Treasure Island Music Festival organizers announced today that Big Grams, a collaboration between Atlanta rapper Big Boi of Outkast and Phantogram, will make their live debut on the island this year.

Perhaps the most interesting hip-hop collaboration since El-P and Killer Mike teamed up for Run The Jewels (also performing at the Festival), Big Grams was conceived while Big Boi and Phantogram collaborated on several tracks for the rapper’s 2012 release Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors.

Several tracks have already leaked ahead of Big Grams’ self-titled album release on Sept. 25, including the debut of “Fell in the Sun” on Friday. Listen Below:

Big Grams will replace Azealia Banks on the lineup, who recently canceled her North American tour. Big Boi performed at the festival as a headliner with Outkast last year.

The festival, Oct. 17-18 on Treasure Island, will also host Deadmau5, FKA Twigs, the War on Drugs, the National, Father John Misty and more. View the complete lineup with audio samples HERE.

After teasing fans with musical medleys since August, organizers for San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival unveiled the complete lineup today.

The list, posted on the festival’s website in paragraph form, is still a bear to digest, but several gems are hidden in the rough. Highlights include Flogging Molly, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Angel Olsen, Steve Earle and the Dukes and Conor Oberst with friends.

The free festival returns to Golden Gate Park Oct. 2-4. The complete lineup, in no particular order:

Joe Pug
Chatham County Line
Robyn Hitchcock & The Sadies Playing ‘Sweetheart Of The Rodeo’ & Other Delights
Nancy and The Lambchops
Megan Slankard
Jamey Johnson
Marco & The Polos
Leftover Salmon Featuring Bill Payne of Little Feat
Neko Case
The Sadies
Dustin Kensrue
Asleep At The Wheel
Circus Quirkus with Poor Man’s Whiskey
The Milk Carton Kids
Monophonics
Punch Brothers
T Bone Burnett
Mandolin Orange
Walter Salas-Humara
Ben Miller Band
Peter Rowan Band
Gillian Welch
Nick Lowe
Sonny and The Sunsets
Alison Brown & The Song Of The Banjo
Michael Franti & Spearhead
Madisen Ward and The Mama Bear
Tim Barry
DeVotchKa
Joe Jackson
Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell
Fairfield Four
Lee Ann Womack
The Go To Hell Man Clan
Poi Dog Pondering
The Stone Foxes
Angel Olsen
The Bros. Landreth
Laurie Lewis & The Right Hands
The White Buffalo
Kevin Devine
JB Nimble
Doobie Decibel System
Kieran Kane & Lucas Kane
Kevin Welch & Fats Kaplin
The Sheepdogs
Flogging Molly
James McMurtry
Indigo Girls
The Flatlanders Featuring Joe Ely
Jimmie Dale Gilmore & Butch Hancock
Pokey LaFarge
Cooder – White – Skaggs
Hot Rize with Red Knuckles & The Trailblazers
Hardly Strictly Disco
Steve Earle & The Dukes
Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys
Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires
Lera Lynn
The New Mastersounds
Buddy Miller’s Cavalcade Of Stars Featuring: Jim Lauderdale, Donnie Fritts & John Paul White
Tony Joe White
Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams
Scott Miller & The Commonwealth’s Ladies Auxiliary
Buddy Miller & Friends

A Special Performance of Big Star’s Third by an All-Star Band including Jody Stephens, Mike Mills, Ken Stringfellow, Chris Stamey, Pat Sansone, Audley Freed, Ralph Carney, Brett Harris & Skylar Gudasz – with a Chamber Orchestra featuring Kronos Quartet – Conducted by Van Dyke Parks – and Special Guests including Steve Earle, Robyn Hitchcock & Chatham County Line

Conor Brings Friends For Friday Featuring: Johnathan Rice, Jessica Pratt, The Felice Brothers, Laura Marling, M. Ward, Conor Oberst

