is Just Alright," "Long Train Runnin'" and the No. 1 hit "Black Water." They then pivoted into pop with new frontman Michael McDonald, knocking out Top 10 singles like "Takin' It to the Streets," "Real Love" and "What a Fool Believes" into the early '80s.

The current Doobies lineup includes two founding members — guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Tom Johnston (who left the band in the mid-'70s following health issues) and guitarist Patrick Simmons — and multi-instrumentalist John McFee, who has played with the band off and on since the late '70s.

Steely Dan, meanwhile, has been back in the headlines following the September death of co-founding member and songwriter Walter Becker. Donald Fagen, Becker's longtime musical partner, continues to perform under the Steely Dan moniker, which has resulted in a legal battle with the Becker estate.

Fagen and Becker's strange blend of jazz, prog rock and pop made them unlikely stars, with their great 1972 debut album Can't Buy a Thrill producing the hit singles "Reelin' in the Years" and "Do It Again." Following a string of more experimental albums that included 1974's Pretzel Logic and 1977's Aja, the duo went on a long hiatus, reuniting in 1993 and continuing to record and tour until Becker's recent death.

Tickets for the Spokane show are $39.50, $69.50, $89.50 and $125, and go on sale at 10 am on Friday, Jan. 26.

A little more than two years ago, Car Seat Headrest arrived in Spokane for an early January show at the Bartlett with a whole lot of buzz for the songs by band leader Will Toledo that he'd released in spurts on Bandcamp.

In the ensuing two years, the band's profile has only gotten bigger thanks to a couple of stellar releases of insistent indie-rock on Matador Records (Teens of Style and Teens of Denial), and now they're coming back to town for a headlining gig at the Knitting Factory on April 11.

Tickets for Car Seat Headrest are $15 and go on sale Friday, Jan. 12, at 10 am through the Knitting Factory website and TicketWeb.com. Naked Giants open the show.

The band is touring behind a re-recording and re-imagining of one of Toledo's old Bandcamp collections, Twin Fantasy. The 2011 version is much-beloved among fans, but Toledo says "it was never a finished work" in a press release announcing the album and tour. The album arrives Feb. 16, and he's already released a video for "new" old song "Nervous Young Inhumans." Check it out:

In May of 2015, The Eagles swung by Spokane Arena for a show that Inlander readers later named the best of the year in our annual Best of the Inland Northwest poll.

That would be enough to warrant a return visit from the SoCal classic rockers, but there's a lot more going on with the band in 2018. Co-founder Glenn Frey died since that last Spokane visit, and he's been replaced by his son Deacon Frey, and country star Vince Gill is also now a member of the band, making the version of The Eagles coming to town on Tuesday, May 8, a bit of a brand new band. Early reports from the band's performances that started last year are positive.

Tickets for the show go on sale Friday, Jan. 12 at 10 am at the Spokane Arena Box Office, all TicketsWest outlets, TicketsWest.com and by calling 800-325-SEAT. Tickets are $49.50, $99.50, $229.50 and $399.50.

Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl is enough of a rock 'n' roll historian to know what's needed to deliver a killer arena-rock show, and he showed that Monday at the band's packed Spokane Arena gig:

PLAY THE HITS
Twenty-two years into their career, the Foo Fighters have a ton of material, and the fans all have their favorites. As Grohl joked early on, if you'd gone to see the band 22 years ago, "we had 12 songs. We now have 367 songs." A slight exaggeration, but the band has a ton of albums, including a strong new one in Concrete and Gold. And while Grohl mentioned that the band likes to touch on each of its albums during the show, the hits were pretty much all part of the three-hour gig. "All My Life" and "Learn to Fly" came early, "This Is A Call" and "Everlong" closed down the encore, and in between the band delivered some of their biggest tunes throughout, from "My Hero" to "Times Like These," "Monkey Wrench" to "Best of You." 


PLAY TO EVERYONE IN THE ROOM, AND MAKE THE ROOM FEEL SMALL
Grohl chatted up the audience often, from the hardcore fans stuffed down front and holding up signs alluding to lead guitarist Chris Shiflett's sexiness, to the folks sitting in the rafters forced to look at screens for closeups of the frontman and various Foos. And he galloped all over the stage, focusing on different seat sections (and different cameras) all night. Grohl also got the audience to join forces for some communal experiences like a massive singalong or lighting up the arena with a sea of cell phones.


