Best Bets: Music and lots of food

Live music downtown tonight

Three Cape Girardeau-based bands will perform live, original music tonight in a show at Shakers Bar in downtown Cape.

Isabella, Guy Morgan and The Scatterguns will team up for a downtown throwdown at the bar, 2 N. Main St. in Cape Girardeau.

Zach Smith, guitarist for Isabella, said the band's sound is a little bit pop punk with some alternative rock or metal thrown into the mix.

Smith said Isabella has a new album cmoing out later this spring, and just finished a collaborative writing process.

The Scatterguns perform in this undated photo.Submitted

He's looking forward to the show, he said, because the band's following is strong in Southeast Missouri.

Isabella has played Warped Tour and Pointfest in St. Louis, Smith said, but the clubs in Cape Girardeau have a different energy.

Josh Tomlin, frontman for The Scatterguns, said of the band's sound, "It's very Southeast Missouri." Southern rock played through a punk rock filter, he said, but with heavy metal, punk rock, hard rock influences. "We have a pretty heavy, pretty loud, sometimes abrasive sound but a lot of the lyrical themes could be country or southern rock songs," Tomlin said. "They're about small town isolation, rural economic depression, fear of change and also that stubborn pride of where you're from."

Nate Comer, aka Party Nate, is lead singer and plays lead guitar for Guy Morgan, a full-on rock & roll band with a punk rock attitude, as he put it.

Guy Morgan also has a new album coming out this summer -- the band's fourth, he said, and will be titled "Welcome to Bikini Beach."

"We're all about old school party movies, beach movies, all that good stuff," Comer said.

"All three of these good bands will be under one roof," Comer said of tonight's show. "Getting all these bands with different sounds together, that's the main thing. People can come check us out, and if you don't like one band, you'll like the next one. And," he added, "have your surfboard ready."

Music starts tonight at 8, 2 N. Main St. in Cape Girardeau. $5 at the door, 21 and up.

Venable/LaPierre scholarship fund concert Sunday

The Venable/LaPierre annual piano scholarship concert will be presented from 3 to 4 p.m. Sunday, at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Jackson. Minneapolis-based pianist Casey Rafn will perform. He is an active freelance pianist, performing at home and abroad as both a collaborative player and a solo pianist.

The concert will fund a scholarship for Jackson students seeking to study the performing arts at a post-secondary level. Matt Palisch, director of music and organist at St. Paul, coordinates the fund.

Attend the concert from 3 to 4 p.m. Sunday at St. Paul Lutheran Church, 223 W. Adams St. in Jackson.

Fish fry planned

In addition to weekly Friday fish fries held in the region during Lent, the H.O.P.E. Campaign will be hosting a fish fry on March 27, the proceeds of which will benefit individuals affected by cancer.

The Jones family established the Larry B. Jones H.O.P.E. Campaign -- which stands for Healing, Optimism, Prayer and Example -- to remember the late Larry Jones who died from cancer on March 14, 2011. In support of survivors and their families, the campaign provides "love offerings" to contribute toward medical care expenses. Lori Galati of the Jones family said in a press release that the foundation remembers their sister Sara who passed away in her sleep in 2012, and also honors the memory of their mother, who passed away from cancer in 2016.

Established March 2011, the Larry B. Jones H.O.P.E. Campaign has raised over $114,000 since its start. It partners with the Ben Kruse 18 FORE Life Foundation, which also benefits individuals with cancer in the southeast Missouri area. The fish fry will take place at 4:30 p.m. on March 27 at Trinity United Methodist Church in Bloomfield, and tickets may be purchased from the family or at Allen Christian Buick GMC in Dexter, or through the H.O.P.E. Campaign website.

Reporter Nicolette Baker contributed to this article.