The Mavericks
Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin with The Guilty Ones
Nels Cline & Julian Lage
Anderson East
Fantastic Negrito
Waco Brothers
Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds
Jim White vs. The Packway Handle Band
The Brothers Gibb
Saintseneca
Beth Hart
mini-Mekons Featuring Jon Langford, Sally Timms & Rico Bell
Boz Scaggs
Steep Canyon Rangers
Hot Tuna Electric
Acres Of Space
Dry Branch Fire Squad
Heidi Clare & The Goose Tatums
Spirit Family Reunion
The Oh Hellos
Gregory Alan Isakov
Los Lobos
The Blind Boys Of Alabama
Paul Weller
Robert Earl Keen Performing Songs From ‘Happy Prisoner: The Bluegrass Sessions’ Delbert McClinton
The Dustbowl Revival
Robyn Hitchcock
Chicano Batman
The Brothers Comatose
The Time Jumpers Featuring Kenny Sears
Vince Gill
Paul Franklin
Joe Spivey
Larry Franklin
Andy Reiss
Billy Thomas
Jeff Taylor & Brad Albin
ALO

The long-anticipated lineup for the 29th Annual Bridge School Benefit arrived today with a power trio of ladies who rock—the Dixie Chicks, Sheryl Crow and St. Vincent—on the bill with benefit co-founder Neil Young.

Ryan Adams, Gary Clark Jr., Spoon and Nils Lofgren will also perform at the two-day concert at Shoreline Amphitheatre on Oct. 24-25. A “plus special guests” caveat on the flyer could mean a few more big names in music will hit the stage, including Eddie Vedder, who seems to make an appearance every year, and other frequent Young collaborators.

By far the most interesting booking this year is St. Vincent, who has challenged rock music conventions since her 2007 debut with angular guitar riffs and avant-garde concepts and arrangements. With filtered guitar tones, synth blasts and other effects, it’s not music that easily lends itself to the acoustic format of the Bridge shows.

Another interesting wrinkle this year—in terms of ticket sales and promotions—Young will also perform at Berkeley’s Greek Theatre on Oct. 18, just one week before the Bridge School concerts this year.

There should be plenty of new music to serve all three shows. The concerts arrive at exceptionally prolific period for Young, who has released five albums and two memoirs since 2012, including this year’s anti-agribusiness LP, The Monsanto Years.

The Bridge School concerts are an annual tradition at Shoreline, marking the end of the concert season at the Mountain View amphitheater. Previous lineups read like a pop music history book with some of the biggest names in music gracing the stage for mostly acoustic performances, from Bob Dylan to Arcade Fire.

The concerts benefit the Bridge School, a nonprofit school in Hillsborough created to help people with severe speech and physical impairments. Neil and Pegi Young’s son Ben attended the school.

The complete Bridge School lineup:

Neil Young and Promise of the Real
Dixie Chicks
Sheryl Crow
Ryan Adams
St. Vincent
Gary Clark Jr.
Spoon
Nils Lofgren

Tickets for the concert go on sale Friday at 10am via Ticketmaster. More info.

With just two weeks before one of the biggest annual music events in Northern California, organizers announced set times today for Outside Lands Music Festival.

The festival kicks off August 7 in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park with Mumford and Sons and D’Angelo headlining, followed by the Black Keys and Kendrick Lamar (Saturday, August 8) and Elton John and Axwell & Ingrosso (Sunday, August 8).

Tickets are officially sold out. Find more info on the festival’s website.

ALSO SEE: Metro’s Highlights and Photos From Outside Lands 2014

Friday, August 7

Saturday, August 8

Sunday, August 9

Treasure Island Music festival will return this October with one of its most eclectic lineups to date with The National and Deadmau5 headline the two-day party in the middle of the San Francisco Bay.

Other highlights include Scottish electro pop group Chvrches, acoustic crooners Father John Misty and Jose Gonzalez and hip hop buzz duo Run the Jewels.

