Joe Cunningham, Christopher Gray and J. Raoul Brody sing songs of ramshackle urban disjuncture. Cheerfully enough!

It all started with their fixation on the Kinks’ album, “Muswell Hillbillies,” memorably evoked in performances at Bird & Beckett and other fine venues a year or so ago… but there’s plenty more modern desolation to feed the preoccupations of the Potrero Hillbillies, so it’s time for another show. (Also, it’s transcendent, which can’t really go out of style, can it?)

Joe Cunningham, a native of Flint, Michigan, is thrilled to think that his suite of songs set in Flint, “Michigan Winter,” will need no more introduction than the recent blizzard of international news items. Lucky enough to be a member of the Potrero Hillbillies, Joe feels that Bird and Beckett is the perfect setting for the international debut of these songs betraying confidences about the lives of friends and family members too far away to exact retribution. With his brilliant and talented colleagues Joshua Raoul Brody and Christopher Gray, the Hillbillies will present a dozen or so songs about de-industrialization, rural life and the implausibility of time. Add some Kinks, and you’ve got a full evening of entertainment…

You can while away your time on the dole and stewing in your juices while awaiting July 13 (oops, it’s past, wasn’t it a delight?!), listening to the Kinks lp that first set the Potrero gang pondering… by clicking here.

In re: Muswell Hill, home to the Kinks’ own eponymous hillbillies … We know per Wikipedia that “The earliest records of Muswell Hill date from the 12th century.” Who knew the technology dates back that far?! Timeless! Certainly, there have been lie-abeds like our musical heroes since time immemorial. And so it goes. Mostly downhill.

Bird & Beckett’s “canyon moonlight” series happens occasional (frequent) Thursday and Sunday nights… country to jazz to just plain beyond category, for your listening pleasure. No cover charge, but your substantial donation in the bucket helps us pay these fine musicians! $10 per solvent adult  ain’t too much, and it’s not too little either! And do please BYOB! The State in its wisdom has enjoined us not to dispense foul elixirs whether for love or money. God helps the child that’s got his own…