Wow — this year’s SXSW sounds amazing!  For those of you who are going, enjoy and please report back; and for those of us sticking around, we are totally going to have an awesome weekend, too!  So there.

Tonight, check out Handmade Music Night at 3rd Ward.  I so want to go and haven’t been able to but I’ve heard it’s fab! For your music fix, hit up Market Hotel for Future Islands and Double Dagger.

Friday, see some performance art at Grace Space: Peter Dobill performs "Heartactions" with music by Asakomusic and food by Big Dicks Hot Dogs — and (possibly OR) Rob Andrews performs Grace Minotaur.  If you haven’t yet, check out this interview with Grace Space’s Jill McKeena.  It’s closing weekend for the Bushwick Shakes’ Romeo & Juliet at the Bushwick Starr.  I heard some great reviews from last week’s show, and who couldn’t use more iambic pentameter in their weekend?

Saturday, support the arts at Market Hotel’s Swoon Swimming Cities Benefit farewell show.  Liturgy (stay tuned to the Culture pages for more on that) and Ana Lola Roman are on the bill as well as live screen printing, djs and dancing.  Put on a beret, grab an easel and head to Michael Alan’s Ragtime Draw-a-thon at Goodbye Blue Monday, which sounds like part performance art, part live music and part figure drawing class…. just high concept enough to be super fun!  In Greater Bushwick news, The Sanctuary of Hope presents The Witnessing: Residency: "a nighttide of performance, an extrapolation of our residency program. The structure of the show is a double trinity: the mitosis of three become six."

3/19 — Handmade Music Night
3rd Ward.
195 Morgan Ave.
7:30-10:30pm.  Free.  (PBR while it lasts!)

3/20-22 — Romeo & Juliet
Bushwick Starr.
207 Starr Street.
8pm. 
$15 — Reserve tickets

3/21 — Swoon Swimming Cities Benefit
Market Hotel.
1142 Myrtle Ave.
Doors 8pm, Cost TBA.