The festival, traditionally the last event in a long Bay Area outdoor concert season, arrives this year Oct. 17-18. With two stages on a small footprint, performances are staggered throughout the day so it’s technically possible to catch every performance throughout the day. However, there are numerous opportunities for distraction with a silent disco area, a giant Ferris wheel that offers epic views of the San Francisco skyline and numerous vendors.

The daily lineup has not yet been released but it typically features more dance-oriented acts on Saturday. Tickets go on sale June 11 at 10am. More info.

The Complete Lineup:

The National
Deadmau5
Robyn & La Bagatelle Magique
Chvrches

The War on Drugs
Azealia Banks
Father John Misty
STS9

Run the Jewels
Panda Bear
Gorgon City (Live)
Jose Gonzalez

Hudson Mohawke
Deerhunter
Cashmere Cat
Drive like Jehu
Viceroy
Lower Dens
Shamir
Ex Hex

Mikal Cronin
Baio
Viet Cong
Bob Moses
Ought
Skylar Spence

It is only appropriate that U2 kicked off the first U.S. date of its latest North American tour with a sold-out crowd of devotees at SAP Center on Monday, including members of the San Francisco Giants, the Rev. Cecil Williams from Glide Church and big names in tech.

No other band is more closely aligned with Silicon Valley tech giants and U2’s inspirational songs from over three decades are undoubtedly good enough to make the unofficial reverend outfielder Hunter Pence jump in praise (that, he did, with Giants manager Bruce Bochy and teammate Ryan Vogelsong standing nearby). Count on a few new Bono-inspired startup slogans jotted on after party napkins, too.

But even with that social cachet, U2 continues to push the limits of arena-sized performances, this time doing its best to make the 17,000-capacity SAP Center feel like an intimate music venue. On Monday, it felt like a club gig compared to the band’s last Bay Area outing, the massive, record-breaking U2 360° Tour at Oakland Coliseum back in 2011.

PHOTO GALLERY: U2 At SAP Center

In San Jose, the band utilized an innovative setup for more than two hours with a large stage at the north end of the arena floor that was linked with a runway to a smaller stage at the south end. Above the mid-section, giant LED boards projected massive video and animation visuals.

Alternating from each stage throughout the night, fans on opposing ends of the stadium were offered a unique perspective, although it seems somewhere near half court is probably best for this show. The sequences with the LED screen were stunning, especially when Bono and the Edge climbed a platform behind the images, allowing Bono to interact with an animated streetscape and later hold the Edge in his giant hand.

The Edge. Photo by Brian Kirksey.

Musically, it was a night of nostalgia on multiple levels, first with an emphasis on songs from the band’s 2014 album Songs of Innocence, which was inspired by the band’s formative years. They started with the first single from that album, “The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone),” and then an unexpected pick, U2’s first single ever “Out of Control,” before Bono introduced bassist Adam Clayton, drummer Larry Mullen and the Edge by their Dublin neighborhoods.

Bono set the tone in the first break, riffing on the tour’s iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE theme and asking the crowd: “Can you still experience innocence after all of these years?”

That’s not always an easy question with U2. At this point, multiple generations can claim U2 origin stories; the musical bookmarks from their past that brought them out on a Monday night to sing along in near-religious fervor to the group’s biggest hits.

At the same time, the band had the audience questioning: Where is our innocence after Ferguson and during the AIDS crisis? What have we learned from the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the conflict in Ireland? Can we become global citizens? What is magic and what is a trick?

Perhaps, that’s what U2 does best. In the wake of thousands of glowing cell phones and selfie attempts, it’s a band that can still insert a little humanity, charity and mystery into the rock ’n’ roll juggernaut. On Monday, it was nostalgic and refreshing—and it felt a little innocent—all at once.

U2 performs again on May 19 at SAP Center before continuing its North American tour.

Many Bay Area Grateful Dead fans knew it wouldn’t be a proper farewell without at least one Bay Area performance, and now the band is delivering with two scheduled “Fare Thee Well” concerts at Levi’s Stadium this June.

