Arts Devo

Sprung! Ha ha! Stupid humans of Chico. You pray for a break in the rain, and this is what you get: a jammed-up weekend so overpacked with community events and killer art and music that you will probably miss half the cool shit goin’ down. Forget the lawn. Forget laundry. Just put off everything and fall into Chico’s spring groove. Here’s just a slice of what’s happening:

Saturday, April 22

• Wildflower Music Festival, noon-8 p.m.: The annual fundraising festival at the End of Normal for Wildflower Open Classroom charter school has a heavy-hitter lineup this year, including the usual Mother Hips (in trio form), plus Oakland’s Junior Toots and locals Surrogate, Kyle Williams, Jeff Pershing Band and Loki Miller Band. Tickets $40 at www.eventbrite.com

• Marc Cooper benefit, 8 p.m.: Journeyman blues/jazz guitarist Marc Cooper has a lot of friends in the local music scene, and many of them—including Big Mo, Chuck Epperson, Cretin’s Cattle and Groovestruck (featuring Cooper)—are hitting the stage at Lost on Main to raise money for Cooper’s fight against lung cancer.

Sunday, April 23

• Monca grand opening, 1-5 p.m.: The time is finally here for the public unveiling of the Museum of Northern California Art, 900 Esplanade, in the old Veterans Memorial Building. Let’s celebrate something new in town!

• CAMMIES Finale & Awards Show, 2-7 p.m.: The finale for the CAMMIES season, featuring 13 local bands, food trucks, beer for sale and the announcement of the CAMMIES awards happens Sunday at Patrick Ranch. Free and family-friendly. (Shuttle available 1-8 p.m. between the “Our Hands” sculpture and the ranch.)

• Golden Road Radio Hour, 5:30-9 p.m.: The Nevada City-based radio/online TV variety show is coming to Chico to record and livestream an event at the Chico Women’s Club. The show’s mission of “building a better future through education, community-building and positive social change” is realized by bringing together a wide range of presenters, which in Chico will include alternative health practitioners, historians, DJs, Allegory belly-dance troupe, jazz guitarist Charlie Robinson and more. Tickets: $10.

DEVOtions Arts DEVO will be performing his usual hosting duties at the CAMMIES Finale on Sunday, and as such will miss the grand opening of Monca. And that’s a bummer. But if I’m carving time out of the busy weekend, other than those two events, my personal picks for arts fun are happening at the Pageant and Blue Room theaters.

Tonight, April 20, at 9 p.m., the Pageant Theatre is hosting JR Robinson and Esther Shaw of the chamber/doom/drone collective Wrekmeister Harmonies, performing a live soundtrack to a selection of works by the late experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage. Tickets are $10.

And Friday and Saturday, April 21-22, at 7:30 p.m., the Blue Room Theatre joins other community theaters around the country in premiering Monty Python’s Edukational Show, a pilot version of a new production in development that will highlight the irreverent British comedy troupe’s best sketches and songs. Tickets are $10 for each of the two showings.