Category: News

Noise Pollution – The AC/DC Experience rolls into Rapid City on May 29 for a 21+ show that leans hard into the full arena-rock playbook. The San Diego-based tribute act focuses entirely on AC/DC’s catalog, covering both the Bon Scott and Brian Johnson years while recreating the sound, pacing, and energy that turned the band into one of the biggest rock acts on the planet.

That means the setlist can jump from Highway to Hell into Back in Black without missing a beat, with the band treating the material less like bar covers and more like a full concert production. Noise Pollution has spent years building a reputation around that attention to detail, right down to the guitar tones, vocals, and sequencing of the show itself. Rock radio stations and music outlets around the country have singled the band out as one of the stronger AC/DC tribute acts currently touring.

Special guest Common Law opens the night and gets things moving early before Noise Pollution takes over the stage.

The show starts at 7 p.m. with doors opening at 6. General admission tickets are $20 in advance or $25 at the door. VIP tables are available for $45 and include reserved seating, a private bar area, and table service throughout the night.

Standing room, loud guitars, and a room full of people yelling every chorus back at the stage feels about right for an AC/DC tribute show on a Friday night in Rapid City.

The smell of smoked meat and fried food is about to take over the Black Hills Harley-Davidson parking lot again.

The Black Hills Food Truck Festival returns to Rapid City Friday, May 29 and Saturday, May 30 with more than 30 food trucks, live music, vendors, drinks, and family activities spread across a newly expanded two-day schedule.

After drawing thousands during its first year, the festival is returning bigger this time around with additional food vendors, more live music, and extra space for crowds to spread out across the Harley-Davidson grounds.

Festival hours run Friday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The food lineup ranges from BBQ, burgers, tacos, brats, and steak tips to Ecuadorian food, shaved ice, ice cream, lemonade, dirty sodas, coffee, and desserts. Organizers say more than 30 food trucks and vendors are expected throughout the weekend.

Live music is scheduled both days, with Flannel performing Friday night. Saturday’s lineup includes Tyler Bills Trio, Johnny Hastings, and Concrete Cowboys.

Along with food and music, the event will also feature a beer garden, games, face painting, vendors, and tattoo offerings throughout the weekend.

The festival is hosted by Black Hills Harley-Davidson and organized by Jesse Lee of The Good Stuffed food truck, who said the goal is to create a large community event that also helps bring attention to local food trucks and vendors across the region.

Admission is free and the event is open to all ages.

Series

Black Hills Food Truck Festival

See Full Schedule

Black Hills Food Truck Festival
Friday, May 29 • 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Saturday, May 30 • 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Black Hills Harley-Davidson
2820 Harley Drive • Rapid City

Outlaw Square is kicking off summer with the brand new Deadwood Double Shot Concert Series. Two ticketed shows sandwiching a packed summer season in Deadwood. This Friday, Mark Chesnutt takes the stage for the first one.

Chesnutt came up through the Texas honky-tonk circuit before signing with MCA Nashville in 1989, and within a decade had earned 14 number one hits, 23 top ten singles, and sold more than 12 million albums. He is a mainstay of the traditional country sound with a catalog people know by heart.

Outlaw Square sits at the corner of Deadwood Street and Main Street. The square was built in 2018, the result of a community effort to gbring Deadwood a central public gathering place. This Friday has all the potential to be exactly the kind of night it was built for: traditional honky-tonk country dance hall, under an open sky.

The series is new this summer, presented by Silverado Franklin Historic Hotel and Gaming Complex, and built around a simple structural idea: two ticketed concerts, one to open the season and one to close it, giving locals and visitors a reason to plan a weekend around Deadwood when the calendar would otherwise be quiet.

The second Double Shot show is set for September 5.
Stay tuned for the artist announcement, coming in June.

The series is designed to grow. The vision behind it is long-term: a rotating mix of acts across genres, returning each summer to anchor the season on either end. For Outlaw Square, it is a chance to build something people plan a night around, rather than just stumbing across.

The downtown studio’s spring open house features new artwork, live tattoo artists, music, desserts, and a packed gallery Thursday night.

Swallows, ships, dragons, butterflies, tigers, and mermaids are covering the walls at the Suzie Cappa Art Center this week as the downtown studio prepares for its annual spring open house Thursday night.

This year’s show, Tattoo Artistry Through Time, pulls inspiration from centuries of tattoo imagery and flash art, with roughly 25 Suzie Cappa artists creating hundreds of new pieces for the event. The work ranges from classic tattoo subjects and astrological symbols to flowers, skulls, animals, and more surreal imagery, spread across paintings, drawings, mixed media work, and other formats throughout the gallery.

