The Arcs—Dan Auerbach, Leon Michels, Richard Swift, Homer Steinweiss, and Nick Movsho—kicked off their three-week North American tour this week, in support of Yours, Dreamily, their debut album. The band is joined by special guests Mariachi Flor de Toloache to play the LC Pavilion in Columbus, in Auerbach’s home state of Ohio, tonight and The Fillmore in Detroit on Sunday. (Next up is a home-town show for Auerbach at the Akron Civic Theatre on Tuesday.)

“The Arcs feel less like a hobby-turned-side project than a full-formed band that can stand on its own merits without the backstory of the mothership,” says the Guardian in a four-star review of the band’s first of two shows at the Vic in Chicago. The Chicago Tribune found “Auerbach's creative spark on display with Arcs at the Vic.”

Last week, on Record Store Day Black Friday, The Arcs released The Arcs vs. The Inventors Vol. I, a limited-edition 10" record featuring Dr. John and David Hidalgo, in independent record stores. You can hear one of the six songs, “Young,” here. The EP will be released digitally next week.

Yours, Dreamily, just came in at number 9 on Rolling Stones’s 50 Best Albums of 2015, with the magazine calling it “riveting.” You can see a complete view of the list, which also includes Rhiannon Giddens’s Tomorrow Is My Turn, here.

---

Sam Amidon kicked off a two-week North American tour as a special guest of San Fermin this week, stopping at Columbus Theatre in Providence, Rhode Island, tonight, MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, tomorrow, and La Sala Rossa in Montreal on Sunday.

Amidon answered fans’ questions on the Big Ears Festival Facebook page on Wednesday; you can read what he had to say here. He will perform at the 2016 edition of the festival in Knoxville, Tennessee next spring (as will Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Olivia Chaney, Bombino, and Nico Muhly, among others).

---

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman continues the Western US leg of its tour, which began earlier this week, performing at the Fox Tucson Theatre in Tucson, Arizona, tonight, and a pair of shows at the Outpost Performance Space in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Saturday and Sunday.

The quartet’s self-titled debut album was just named the No. 1 Best Jazz Album of 2015 by PopMatters and made Mojo magazine's list of the Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2015.

---

Tyondai Braxton gives two solo performances in Brazil this weekend, first at the Festival Novas Frequências in Rio De Janeiro on Saturday, and at Sesc Belenzinho in São Paulo on Sunday.

---

Emmylou Harris will join Rufus and Martha Wainwright; their family, including their father Loudon Wainwright III and their aunt Anna McGarrigle; and fellow friends for Rufus and Martha Wainwright's Noël Nights, a Christmas show presented by the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal and taking place at Maison Symphonique de Montréal. A continuation of the long-running family tradition captured on the 2005 Nonesuch release The McGarrigle Christmas Hour, the show takes place on both Saturday and Sunday; as in previous years following the death of Kate McGarrigle from sarcoma in 2010, all profits will go to the Kate McGarrigle Fund, which supports cancer care and research at the McGill University Cancer Centre and the teaching hospitals of McGill University.

Nonesuch released Tell My Sister, a three-disc set of newly remastered editions of Kate & Anna McGarrigle's beloved 1976 self-titled debut and its 1977 follow-up, Dancer with Bruised Knees, in 2011, and Sing Me the Songs: Celebrating the Works of Kate McGarrigle, featuring music from three concerts in honor of the late singer-songwriter, in 2013, with net proceeds go to the Kate McGarrigle Foundation.

---

The Brad Mehldau Trio—with Larry Grenadier on bass and Jeff Ballard on drums—wraps up its two-week tour of Europe this weekend with two shows in Italy: at Teatro Biondo in Palermo tonight and Auditorium Ciminiere in Catania on Saturday.

As noted earlier today in the Nonesuch Journal, Brad Mehldau’s recently released 10 Years Solo Live box set, culled from live recordings made over a decade of the pianist’s European solo concerts, has received wide critical acclaim from around the world. Click here for a taste of the responses the collection has received.

---

Punch Brothers hit the road for a two-week United States tour this week, stopping at The Pageant in St. Louis tonight and the State Theatre in Ithaca, New York, on Sunday. The group’s new five-song EP, The Wireless, with tracks from the recording sessions for the band's T Bone Burnett–produced album The Phosphorescent Blues, was released last month. The current tour features songs from both releases sung around a single microphone.