Ah, how the mighty have fallen. Seattle music veteran Jerry Cantrell (you may remember him from a little band called Alice In Chains) is playing this Saturday (October 22nd) at local sports bar The Tavern on Gray (West Gray at Waugh). Yes, that’s right — Jerry Cantell at The Tavern.

And despite what The Tavern’s ads indicate, I highly doubt that Layne Staley’s corpse will be rising from the grave to play alongside his former bandmate in a Houston sports bar parking lot (the ads read: “Jerry Cantrell w/ Alice In Chains” instead of “from”). Guess they had to get that plug in there somehow.

Local rock heroes (and Houston Press Music Award winners — Best Band Readers’ Choice) DuneTX open the show at 6 p.m. Cantrell hits the stage at 7:30. The show is 21+, of course.

Ticket information is available at The Tavern’s website or at the Rock 103.7 website.

I was going to go off on some rant about how sad it is to see Jerry Cantrell having to play a parking lot party at a sports bar, but then I changed my mind because it’s great to see a working musician able to tour nationally, even if it’s pubs and sports bars. And I saw some great bands in parking lots yesterday during Westfest Compressed (more on that later). I like Alice In Chains’ music (they are probably my favorite band from that period) so it’s nice to get a chance to catch Cantrell in such a small venue. Better than some festival at The Woodlands, that’s for sure.

Columbia released a pretty decent Alice In Chains box set that is available here.

More information on DuneTX is available at their website and their MySpace page. Their CDs are available at most local record stores and the usual online outlets (iTunes, Napster, CDBaby). Be sure to support the local guys…

See you out and about.

Now Playing: Porcupine Tree