The Grateful Dead, which earlier this year announced three concerts in Chicago this July 3-5 as their final performances, announced two additional shows at the Santa Clara stadium on June 27-28 in a letter to fans:

Although none of us knew it when we walked off the stage at Soldier Field on July 9, 1995, the Grateful Dead’s long strange trip ended in Chicago that night. As you are aware, twenty years later, we’re returning to Chicago to properly say Fare Thee Well.

But every good ending must start with a beginning. For us, it all began fifty years ago when we grabbed a bunch of instruments off the walls of a music store in Palo Alto California and began banging away on them in the back room, at night after the store had closed for the day.

Since we made the decision to go back to Chicago to say our final goodbye, it has become clear to us that we first need to return to our beginnings, where we first said hello — to each other and to all of you. [read the entire letter HERE]

And it appears that after more than 50 years in existence, the long strange trip for the iconic Bay Area band is finally winding down.

“We will not be adding any more Fare Thee Well shows,” the band wrote to fans. “The three Chicago shows will still be our final stand. We decided to add these two Santa Clara shows to enable more of our fans to celebrate with us one more time. But this is it.”

In addition to original members Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, the band will also feature Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio, pianist Bruce Hornsby and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti.

After problems with scalpers with the Chicago shows, the band will release 65,000 tickets for each Levi’s Stadium show via its online mail order system on Dead50.net.

One has to wonder if all the fuss about Beyoncé and Jay Z’s rumored separation is just one more staged act of the couple’s cinematic and highly scripted On The Road tour, in San Francisco on Tuesday for the first of two shows at AT&T Park.

With reports that the tour will bank $100 million on ticket sales barely muting rumors of divorce just hours before they hit the stage at AT&T Park, it’s well within their means to drum up a little scandal to keep them in the headlines and tickets sales moving (all press is good press, no?).

Drama aside, it’s doubtful many people at the nearly sold out show left unhappy on Tuesday.

The husband-and-wife duo stuck to the script with little deviation from the first 17 shows of the On the Run Tour—a Bonnie and Clyde theme weaved between nearly 40 songs during a 2.5 hour performance.

Read more on Metro affiliate SFstation.com.

He didn’t invent funk, but for five decades Bootsy Collins has been one of the genre’s most recognized ambassadors. From behind his signature star-burst glasses, outsized top hats and custom made “Space Bass,” his lilting vocals bespeak depths of mellow most of us mere mortals can only imagine.

From his lips, the Bootzilla can take a single word—“baby”—and transmute it into something divine, instilling it with all the glory and poetry of a Shakespearean sonnet.

And then there’s his bass playing. Collins’ progressions are perpetually shifting and inventive, yet unpretentious—firmly grounded in the classic funk traditions pioneered by the likes of James Brown and further spun out by Funkadelic—two acts for which Bootsy played before striking out on his own.

The iconic funk bassist, will headline San Jose’s 2014 Jazz Festival on Friday, Aug. 8, but when he speaks with Metro from his home outside Cincinnati, where the Mothership is refueling between stages of a European tour, he has his sights set on his next stop: Batumi, Georgia—a resort on the Black Sea, which once served as a playground for Communist Party bigwigs.

The 64-year-old Collins laughs, tickled by the notion that the Soviet Union is long gone, but he remains, and will soon spread his technicolor gospel to the former Eastern Bloc.

“There’re a lot of things going on that, you know, we can expose the funk to,” he says. “It’s gonna be a blast!”

It’s just the latest improbable episode in a life full of improbabilities. Born in Cincinnati in 1951, the son of a single mother, William “Bootsy” Collins was just 18, and didn’t even own a bass, when his group, the Pacemakers, was tapped to become James Brown’s backing band—a huge break, which the young Collins quickly turned his back on. Just 11 months later, in 1971, Bootsy walked.