Part of what makes the Suzie Cappa Art Center stand apart from a typical gallery is that the space operates as both a public exhibition space and a working studio built around supporting artists of all abilities. Throughout the week, artists actively work inside the downtown studio, developing and selling artwork while building professional opportunities in a setting designed around creative independence rather than limitation.

Tattoo artists from Die This Way Tattoo and Bad Cat Tattoo will be onsite doing flash tattoos inspired by themes and imagery connected to the artists’ work. DJ Baked Bunz will handle music throughout the night, bb’s Natural is creating a tattoo-inspired dessert for the event, and Aqua & Acre is sponsoring refreshments.

By the time doors open Thursday evening, the gallery walls will have been completely reset with new work created specifically for the show. Some pieces lean traditional and playful. Others move darker or stranger. One painting might feature a kitten sitting in a teacup while another heads toward skulls and barren landscapes.

The Suzie Cappa Art Center Spring Open House runs Thursday, May 28 from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at 722 St. Joseph Street in downtown Rapid City. Admission is free.

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Suzie Cappa Art Center Spring Open House

Thu, May 28 • 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm

@ Suzie Cappa Art Center and Gallery in Rapid City

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The Suzie Cappa Art Center Spring Open House runs Thursday, May 28 from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at 722 St. Joseph Street in downtown Rapid City. Admission is free.

Longtime indie-folk favorite plays 707 Sports Bar & Nightlife on Friday, July 24th.

Longtime indie-folk favorite plays @707rapidcity on Friday, July 24th.

The Minneapolis songwriter has spent nearly thirty years building one of the most quietly respected catalogs in modern folk music, mostly outside the machinery of mainstream radio or major-label hype. His songs have shown up in surf films, indie playlists, and enjoyed on late-night drives with the windows rolled down.

Jennings first started gaining attention in the late 1990s after releasing his self-titled debut in Minneapolis. Since then, he has released a long run of records. Jennings writes plainly. He does not hide behind heavy metaphor or theatrical delivery. A lot of his songs feel more like somebody thinking out loud in the middle of the night than somebody trying to impress a room. Relationships, faith, isolation, restlessness, getting older, trying to stay grounded are comon themes in his music.

People who follow Jennings tend to talk less about spectacle and more about atmosphere. Quiet rooms, careful audiences and the strange intimacy that happens when a crowd stops treating a concert like background noise. That makes a venue like 707 an interesting fit. The room is big enough to pull in a crowd but still close enough that an acoustic set can feel personal instead of distant.

The July 24 show starts at 7 p.m. Advance tickets are $20, with reserved seating available.

Rock The Rez Fundraiser | Saturday, May 16 | 5–8:30 p.m. @ Dahl Arts Center • Rapid City

Rock The Rez hosts five-day rock n’ roll camps for Indigenous girls, Two-Spirit, and LGBTQ+ youth. Campers spend the week learning instruments, forming bands, writing music, and performing together at the end of camp. The organization will host six camps this summer across South Dakota, Minnesota, and Colorado, including its first full week in Rapid City.

Saturday’s fundraiser is built around live music, community gathering, and direct support for those camps. The evening includes performances by The Wake Singers, David Huckfelt, and Laura Hugo, along with kids activities, crafts, snacks, and a silent auction. Funds raised from the auction and ticket sales go directly to Rock The Rez programming.

David Huckfelt and Laura Hugo

Their song “Chief Seattle’s Dream” was recently featured in the latest season of Dark Winds. Huckfelt is known for his work with Minneapolis indie-folk group The Pines and for collaborations with Indigenous artists and activists across the Midwest. Laura Hugo, originally from Teec Nos Pos in the Navajo Nation, writes songs shaped by grief, mental health, and personal experience.

The Wake Singers

Many people in Rapid City already know The Wake Singers. Reed Two Bulls, Douglas Two Bulls, Micheal Two Bulls, and Dan Carroll have built a strong following locally with music rooted in folk, rock, and Northern Plains songwriting traditions. Marty Two Bulls will also appear during the evening.

Downtown Rapid City is going to have belly dancers moving between breweries, the Farmers Market, and Main Street on Saturday afternoon before the whole thing lands inside Fifth Street Pub for an opening party that looks more like a community jam session than a standard gallery show.

Anastasia Smith Arts and Sisters Dance Tribe are participating in Shimmy Mob for the fourth year, joining dancers around the world performing the same choreography during the second week of May as part of an international flash mob now in its fifteenth year. The local crew plans to hit the Farmers Market around noon, Main Street Square around 3 p.m., and several downtown breweries throughout the day before gathering at Aby’s for Anastasia Smith’s opening party from 5–8 p.m. inside Fifth Street Pub.

The night is centered around Smith’s artwork, but the walls are only part of what’s happening. Guests will be able to jump into paper folding, watercolor, and drawing activities throughout the evening. Figure drawing artists and students will also be set up during the event, with visitors invited to sign up as live models and become part of the work themselves.

