On Saturday morning at 10, twenty-five musicians will gather, be shuffled around through the mixing of names in a hat {please, please let it be a cowboy hat like the one on the logo!}, and turned into five brand new bands. Twelve hours later, they’ll be expected to perform a few brand new songs and maybe a cover if they’re so inclined before an audience at Neumo’s [#]. The only certainty is that each band gets a drummer, but its very very likely that the result of the experiment will be very much worth seeing.

In this installation of the annual Rock Lottery, bands will be composed of some combination of the following artists:

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Then again, some of these people are already in so many bands that you have to assume that they’re collaboration addicts. Nevertheless, year after year and city after city it is reported to work. In disbelief, I asked Samantha about why last year’s was so great, and if this description doesn’t convince you to go, I don’t know what will:

The whole charm of Rock Lottery is that a bunch of excellent musicians who might never be in a band together because they make completely different types of music have one day to create songs that, if it all works, move beyond everyone’s “style.” Last year Dave Bazan and Spencer Moody were in the same band and the outcome was phenomenal (it later turned up on the Yeti 4 comp.), and when would those two ever have gotten together otherwise? And the other half of the fun is that it’s essentially ephemeral, it’s pretty much just that one night of people you’ve heard making music you know suddenly making music you’ll probably never get to hear again.

Profits raised from the event benefit the Vera Project. Buy your tickets ahead of time [ticketswest] or show up early. Doors are at 8 pm and the show starts promptly at 10 pm.