SYCAMORE SMITH in The Stranger

Michigan's Upper Peninsula hasn't changed much since its 19th-century mining boom times—it's still a vast, sparsely populated wilderness, so the college town of Marquette is like Paris up there, a relative hotbed of art and action. That's where Sycamore Smith hails from, and for well over a decade he's held forth as the U.P.'s prime musical export, as a member of the scruffy pop-punk machine the Muldoons and solo. With his rough-hewn folk-guitar strum, slippery melodies, and tongue-tying Dadaist wordplay, Smith comes across like a hillbilly Robyn Hitchcock. He's taking his cracked one-man vaudeville revue on the road, so anyone with a penchant for kazoo abuse and Gilded Age detail should make the scene at the Funhouse, where Smith will appear alongside fellow ex-punks Steve Turner and Charles Leo Gebhardt IV. This night should prove a peculiar hootenanny indeed. FRED BELDIN

Sycamore Smith on MySpace
Sycamore Smith's Wild Wild Website
Muldoons on MySpace