Sisters Dance Tribe will be performing throughout the night alongside live percussion from Amber Tjeerdsma. Local rock band Wicked Six is also scheduled to play a set, turning the opening into a full live music and dance party inside the pub. Smith says performances from both the Shimmy Mob team and Sisters Dance Tribe will continue throughout the evening.

There is also a very real chance the band may end up celebrating something bigger than the show itself. Wicked Six member Derick may miss the performance if his wife Christina goes into labor that day.

The event doubles as an open invitation into the larger community surrounding Anastasia Smith Arts and Sisters Dance Tribe, including beginner belly dance classes, private art lessons, and ongoing figure drawing sessions around Rapid City.

By Saturday night, there is a good chance somebody who only planned to stop in for a drink at Aby’s ends up sitting under a figure drawing lamp while a belly dance drummer jams with a rock band a few feet away.

The Big Top Opening

Monday, May 11

Anniversary week opens Monday with Double Barrel Chocolate Rye bottle releases and a special Brownie Stout release on draft and in cans. Green Chili Shack starts serving at 4 PM while the line forms for the first-day pint glass giveaway. Alex Massa brings live psychedelic circus music to the brewery beginning at 5:30 PM with Cirque De Tango.

• 4 PM – Green Chili Shack opens
• 5 PM – Pint glass giveaway for the first 50 people
• 5:30 PM — Alex Massa live music

The Silverball Sideshow

Tuesday, May 12

Tuesday shifts into pinball and side-show territory with the release of “I Wanna Be A (pin)Balla.” Patas Azules starts serving at 3 PM before free pinball takes over from 4–6 PM, with prizes going to the top score on each machine.

• 3 PM — Patas Azules
• 4–6 PM — Free pinball competition

Fire & Flight

Wednesday, May 13

Wednesday’s Fire & Flight theme centers around Flying Circus, a mimosa-inspired wheat beer collaboration with Black Hills Balloons. CD’S Wings opens at 3 PM while Sivan Hoch brings a funk set later in the evening. Black Hills Balloons will have a balloon basket and burner on site for photo opportunities alongside limited collaboration stickers and possible fire dancing on the patio.

• 3 PM — CD’S Wings
• 5:30 PM — Sivan Hoch live funk music
• Black Hills Balloons photo ops throughout the evening

The Big Show

Thursday, May 14

Thursday leans fully into the circus atmosphere. The night includes the release of Pickled Nordren, a collaboration with MoonCats, alongside Drops Of Juniper. Patas Azules opens at 3 PM before MoonCats takes the stage at 6 PM with a ventriloquist set from Danny during the break. The brewery plans to fill the space with UV lighting, glow paint, and a gallery wall featuring anniversary shirts from the last decade.

Late in the evening, live screen printing moves into the barrel room with $5 bring-your-own-shirt prints.

• 3 PM — Patas Azules
• 6 PM — MoonCats live music
• 7:15 PM — Birthday toast for Ryan
• 11 PM — Live screen printing in the barrel room

Strongman Night

Friday, May 15

Friday’s Strongman Night centers around the release of Bourbon Barrel Aged Grizz. Live screen printing begins at 11 AM while YoYo Hibachi starts serving later in the afternoon. A beer cotton candy station runs under the tent from 4–6 PM as the brewery shifts toward heavier beers and amber-lit late-night energy.

• 3 PM — YoYo Hibachi
• 4–6 PM — Beer cotton candy station
• 11 PM — Live screen printing

Conservation to Chaos

Saturday, May 16

Saturday starts with pancakes and a creek cleanup before shifting into the heaviest music night of the week. The daytime portion includes the Trout Not Trash cleanup effort, environmental midway activities, and food vendors under the tent. By nightfall, the atmosphere turns toward projection mapping and psychedelic visuals leading into a late performance from Year Of October.

• 10 AM — Creek cleanup
• 11:30 AM — Enviro-Midway opens
• 8 PM — Year Of October

RC Local Party

Sunday, May 17

The week closes Sunday with the release of RC Local, a Triple IPA collaboration with Independent Ale House. Ruth’s Kitchen starts serving at noon alongside free roller dogs under the Big Top while the brewery settles into a more laid-back final day. A community toast for Lost Cabin’s 10th anniversary takes place at 2 PM.

• 12 PM — Ruth’s Kitchen
• 12 PM — Free roller dogs under the Big Top
• 2 PM — Community cheers for 10 years

Up First, Jalan Crossland

Photo Credit: Tess Anderson

The Ten Sleep, Wyoming native has been a fixture in the Black Hills for years, building the kind of following where people make plans the second his name shows up on a poster. His mix of guitar work, banjo playing, sharp writing, and dry Wyoming humor has carried him from tiny bars to major festival stages, but rooms like 707 still fit him best. Up close, every little thing he does lands harder.

