2Bad brings the King of Pop to life in Friday headliner, Spazmatics top the line up Saturday while the Shakedown Party Band, Garratt Wilkin & The Parrotheads fill the early slots before the award-winning Eden Brent closes the weekend with Sunday’s Powerhouse of Blues
Fans of Michael Jackson, the music and pop culture of the 1980s and ’90s, or the laid-back sounds made famous by Jimmy Buffett will find plenty to choose from this weekend as Powerhouse Pub packs its Historic Folsom stages with three days of live entertainment.
Two of the venue’s popular returning productions anchor the weekend. Friday night belongs to 2Bad, Adam Aldama and The Aces’ high-energy Michael Jackson tribute, while Saturday night brings the return of The Spazmatics and their full-scale celebration of the 1980s.
There is plenty surrounding those two headliners as well. Shakedown Party Band opens the weekend Friday with rock, pop and country favorites. Saturday afternoon brings the tropical sounds of Garratt Wilkin & The Parrotheads and the music of Jimmy Buffett before The Spazmatics turn the clock back to the era of synthesizers, new wave and MTV. On Sunday, internationally recognized pianist and vocalist Eden Brent arrives with five Blues Music Awards to her credit for the latest edition of Powerhouse of Blues.
Friday, Aug. 14, gets underway at 6:30 p.m. with Shakedown Party Band taking the stage for the TGIF Early Show.
The five-piece variety cover band builds its performances around rock, pop and country dance songs. With multiple members handling lead vocals, the group is able to move between different styles and artists throughout its set, giving Friday’s early crowd a broad mix of familiar music before the evening turns its attention to one of the most recognizable catalogs in pop history.
At 10 p.m., 2Bad: The Michael Jackson Tribute Show takes over Powerhouse. The production is one of several themed shows created by Adam Aldama and The Aces, and this time the focus is entirely on the four-decade musical legacy of Michael Jackson.
The show combines live music, vocal harmonies and choreography as the five-piece group moves through Jackson’s catalog, including “Bad,” “Billie Jean,” “Smooth Criminal,” “Black or White,” “Rock With You” and “Heal the World,” along with selections reaching back to his years with the Jackson 5.
Rather than focusing on a single period of Jackson’s career, 2Bad moves through the different eras that transformed him from a young Motown star into one of the biggest recording artists in the world. That gives the production plenty of territory to cover, from the early Jackson 5 years through the landmark solo albums and music videos that became fixtures of 1980s and ’90s popular culture.
The music is paired with the choreography that became an important part of Jackson’s performances, giving the production both a concert and visual component.
Behind 2Bad is Adam Aldama and The Aces, a Sacramento-area five-piece that has developed a growing lineup of themed productions. In addition to its Michael Jackson show, the group performs as The Red Corvettes for its Prince tribute, Finesse for its Bruno Mars show and Y2K Live for a celebration of music from the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Saturday, Aug. 15, begins with a decidedly different soundtrack.
Garratt Wilkin & The Parrotheads bring “A Celebration of Jimmy Buffett’s Music” to the Saturday Afternoon Dance Party beginning at 3 p.m., offering an afternoon built around the tropical sounds and storytelling that made Buffett a cultural phenomenon far beyond the music charts.
The Placerville-based group evolved from Garratt Wilkin & The Whiskey Ducks into a band dedicated exclusively to performing Buffett’s music. Since making that transition, The Parrotheads have performed in configurations ranging from a six-piece core band to a 13-piece ensemble incorporating steel drums, horns, harmonica and pedal steel guitar.
Wilkin has said the larger configuration allows the group to more closely reproduce the sound and atmosphere of Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band and the experience of attending one of his concerts.
That approach has taken Garratt Wilkin & The Parrotheads well beyond Northern California. The group has toured across North America and performed at festivals from Maui to Nashville, building its shows around the beaches, boats, bars and tropical imagery synonymous with Buffett and the Parrothead culture that grew around his music.
For longtime Buffett followers, Saturday afternoon offers an opportunity to revisit that songbook and the Margaritaville lifestyle it inspired before Powerhouse makes another dramatic musical shift Saturday night.