PACK A KILLER LIGHT SHOW
What appeared a simple diamond-shaped video-screen backdrop early on proved to be a pliable piece of stage magic, shifting shapes and heights and projecting all manner of objects to the audience depending on the song. Just when you thought you'd seen everything the band's special effects could do, they'd deliver something new — right up through the encore.

For a while on Thursday, it looked like Deer Tick's first-ever visit to play Spokane would fall to this year's Curse of Halloween Week that caused Silversun Pickups to quit after four songs Tuesday night at the Knitting Factory, The Courtneys to cancel their Friday show due to weather and The Weather Station to cancel their scheduled Saturday night show at the Bartlett. A broken-down tour bus in Boise didn't bode well for the Rhode Island roots-rockers, and the planned 8 pm start time, and then rescheduled 9:30 pm show launch, ended up being a 10:30 pm-ish kickoff following an extended loitering session in cold, drizzly rain outside the Bartlett, while the band did a not-so-quick sound check inside after they finally arrived.

And you know what? The show was totally worth the wait for the fans who hung around and (mostly) filled the club, as Deer Tick roared through a career-spanning set that was at turns thrilling, heartbreaking and hilarious.

Plans to play two sets — one acoustic, one electric — went out the window due to the late start, and comedian Jena Friedman, the opening act, only did about five minutes of jokes to a well-lubed audience before singer/guitarist John McCauley, guitarist Ian O'Neil, bassist Chris Ryan and drummer Dennis Ryan hit the stage and proceeded to knock out about 25 songs, playing well past midnight.

The band's two new albums, Deer Tick Vol. 1 and Deer Tick Vol. 2,  are split between all-acoustic and all-electric tunes, but Thursday night it was mostly electric throughout, save the occasional appearance of a mandolin here and there. The new acoustic songs were still excellent, delivered with added muscle (and an assist from a touring keyboard player), and all the new material fit in easily with a catalog that has touched on everything from folk and country to blues and garage-rock on the band's releases over the past decade. 

The Bartlett announced this afternoon that the Weather Station, the folky solo project of Canadian singer-songwriter Tamara Lindeman, has canceled its scheduled Saturday night show, citing "unforeseen circumstances." Per the venue's Facebook page, refunds will be made available to those who bought advance tickets; there's no word yet on the show being rescheduled.

Lindeman spoke with the Inlander in anticipation of the show; read her interview here.

When Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert came out on stage last night with his right arm in a sling, I really hoped it was part of his Halloween costume. The band dressed up in Stranger Things Halloween outfits — was his broken arm and overall look of death somehow part of it?

But then Aubert, in a raspy voice, told everyone that the universe didn't want him to be there at the Knitting Factory. He broke his arm a few days ago, he said. And even though he figured out a way to strum his guitar anyway, he now had the flu.

The band played a few of its hit songs and shut it down early.

Nobody could fault Aubert for his effort. It was immediately clear that he couldn't sing at anything close to full strength. At one point in the middle of the second song, nothing but air came from his voice, and he shook his head and stopped playing. He asked the audience if they even wanted him to play anymore. The packed crowd at the Knitting Factory enthusiastically expressed their support.

To end the night, they played "Panic Switch" and "Lazy Eye," both crowd favorites. The audience knew the words and filled in during the parts where Aubert would normally be screaming. It's hard to hear those songs live and not be into it, so overall it ended on a high note, albeit before 10 pm.

"Thank you Spokane, for being so supportive last night. we love you. happy halloween..." the band wrote on Facebook today.

Still, the whole thing was kind of a bummer. The Silversun Pickups show I saw in Seattle years ago was one of the best I've ever been to, and I was hoping they could rekindle some of that Tuesday night. You could tell the band was disappointed they couldn't put on a better performance for the Halloween crowd. They went all out for the Stranger Things theme — the words "Silversun Pickups" even appeared on the screens with the show's signature font. And there was supposed to be a costume contest.

The Knitting Factory says it isn't automatically giving refunds to ticket buyers, but people are welcome to reach out to TicketWeb if they want. After the show, Aubert promised they would reschedule another Spokane date.

"We'll be back. Thank you. I love you," Aubert said. "Sorry."