Sponsored by the ACLU of the Nation's Capital, the third annual event will be part speak-out, part concert. Information tables will be out by 12 p.m.; between 4 and 6 p.m., members of the public are invited to contribute to an open mic; at 6 p.m., a panel of statehood experts will speak, and the concert—with openers Wayna and Uptown XO— will kick off at 7 p.m. An after party is in the works, too.

Admission is free and open to the public.

First opened in Manhattan's Flatiron district, the Hill Country Barbecue Market began as restauranteur Mark Marc Glosserman's brainchild in 2007, combining his love of southwestern food and Texas twang. Glosserman has since extended further south, staking a claim in D.C. that culminates Thursday night with a launch party for Hill Country Live, the venue/restaurant's concert series devoted to Texas' multifarious music styles. Tickets are $15 and include a downstairs performance by Austin roots rockers Heybale!

Since mid-March, Hill Country's new Penn Quarter location has featured a series of free or cheap concerts that highlight its American and roots music ethos. Thursday's launch marks the venue's shift toward a becoming base for Austin-flavored live music and culture—and, once a week or so, charging a bit more for the music. And while the Texas capital might be the "spiritual epicenter" of the Hill Country aesthetic (the venue even curated its own South by Southwest showcase this spring), Glosserman says he hopes that the venue will become a center for D.C.-area roots music, too.

This summer, Hill Country Live will present concerts by Houston multi-instrumentalist Carolyn Wonderland (June 9, pictured), San Antonio-based Emory Quinn (June 23), and Mainer Slaid Cleaves (June 27). See Hill Country's website for schedule and ticket information.

Collin Crowe, a guitarist in Buildings who organized tomorrow's orchestral project, says 15 guitars will be on stage. "I hit up mostly friends of mine for it," he says. "To me, there's a lot of us not doing very much."

Crowe, who composed music for the orchestra, says he's "freaking out a bit" about the ensemble's inaugural performance. He says expect an ambitious piece that's "going to be really soft and chilling."

The band had toyed with the idea of a guitar orchestra before. "It's something I've always wanted to do, but never had the incentive to do it," Crowe says. "Being invited to play with Lightning Bolt was that incentive."

Rehearsing with large ensemble was "kind of cool," Crowe says. "It [felt] like a party every time."

As for the venue, whose second-floor space often vibrates during gigs? The employee who picked up the phone at DC9 this afternoon put it plainly: "Fifteen guitars? Oh man. Jeez."

Try as Jimmy Fallon might, one man who can't be remade is Neil Young. From director Jonathan Demme, Neil Young Trunk Show combines footage from two shows at Pennsylvania's Tower Theatre—footage demonstrating that Young can still rock. (At 82 minutes, the film is mostly music, including a 21-minute jam on "No Hidden Path.") Neil Young Trunk Show succeeds at what most concert DVDs struggle to accomplish—making you feel like you're actually at the show, not watching from a couch.

To read Tricia Olszewski's reviews of both films, go here.

In the T2: Judgement Day-style techno-battle for punk rock's soul, the machines are winning. At least that's how it seems listening to Brooklyn's These Are Powers. On its '07 debut, Terrific Seasons, the trio was still pounding out wiry post-punk rhythms with fairly conventional gear–bass, guitar, a drum kit. But over the last couple of years, These Are Powers has embraced the future to its very bosom. Bassist Pat Noecker and guitarist Anna Barrie process their instruments though a labyrinth of effects pedals, until you can't be sure the noises you're hearing originated with a guitar. Drummer Bill Salas has ditched acoustic percussion for sampler-driven trigger pads. But Noecker argues that his band, who are performing this evening at Velvet Lounge, is still more man than machine. He recently spoke with Washington City Paper about samplers, electronics, and how you can still break a sweat when you're smashing plastic.

These Are Powers w/ Exactly, Sick Weapons
@ Velvet Lounge
$8, 9 pm
915 U Street NW

Washington City Paper: The last time I saw you play (at Civilian Arts Project) you were lugging around a giant PA system. Is that something you’re still packing?

Pat Noecker: Yeah, we still carry our own PA. There are no more acoustic drums in the band and Anna’s setup has changed, so we carry the PA for quality assurance on monitoring the electronics. We just want to make sure we don’t have to rely on anybody else to make our show good. And if we can [rely on somebody else], that's even better.

WCP: Is it useful in terms of setting up in offbeat/non-traditional spaces?

PN: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a really great investment; I highly recommend it for any band incorporating electronics.

WCP: You mention that you’ve given up entirely on live drums. Why is that?

PN: Yeah, no more live drums. Now it’s just samplers and live electronics. The acoustic drums, they just don’t hold up sonically to what you can do electronically. You could argue its more exciting to watch somebody play a live kit. But I think it’s still exciting to watch Bill (Salas) play the sampler pads.

WCP: You don’t think that bashing on a piece of rubber loses some of the live energy and presence of a real kit?

PN: Bill’s still playing an instrument, it’s just that the sounds he’s making aren’t what you’re used to hearing from a drummer. He’ll still be breaking sweats and shit. It’s amazing to watch somebody sit behind a kit and work it, but a sampler can be cool, too. What you're seeing gets dislodged from what you’re hearing.

WCP: On your earlier records, you guys used a pretty standard rock set-up (guitar/bass/drums). What made you guys want to get deeper into using electronics?

PN: Just being interested in the idea of collage within pop songs. For us, it’s like, we appreciate art and want to be able to do what painters and collage artists do. Music sort of lags behind visual art–painters were pretty far ahead of musicians on a lot of levels. So with electronics, I get to use certain [visual] art-inspired techniques.