At 10 p.m., the glasses, suspenders and geek-chic style return as The Spazmatics take over Powerhouse with their celebration of all things ’80s.
The Spazmatics have built a national following by turning the decade’s pop, rock and new wave hits into a theatrical production combining live music, choreography, humor, costumes and audience interaction.
Their repertoire reaches into the music that dominated radio and MTV, including songs such as Devo’s “Whip It,” Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” and Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science.”
Even the group’s backstory is part of the act.
According to the intentionally fictional Spazmatics legend, the band was born in the spring of 1983 when physics teacher Kevin Stigwood lost a debate over String Theory to a student at Alta Dena High School in Thousand Oaks. The terms of the wager required Stigwood to perform “She Blinded Me With Science” during halftime of a state basketball championship game.
With help from electronics teacher Sydney Balderman, a band was assembled and a fictional ’80s institution was born.
Behind the story is a touring entertainment concept developed by Perfect World Entertainment, with different casts performing the Spazmatics production in cities across the country. The format is designed to reproduce the same exaggerated celebration of 1980s music and culture wherever the show appears.
That means the experience reaches beyond simply covering songs. Costumes, synchronized movements, comedy and crowd participation are incorporated into a show designed around the era when synthesizers, music videos and larger-than-life pop personalities dominated the landscape.
The references extend into the broader culture of the decade as well, evoking the era of movies such as “The Breakfast Club,” “Back to the Future” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
For audiences who lived through the decade, the show revisits music that formed the soundtrack of the era. For younger fans who discovered those songs decades later, The Spazmatics offer a live introduction to the sounds and visual style that have continued to resurface in popular culture.
After two nights spanning pop, rock, country, Buffett favorites and ’80s nostalgia, Powerhouse turns to the blues Sunday afternoon.
Eden Brent headlines Sunday’s Powerhouse of Blues beginning at 3 p.m., bringing an extensive career as a pianist, vocalist and songwriter to the Historic Folsom stage.
A Mississippi Delta musician whose style combines blues, boogie-woogie and roots music, Brent spent the first two decades of her career learning alongside blues pianist Abie “Boogaloo” Ames. That relationship became an important foundation for the piano-driven style she would later take to audiences around the world.
Her career reached another level after winning the International Blues Challenge, launching a period that brought international performances and repeated recognition from the blues community.
Brent has since collected five Blues Music Awards among a lengthy list of career honors. Her most recent recognition came in 2026 when she received the Traditional Blues Female Artist honor, known as the Koko Taylor Award, at the 47th annual Blues Music Awards. The honor followed her 2025 Blues Music Award for piano.
Her Powerhouse appearance also comes ahead of another chapter in her recording career. Brent is preparing to release her eighth studio album, “Things Going South,” this fall.
Recorded at the historic Sam Phillips Recording studio in Memphis, the album features 10 original songs centered on themes of love and protest while presenting a contemporary interpretation of traditional blues.
Brent’s combination of piano playing, vocals and songwriting brings a very different sound to Sunday afternoon following the tribute-driven performances that dominate Friday and Saturday.
Together, the three days cover considerable musical ground. Friday moves from Shakedown Party Band’s rock, pop and country mix into four decades of Michael Jackson. Saturday trades that for Jimmy Buffett’s tropical songbook before The Spazmatics return Powerhouse to the 1980s. Sunday closes the weekend with an artist whose career is rooted in the traditions of Mississippi and American blues.
Powerhouse Pub is located at 614 Sutter St. in Historic Folsom. Shakedown Party Band performs Friday at 6:30 p.m., followed by 2Bad: The Michael Jackson Tribute Show at 10 p.m. Garratt Wilkin & The Parrotheads perform Saturday at 3 p.m., followed by The Spazmatics at 10 p.m. Eden Brent takes the stage Sunday at 3 p.m. for Powerhouse of Blues.
All shows are for ages 21 and over. Tickets, VIP reservations and additional event information are available at www.powerhousepub.com.
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