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What was once the Blake Street Baseball Club, an open-air venue in LoDo that catered to the Rockies crowd, is now the LoDo Music Hall. According to general manager Shawn Ellis, the focus of the club, which holds up to 1,000 people and now sports a roof, is live music, and locals will get plenty of chances to shine. Judge the place for yourself when Brethren Fast takes the stage on Friday, June 19. Also on June 19, producer Joe Lyon presents Squishy Live!, a showcase for cHUck dA fONK and the Mile High Funkers that appears on DCTV/Channel 57 at 10 p.m. Hip to Da Reel, a hip-hop video clip-fest overseen by Jhay Escalera, follows thirty minutes later.

When the Lilith Fair stops in Denver on August 23, Boulder singer-songwriter Sherri Jackson won't be part of the lineup. However, she's been added to five Lilith dates in early July, including stopovers in Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Detroit and Columbus, Ohio. In the meantime, she's touring coffeehouses and small clubs in the Northeast in order to sharpen material for her second disc for Hybrid Records, which recently signed a distribution agreement with Sire. Ted Guggenheim, Jackson's manager, expects that recording on the package will begin in September with an eye toward a February 1999 release. He adds that Jackson penned several songs likely to be considered for the album during a recent songwriting retreat at a castle outside Paris owned by Miles Copeland, onetime manager of the Police. During the session, Jackson collaborated with most of the retreat's participants, including, Guggenheim says, "Rick Astley and a couple members of the Go-Go's."

Sounds like a horror movie to me. On Thursday, June 18, Joanna Conner plays selections from her new Blind Pig album, Slidetime, at Brendan's. On Friday, June 19, Turnsol celebrates the release of its latest, Carry Me This, at Herman's Hideaway, and the Skalars educate folks at Round Midnight, with Judge Roughneck. On Saturday, June 20, Shawn Mullins croons at Nederland's Acoustic Coffeehouse; Rebecca Folsom has a field day at Stella's; and Sanskrit is spoken at the Houston Fine Arts Center. On Monday, June 22, Spoon goes to the 15th Street Tavern, and Kim Lenz and Her Jaguars prowl at the Bluebird Theater. On Tuesday, June 23, Esma and her band, Ansambl Teodosievski, bring out the gypsy in you at the Mercury Cafe. And on Wednesday, June 24, the Saw Doctors operate at the Bluebird. That's really going out on a limb.

--Michael Roberts

Backbeat's e-mail address is: Michael_Roberts@ westword.comMichael_Roberts@. While you're online, visit Michael Roberts's Jukebox at www.westword.com.