If you’d been in a band with your brother and a friend, recording your first release in a tiny Toronto garage in close proximity to your neighbors, you too might have forged a sound as quietly intense as that of Cowboy Junkies—but that would require you also have lots of talent and taste, and it would help if your sister had a mesmerizing, ethereal voice. Such were the forces that lined up in 1986 when the band spent one summer day with a single microphone and a digital two-track machine to record Whites Off Earth Now!! Still the same lineup after two decades, guitarist/songwriter Michael and drummer Peter Timmins will be joining sister Margo and bassist Alan Anton to create the dreamy, narcotic sound that has enthralled listeners since their haunting version of Lou Reed’s “Sweet Jane” on their breakthrough release The Trinity Sessions in 1988. Having completed the circle from indie to major label act and back again, Cowboy Junkies are likely to feature some of the songs recorded for 2005’s Early 21st Century Blues—a return to their stripped-down sound covering themes of war, violence and loss. Buffalo is among a small handful of cities to host a Cowboy Junkies show before they travel to Europe in support of a retrospective book XX, a chronicle the band’s twenty-year history.

High-energy local and out-of-town rock bands are focusing their intensity on the stage at the Adam Mickiewicz Theater to benefit the Torn Space Theater Friday night. Knife Crazy and Bare Flames, both from Buffalo, are a mix of experimental indie punk and pop. Knife Crazy’s debut record, Delicious Delicious Science, blends Sonic Youth-like guitars with a few understated tracks that flirt with the mainstream, but holds on tight to their specialty of “jagged, serpentine excursions” fueled by a dry wit. Cleveland-based bands Self-Destruct Button and Clan of the Cave Bear also produce a type of experimental rock featuring a disjointedness that somehow works, while never losing momentum. Clan of the Cave Bear is a two-piece thrash band, with only a guitar and drums to make themselves heard. Doors open for this event at 8pm, and the $5 cover charge will go to benefit the Torn Space Theater—a company that is itself given to experimentalism. In the last year, Torn Space has given Buffalo productions of Quills, ’night, Mother and Terminus, the latter a rare spectacle staged in the East Side’s abandoned New York Central Terminal. Great bands playing to benefit a great theater company, in one of the city’s great, underappreciated venues. Who can say no to that?

On December 28, 2006 Buffalo suffered the loss of Mike Maffei, a cherished singer-songwriter and AIDS activist who performed regularly at local venues such as Peopleart and the Coffee Bean Cafe. In 1990, Mike was diagnosed with AIDS and became deeply involved in the movement to bring about common understanding of the disease, speaking at local high schools and AIDS retreats. Considering music a major cause of his survival, Mike released Consequences of Desire in 2001 and performed at the Turtle Hill Folk Festival, the Williamson Folk Fest and other venues across the Northeast. On Friday at 7:30pm, a memorial celebration of his life will be held at First Presbyterian Church. Performers include Mari Anderson, Tim Baldwin, Noa Bursie, Joe Cuddahee, Anne Huiner, Katie Miller, KathyMoriarty, Kinloch Nelson, Stu Shapiro and more.

This week former Buffalo Philharmonic concertmaster Charles Haupt presents the third in his new series of chamber music concerts. A Musical Feast, as Haupt has titled the series, is hosted by the Kavinoky Theatre, whose excellent acoustics and intimate size are ideal for the sort of music and musicianship the series showcases. Haupt’s selections in the first two performances by and large have comprised the classical canon, but for this performance he has chosen a more modern path: Only one of the featured composers, Zoltan Kodaly, was born prior to 1900. The program features Haupt and Feng Hew, associated principal cellist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, playing Kodaly’s Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7. Percussionist Tom Kolor performs Rebonds (a) by Iannis Xenaxis. Soprano Tony Arnold and flutist Cheryl Gobbetti-Hoffman joins Kolor in John Cage’s Music for Three. Gobbetti-Hoffman will also play Voice by Toru Takemistu, and Charles Castleman will perform the Buffalo premiere of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Violin Sonata No. 2, written in 1967. Arnold and Gobbetti-Hoffman will also perform Thea Musgrave’s Primavera. This performance, and this series as a whole, is a must for lovers of chamber music.