There is also something fitting about Jalan opening this night in Rapid City. Around here, people know what he can do. They know the speed, the precision, the weird little left turns, and the way he can turn a room from laughing to dead silent in the middle of a song. He is the rare kind of regional musician whose reputation was built the hard way, one live show at a time.

“Cary’s music comes from a place deep inside. I would describe his style as artful, soulful, and authentic. His fingerpicking style will warm even the coldest heart. If you get a chance to hear him, whether with a band or on his own, take the opportunity and enjoy the ride!”
~Anni Harjes

Ghost Dog is the five-piece band Morin leads with Celeste Di Iorio on harmony vocals and rhythm guitar, and the lineup around them is stacked with serious players. Bassist Ean Smith has worked with groups like Galactic, Robert Randolph, and Dumpstaphunk, while drummer Adam Loudermilk and percussionist Koda Gray lock into a groove that feels just as rooted in blues and Americana as it does funk, reggae, and the wider rhythm traditions Morin has been pulling from since The Atoll days.

Opening weekend offers more than the show itself

Eminent Domain Black Hills Community Theatre | Studio Theater, Performing Arts Center of Rapid City Opens Friday, May 1 | 7 p.m. Continues May 2, 8, 9, 15, 16 at 7 p.m. | May 3, 10, 17 at 2 p.m.
Written by Nebraska playwright Laura Leininger Campbell, directed by Truax with assistant director Lynne Mazzone.

Playwright Talkback with Laura Leininger Campbell:
Friday, May 1 immediately following the opening night performance
Playwriting Workshop with Laura Leininger Campbell:
Saturday, May 2 | 10 a.m. to noon | 4th Floor Rehearsal Room | Ages 14 and up | RSVP to merlyn@bhct.org

Shannon Truax, making her mainstage directing debut at BHCT, came into Eminent Domain reading it as a fight between ordinary people and a pipeline company. A family farm threatened by eminent domain, a patriarch digging in, a corporation with the law on its side. It was a story she thought she knew, but by the time the cast got deep into rehearsal, she understood she had been wrong about what the play was actually about.

“I have come to understand that this is really the story about the negotiations and compromises that happen inside of relationships,” Truax says, “especially in the face of a fight you might not be able to win.”

Nebraska playwright Laura Leininger Campbell wrote a play that uses a pipeline dispute as the pressure that cracks a family open, not the subject of the story itself. Rob MacLeod is fighting to save his farm. His daughter Adair left years ago and has her own calculus about what the land is worth. His son Bart has stayed, and has his own accounting of what that loyalty has cost.

Truax says she wants the audience shifting allegiances throughout. There are no villains in this production, and the director has built the show around that ambiguity, asking actors to sit inside uncomfortable spaces, listen to each other, and resist resolution. The Studio Theater makes that work visible in a way a larger stage wouldn’t.

“The audience is only an arm’s length away, so there is no distance to hide behind. The audience can feel the shifts in energy, the silence, the tension. The actors can feel the audience’s reactions. This space demands honesty from the actors and it invites the audience to be part of the experience, not just an observer.”

For audiences in the Black Hills, the material carries particular weight. Land rights, infrastructure projects, the legacy of family farms, these are not abstractions here. Truax, who works in Public Works, brings that familiarity to the production. The MacLeod family’s fight maps onto conversations that happen in this region in ways that a coastal production of the same play might not reach.

A Playwright in the Room

Playwright Talkback with Laura Leininger Campbell:
Friday, May 1 immediately following the opening night performance
Playwriting Workshop with Laura Leininger Campbell:
Saturday, May 2 | 10 a.m. to noon | 4th Floor Rehearsal Room | Ages 14 and up | RSVP to merlyn@bhct.org

Laura Leininger Campbell’s plays have been recognized by the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference, one of the most competitive development programs in American theater, and have earned distinction from the Henley Rose Playwrights Competition, Seven Devils Play Foundry, and the Great Plains Theater Commons. She writes out of the Midwest, about the Midwest.

Following Friday’s opening night performance she joins the cast for a talkback. Saturday morning she leads a two-hour playwriting workshop in the 4th Floor Rehearsal Room, open to writers 14 and up, new and experienced alike. For anyone serious about writing for the stage, or curious about what that process looks like from the inside, this is a working playwright with serious credentials willing to talk about her craft. Bring a notebook. RSVP to merlyn@bhct.org.

BHCT closes its 58th season with Eminent Domain by Laura Leininger Campbell. The run extends through May 17, but opening weekend is when Campbell is in the building, and that is worth showing up for early.