As luck—or perhaps destiny—would have it, lightning struck a second time when Bootsy met George Clinton, the mad genius behind Funkadelic, whose acid-funk freakouts were attracting fans in the Detroit area. In Clinton, Collins found a musical mentor and collaborator, and with Collins, Clinton scored some of his biggest hits.

Collins finished the ’70s as the frontman of Bootsy’s Rubber Band. Since then, he’s done countless collaborations with artists as diverse as Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads, house-era charmers Deee-Lite, Snoop Dogg, and even the Reverend Al Sharpton.

By his own admission, music was Collins’ ticket out of a hard-knock life that seemed likely to land him in prison. But that’s not how it felt at the time: Then, as now, Bootsy was just following his bliss.

“It seemed like everybody was always happy around music and having a good time,” he recalls. “That pulled me toward wanting to play—watching people getting off and having a good time. That was a big part of it. And of course the girls—definitely.”

However, the biggest draw may well have been was Collins’ older brother, Phelps—also known as Catfish. “I was just trying to prove to [Catfish] that I was worthy of hanging with him,” Bootsy confesses. Eight years older than Bootsy, Catfish was already playing in bands when Bootsy was barely a teen.

Though the Collins brothers would ultimately enter into a musical partnership that lasted until his older brother’s death in 2010, initially, Catfish wasn’t so keen on Bootsy getting into the profession. “He didn’t take me seriously,” Bootsy recalls. “In fact, he was kind of like against it.”

But persistence and talent won over the skeptical brother. In Bootsy’s retelling, success was just an easy glide from there: “Once I did that, everything started clicking. Everything started, just, you know, working.”

Perhaps it’s true, because it was soon after that James Brown came calling. Virtually overnight, the Collins brothers went from obscurity to funk aristocracy.

Regarding his decision to leave Brown and join Funkadelic, Bootsy recalls the shifting sounds of the early ’70s: “Things were definitely changing. You used to have a solo artist and maybe, like, a saxophone. But Jimi [Hendrix] changed that. By him coming on the scene with the wild guitar thing, that led into bands wanting to be the front guys—like Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears. It was more than just a singer with a back-up band. The bands became the stars.”

It’s a crooked pedigree that traces itself from Hendrix to the marching-band prog-rock of Chicago to Funkadelic—but therein lies genius.

When asked how it felt to step out from the band and become a frontman, Bootsy laughs, saying, “In the first place, it was George [Clinton] who who talked me into the frontman thing. He always said I was a star—whether I wanted to be one or not. I never looked at it like that.”

It’s hard to believe a man with star shaped glasses doesn’t recognize his own star power, Bootsy insists with a laugh that he still can’t believe he’s come so far and lasted so long. “I don’t know what was happening,” he says. “I just went with it. I know I took a lot of LSD, though.”

With almost two months of touring ahead of her on the Warped Tour, Bay Area rapper/vocalist K.Flay has a few favorite summer jams to keep her company during the long hours on the road. She shares her top picks below before the tour stops on her home turf this Saturday at Shoreline.

Look out for K.Flay’s new album Life as a Dog on June 24.

Alex Metric & Jacques Lu Cont feat. Malin – Safe With You
I am literally obsessed with this song. I feel like it’s that rare breed of track that’s uplifting but tinged with a sort of morose energy at the same time. You can dance but also cry. It’s better to dance, though.

Zhu – Faded (Odesza Remix)
If you don’t like this, then something is wrong. Things get pretty great around 1:40.

Lykke Li – No Rest For The Wicked
Lykke Li is one of my favorite artists, period. I love the honesty and emotionality of everything she does. This song is so beautiful and I really appreciate the aesthetic of the album as a whole.

Sales – Chinese New Year
The weird-ass tuning on the guitar made me like this song immediately. There’s something so charming about this band. Maybe that’s a weird word to use, but I just like that their music feels totally sincere. Like, what someone would say to you when you’re lying down in a parking lot.

Phantogram – Black Out Days
The vocal sampling and the melodies on this track are so good. The whole record is incredible — I feel like they’ve developed and progressed so much with the new album.