Miami Music Festival Previews: Carlos Bertonatti, Alex Nelson, and Shonie, All Playing Tonight

Here are a few randomly selected recommendations among the many acts playing the Miami Music Festival. Visit MiamiMusicFestival.org for individual venue details. Many of these funky-named places you've never heard of are subdivisions of real venues, with made-up names just for festival purposes. Others venues are tents; Transit Lounge alone will host...

By Arielle Castillo

December 10, 2009

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Here are a few randomly selected recommendations among the many acts playing the Miami Music Festival. Visit MiamiMusicFestival.org for individual venue details. Many of these funky-named places you've never heard of are subdivisions of real venues, with made-up names just for festival purposes. Others venues are tents; Transit Lounge alone will host a couple, as well as putting on separate showcases within its walls. Three-day festival wristbands are $50 ($35 for students); one-day wristbands are $25 ($20 for students). Otherwise individual show admission is $10.

Carlos Bertonatti: Ladies will swoon for this Venezuelan-born, Miami-based crooner and guitarist, blessed with movie star looks and extremely catchy, sunny acoustic pop rock. Imagine, perhaps, John Mayer, but without all the douchiness.

9 p.m. Thursday at Waxy O'Connor's indoors, 690 SW 1st Court.

Alex Nelson: A fast-rising one-man-band from Fort Lauderdale, Nelson specializes in hushed tales of heartbreak run, live, through a byzantine setup of knobs and buttons. It captures the essence of both Dashboard Confessional and, say, the Postal Service, and it works -- really works.

1 a.m. Thursday (Friday morning) at the Lounge at Transit, 729 SW 1st Ave. 10 p.m. Friday at La Guaracha, 801 Brickell Bay Dr. (in the Four Ambassadors).

Shonie: One of Slip N Slide's most recent discoveries, Shonie brings frank talk back to R&B. Rather than sing with her head in the clouds, Shone gives it to you straight from a female perspective, as she did with her minor Internet hit earlier this year, a somewhat salacious response song to Jeremiih's "Birthday Sex."

1 a.m. Thursday (Friday morning) at Ecco Lounge, 168 SE 1st St.

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