With the hot rods coming to town for the big car show in conjunction with the 15th annual Route 66 Mother Road Festival held downtown, the weekend push is “vroom, vroom; take a look at my car room” or something like that. Bands on the hot rod stage at Fifth and Adams include The Hit Men on Friday night and Stingray Alley, Groove Daddies and Rosie & The Rivets going from 1 to 10 all day on Saturday. I’ll be playing bass with The Motorvators on Saturday, starting bright and early at 11 a.m. in front of Recycled Records. I sure hope I can park my hot rod Prius next to the stage again while unloading the gear, just for those special looks from the car-watching crowd.

On Friday night at Walnut Street Winery in Rochester, Dave Adams returns to the area for another blast from the past while hanging out in the particular present and jumping into the future fire. Dave was a founding member and driving force of Springfield’s seminal punk-ish band Food & Money back in the early 80s. He also played in the Rockin’ Rebels before heading west to end up in Sacramento for most of the last couple decades. Now retired occupationally and inspired creatively, Dave writes songs considering the current situation of the world and his world from a playful, poignant and insightful perspective. Joining Mr. Adams in entertaining are Larry Stevens, Danny and Tony Fafoglia, Dave’s brother Dougie from Toronto, and Jeff Helton, all who played with or knew of Adams back in the day. On Sunday in the Dumb Records store, Dave joins up with legendary, local guitarist Jeff Kornfeld and brother Dougie Adams for an hour set starting at 8:30 p.m., as the fellas relive being in a band together some 40 years ago. “Unbelievable” is the word Dave used to describe all this excitement, bringing together friends and musicians from decades past to join again in playing music. We agree with you, Dave, and I will add “incredible, fantastic and very cool” as further descriptions of the happening.

The Jacksonville-based, multiinstrumentalist, singing blues musician Robert Sampson hosts a CD release party at Third Base on Friday night at 8 p.m. Robert, a multitime winner of the local Blues Challenge and a finalist at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis on a few occasions, molds a lifetime of music to an appreciation of the deep feelings and intense emotions tied to making music a way of life, especially through the blues. As pastor of his church (and a left-handed musician), Robert also brings in spiritual leanings to his way of doing things and leads us to understanding the title of his CD, Lefty Preacher. Go get ‘em, Robert.

The first round of our “Best of Springfield” contest is complete, with the nitty-gritty voting now in motion. As we know, the music and entertainment section is always hotly contested with the results used by venues and artists as calling cards throughout the year. I’m not a particularly competitive person and somewhat dread the reaction the contest causes in the artistic community, but all in all we take it well, and if each person votes in good faith, may the best one with the most votes win. I would like to say congratulations to the category makers at Illinois Times for giving us some very interesting and well-deserved new areas to vote in and folks to vote for.

Roll on, September, roll on.

Contact Tom Irwin at [email protected].