Have tickets ever been scalped for a matinee screening of a new music documentary at downtown’s Digital Gym?
The answer may come soon as soon as Saturday afternoon, when “Midnight Jack — The Movie” debuts at the East Village theater, which is housed on the second floor of UC San Diego’s Park & Market campus.
The film’s namesake is famed San Diego troubadour Jack Tempchin, who in 2918 was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in New York alongside Cat Stevens, John Prine, Missy Elliott, Tom T. Hall and Dallas Austin. A former North Park resident who lives in North County, Tempchin is best known for writing one of the Eagles’ biggest hits, “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” and co-writing another Eagles’ classic, “Already Gone.”
His songs have also been recorded by everyone from Tempchin’s s Johnny Rivers and Emmylou Harris to New Riders of the Purple Sage and Olivia Newton-John. He and Eagles’ co-founder Glenn Frey co-wrote some of Frey’s biggest solo hits, including “The One You Love” and “Smuggler’s Blues.”
“Midnight Jack — The Movie” is the brainchild of Tempchin’s fellow troubadour and periodic colaborator, multiple San Diego Music Award-winner Gregory Page. It features seven full-length songs by Tempchin, plus “Taking Everything Away,” which he co-wrote with Frey. It won Award of Recognition: Documentary Feature honors at the 2023 IndieFEST Film Awards.
“I began making this film in 2020,” Page said. “It encompasses a long stretch of time and contains many different film techniques, from lo-fi to psychedelic. It’s more of an experience rather than a movie. Jack wanted no mention of his hits or time spent with famous friends.”
Tempchin and Page will do a Q&A after Saturday’s screening, which sold out weeks in advance. That’s the bad news. The good news is a second screening has been added for Feb. 10, also with a Q&A, and some tickets are still available. With any luck, a third screening might be added. 3 p.m. Saturday (sold out) and Feb. 10. Digital Gym, 1100 Market Street, downtown. $20. (619) 230-1928; digitalgym.org
Jake Blount: How many LGBTQ activist 28-year-old banjo- and fiddle-playing singers are fusing traditional Black folk, blues, gospel and string-band music with Afro-futurism, hip-hop, ambient electronica and a palpable sense of existential dread? Take a bow, Jake Blount. His second album, 2022’s striking “The New Faith,” expertly leaps across the centuries to create an inviting stylistic synthesis. In his talented hands, weathered gems by Lead Belly and Sister Rosetta Tharpe simultaneously sound old and new, stepped in history and completely in the moment. His UC San Diego concert with his band promises to be a night to remember. 7 p.m. Sunday. The Loft at UC San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla. $14-$38. artpower.ucsd.edu
Stephane Wrembel: French six-string virtuoso Stephane Wrembel grew up playing in rock bands and emulating the playing of such guitar heroes as Joe Satriani, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler and former San Diegan Frank Zappa. But after graduating from high school, he immersed himself in the music of Belgian gypsy guitar legend Django Reinhardt and the alternately ebullient and rhapsodic “hot jazz” style Reinhardt popularized in the 1930s with French violin great Stéphane Grappelli and their band, the storied Quintette du Hot Club de France. Wrembrel has since earned international recognition as one of the finest progenitors of “le jazz hot.” His concert here Tuesday at the all-ages Dizzy’s falls on what would have been Reinhardt’s 114th birthday. 8 p.m. Tuesday. Dizzy’s, Arias Hall (behind the Musician’s Association building), 1717 Morena Blvd., Bay Park. $25. (858) 270-7467, dizzysjazz.com