8:00pm - $10 Cover

The Karl Straub Combo sounds like a mixture of Buck Owens and Sun Ra, with material written by Elvis Costello. Or, to explain it more simply, they sound like NRBQ.

Straub has been writing songs and petulantly ignoring genre boundaries since 1985. His old band the Graverobbers recorded albums like “Soul Parking,” and “Harlem Hayride,” developing a tiny but rabid cult of fans, and his songs have been recorded by numerous artists (Kelly Willis, Eugene Chadbourne, Last Train Home, the Grandsons, etc.) across a diverse spectrum including country, rock, jazz, folk, and avant-garde noise.

His songs were used in the Netflix film with Elijah Wood and Melanie Lynskey.

Karl Straub sings and writes songs, but he’s not a “singer-songwriter.” He plays guitar and fiddle, but he’s not exactly a “guitarist” or a “fiddler.” He writes and plays rock and roll, country, and jazz, but he’s not a “rock and roll musician,” a ”country musician,” or a (God forbid) “jazz musician.”

He has a substack newsletter called

Hot Plate! Print Edition. karlstraub.substack.com

Recorded music available at Bandcamp