Ypsilanti's Black Jake & the Carnies set fierce murder ballads and cautionary tales to the beat of an old-time string band. This octet offers a unique blend of Americana, bluegrass, and punk. Steve Leggett of the All Music Guide writes that Black Jake plays "a kind of raucous acoustic Americana that tosses post modern Appalachian murder ballads, Irish drinking songs, skewed, twisted love songs and general cautionary tales into a stylistic blender that has them sounding like nothing so much as a maverick, hopped-up punk polka band in full 21st-century everything- fits jug band mode"--and that just about covers it--except that you may well find yourself throwing rubber balls at the band . . . and having them thrown back at you. Tonight's opener is the visionary Lake Orion, Michigan band Frontier Ruckus. They've released a new album, "Way Upstate & The Crippled Summer, Vol. 1."