WCP: Do you ever feel like relying on samplers and electronics can impede on spontaneity in your live show?

PN: The tools we choose to use are geared towards playing live. We play them manually—we don’t just press play. We’re not midi-synched–we're not playing along to a set tempo–so there’s more room for error and spontaneity.

It’s up to us how spontaneous we want to be, it’s not up to the machine. That’s something that’s really important to note for this debate between purity and electronics in music or whatever–you’re still playing the machine, the machine is not playing you.

WCP: But electronics—stuff like Ableton, samplers, etc—tend to suggest certain methods of composition, just through how they’re designed. Like, a software like Ableton pushes you toward loop-based writing. Do you feel like your equipment set-up sort of determines what kind of art you eventually produce with it? Is the machine, in some sense, playing you?

PN: Yeah, but I think in general there’s lots of formative situations and circumstances like that in any art form. When blues musicians left the South their music changed because they couldn’t bring their pianos. In regards to interface…I’m playing the bass, but it’s a prepared bass. I came up with my own system. I deformed the interface of the bass as it is. It definitely creates a style–I just play with my thumb, no other fingers.

WCP: You guys are about to put out a new EP (World Class Peoples/Candyman). But why put out an EP? Isn’t modern music distribution—the internet, iTunes—geared towards singles and albums? What chance do four or five songs stand in the world anymore? What good is the EP format these days?

PN: Well it’s not so much a choice. It’s just how it happened. We had these three songs we wanted to put out in the world and wanted people to remix them for us. Originally we would have called it a 12” single. After everything was put together, it was five pieces of music. I mean, it fits in iTunes and then it’s heavily packaged it on vinyl side–180 gram red vinyl with a homemade sculpture. The EP as a format doesn’t have much to do with it. We just do what we have to do—we try to not really worry about trends too much.

Despite her continual success on the charts and ever-growing fan base with songs like "In For The Kill" and "Bulletproof," Jackson is known for speaking out of turn and straying from politically correct statements. The Quietus reported that she "blast[ed] what she sees as America's ignorance of electronic music." In the same article, while attempting to defend her feminist beliefs, she suggested that women who prefer to dress in a more sexual manner — in contrast to her own androgynous style — probably deserve whatever bad things men do to them. "That's what a real woman is, when you've got the sex eyes. I think you attract a certain kind of man by dressing [provocatively]. Women wonder why they get beaten up, or having relationships with arsehole men. Because you attracted one, you twat."

Jackson, though, is just one of many stars who rail against, you know, the people who pay for their music. Prince, however beloved by his rabid and faithful fans, has taken legal action against his online followers in the past. Back in 2007, lawyers for the Purple Rain star sent warnings to three of his fan-built Web sites, demanding these sites remove all lyrics or likenesses of his image — even those photographed by fans personally at concerts or images of tattoos that devotees had inked of the Purple One. In an unusual turn, fans of the three sites united together in order to protest in defense of the man they loved — despite the fact that he was the one taking legal action against them.

Perhaps the most temperamental of music stars is the ever-evolving man himself, Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses. To be fair, fans aren't Axl's only choice targets for physical or verbal attack — security guards, other musicians, photographers, and technical engineers are also in his repertoire. Perhaps his most famous incident was at a concert in St. Louis when, after noticing a fan taking pictures, Axl leaped into the crowd and took matters into his own hands. Shortly afterward, he left the stage in a huff before his set was up, blaming security for the infraction.

Despite these musicians' sometimes-heated interactions with their critics and fans, their popularity abides. Perhaps the La Roux frontwoman put it best herself: "You're not buying their personality, you're buying their music. Of course it's never nice when you're into an artist and you discover they're horrible, and, yes, it would be disappointing if I suddenly found out that Annie Lennox was racist. But you'd still love the music. It wouldn't matter what I heard about Michael Jackson or Prince — you can't just stop liking a song."

Midnight Kids w/ The Mantis
@ Velvet Lounge
$8 9:30 pm
915 U Street NW

A skeptic might take one look at "Stewart Lupton: A Retrospective" and decide they aren't really in the mood for a wake. After all, the last decade has brought the former Jonathan Fire*Eater front man's music career little but pain and suffering. Comebacks flopped, good will was squandered, and concerts were bungled. In ten years, Lupton managed to eek out only a single EP's worth of music under the name Child Ballads.

But hey, it's a brand new year. A brand new decade, even. So maybe redemption is finally afoot for Lupton. This career retrospective–which will feature members of Cat Power and The French Kicks, among others–could be a chance to reconcile with old ghosts and get some closure. But just how far back is this thing supposed to go? Wasn't Jonathan Fire*Eater originally a ska band?

At the very least, it might be a chance to rock out to "Song For Cherry Red" one more time.

Stewart Lupton (A Retrospective) w/ Laughing Man, Kevin Mullin, Submarine Bells.
@ Rock & Roll Hotel
9:30 pm $10
1353 H Street, NE

Tabi Bonney performing at Feedback at DC9 from Denman C Anderson on Vimeo.

Bassist/vocalist Justin Angelo Morey has a sharp ear for '60s R&B hooks and Zombies-style harmonies. "Gloomy Monday Morning," with it's farfisa organ grooves, is such a thorough psych-pop forgery that even Lenny Kaye wouldn't know for sure. And a lifetime of high volume pounding will do wonders for your rhythm section. Strawberry Alarm Clock could have benefited from such a stint on the New England basement-show circuit.

The Black Hollies w/ Title Tracks and Brian Scary and the Shredding Tears
@ Black Cat
$10 8:30 pm
1811 14th St. NW