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The Magnolia 12 results for The Magnolia

Everything at The Magnolia — including past events

Coming Soon

2 days away

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The Rush Tribute Project

In 3 days · Oct 10 $34+ The Magnolia, 210 E Main St, El Ca…

Rush fans carry a grief that is specific and stubborn: the band is gone. Neil Peart, the drummer who was the reason a generation picked up sticks, died; the band retired; and the odds of ever again standing in a room while those impossible time signatures fill the air went to zero. Which is exactly why a great tribute stops being a novelty and becomes something closer to a memorial service that rocks. The Rush Tribute Project plays it straight and plays it hard — Tom Sawyer, Limelight, the whole prog cathedral — for a room full of people who need to hear it live one more time and cannot, any other way. There is no cynicism in this crowd, only devotion. The Magnolia gives it the sound it deserves. Saturday, October 10, 2026, doors 6:30pm, show 7:30pm, El Cajon. Come stand with the faithful and let the music you thought you had lost fill a room again.

Coming Soon

12 days away

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Iron & Wine

In 13 days · Oct 20 $55+ The Magnolia, 210 East Main Street…

Some music asks you to be quiet with it. For twenty years Sam Beam has been making exactly that kind — hushed, close-miked folk that sounds like a screen door and a warm evening and a memory you cannot quite place. Hearing it live in a seated room is a different thing entirely from the earbuds: the whole audience leaning in, holding still, letting a whisper fill a hall that could hold a scream. The Magnolia in El Cajon is the right size for it, intimate enough that the between-song silence becomes part of the show. Beam's songs have soundtracked a generation's weddings and long drives and quiet grief, and there is a communion in a room full of people who each thought the song was written for them alone. Tuesday, October 20, 2026, 7pm. Bring the person those records remind you of — or come to sit with the ache of the one you cannot.

Marc Maron: Yammering into the Void Tour

Coming Soon

12 Gathering

16 days away

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Marc Maron: Yammering into the Void Tour

Oct 24, 2026 $69+ The Magnolia, 210 E Main St, El Ca…

Most comics want you to forget your problems for an hour. His whole act is the opposite — a man in his sixties turning every anxiety, resentment, and half-processed grief over in his hands until it somehow becomes the funniest thing in the room. Twelve years of the WTF podcast made Marc Maron the patron saint of people who overthink everything, and a night with him feels less like a show than group therapy where the therapist is furious and hilarious. He has buried a partner, quit the things that were killing him, and kept talking, and the honesty is the joke and the joke is the honesty. The Magnolia's intimate room is exactly right for it — close enough to see him find the bit in real time. Saturday, October 24, 2026, doors 6pm, show 7pm, El Cajon. Come to laugh at the spiral you thought was yours alone, and leave lighter for having heard someone say it out loud.

Coming Soon

29 days away

Jordan Jensen

Nov 6, 2026 $35+ The Magnolia, 210 E Main St, El Ca…

The funniest people in a room are often the ones saying the darkest thing in the flattest voice, and Jordan Jensen has turned that into an art — deadpan, filthy, disarmingly honest bits about her own life that sneak up and knock the wind out of you between laughs. She came up in the brutal New York clubs and it shows: no fat, no mercy, every line load-bearing. A rising star doing the small rooms before the small rooms are no longer an option, which is exactly the moment you want to catch someone. The Magnolia keeps it intimate enough that the whole crowd feels in on it together. Friday, November 6, 2026, 7:30pm, El Cajon. Come see the comic your funniest friend is already quoting, in a room small enough to remember you were there before everyone else caught on. Bring the person you send the meanest, truest jokes to at midnight — this is a whole night of exactly that.

Coming Soon

31 days away

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Soft Cell

Nov 8, 2026 The Magnolia, 210 E Main St, El Ca…

Everybody thinks they know the one song. Two minutes of it plays at a wedding and the room fills in the rest of it wrong - remembered as a party record when it was always a sad one, sung by a man who sounded like he had just been told something he already suspected. The people who turn up for these shows know the other side of it: the twelve-minute extended mixes, the album that followed and deliberately scared off half the chart audience. They know which songs get the long synth intro that lets a room settle before the first line lands. El Cajon is an odd setting for this - a restored downtown theater with actual seats, which means for once you hear every word of it. The Magnolia, 210 East Main Street, El Cajon. Seven o'clock, all ages. The same crowd turns out for every synth act that comes through town.

Dweezil Zappa - DZ20: Like Father, Like Son

Coming Soon

50 days away

Dweezil Zappa - DZ20: Like Father, Like Son

Nov 27, 2026 $51+ The Magnolia, 210 E Main St, El Ca…

Imagine inheriting not money but an impossible job: keeping alive music so difficult that trained orchestras sweat over it, written by a father whose genius everyone acknowledges and almost nobody can actually play. That is the mission Dweezil Zappa chose, and he has spent decades inside it, a virtuoso in his own right resurrecting his father's labyrinthine catalog note for impossible note, out of what can only honestly be called love. Live, it is jaw-dropping in the literal sense: passages that have no business being playable, performed with precision and visible joy, so a new generation finally hears what the fuss was about while the old faithful quietly come apart in the back rows. The Magnolia in El Cajon, all ages, an evening show in a room whose acoustics deserve this material. Come watch a son honor a father the only way that really counts, by refusing to let the music die.

This Happened

19 Gathered

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Matute

Sep 19, 2026 $45+ The Magnolia, 210 E Main St, El Ca…

Every Latino household of a certain vintage has a soundtrack, and a huge slice of it is the shimmering, overplayed, gloriously cheesy Spanish-language pop of the 80s and 90s. Matute exists to give all of that back to you at once — a Mexican powerhouse cover band that resurrects Flans, Timbiriche, Menudo, and the whole neon jukebox of your tías' cassette collection, done up big and loud and with a wink. A night with them is a room full of people who did not know they still remembered every word until the first chorus hit, dancing like it is a wedding and they are all cousins. It is pure joy with a lump in its throat — the sound of a childhood living room, played for a whole theater at once. Saturday, September 19, 2026, doors 7pm, show 8pm, The Magnolia. Bring your mom, bring your sister, and prepare to lose your voice singing the songs you swore you had forgotten.

This Happened

16 Gathered

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Grupo Duelo - GRAVEDAD TOUR 2026

Sep 4, 2026 $83+ The Magnolia, 210 E Main St, El Ca…

It starts with an accordion and a bajo sexto and a voice that has cried into a thousand Saturday nights - the sound that means home to a huge slice of Southern California. Grupo Duelo has been the soundtrack to first dances, quinceañeras, backyard carne asadas, and long drives up the 15 for over two decades — norteño romance with enough ache to fill a stadium and enough swing to keep a dancehall moving until 2am. The Gravedad Tour brings that whole world to El Cajon, a room that will smell like cologne and nostalgia and fill with couples who know every word. This is not background music for this community; it is the community, gathered and singing. Friday, September 4, 2026, 7pm, The Magnolia. Trae a tu pareja, or come find someone to dance with — either way you will leave hoarse and a little in love with the whole room.

This Happened

Bear McCreary

Sep 15, 2026 $40+ The Magnolia, 210 E Main St, El Ca…

You know the music before you know that you know it. The dread-pulse under a Walking Dead standoff, the war drums of God of War, the aching Outlander theme, the strange sacred choir of Battlestar Galactica — Bear McCreary wrote the sound of a dozen fictional worlds that quietly moved into your memory and never left. Hearing it performed live, by the composer himself leading a band through those themes, does something a soundtrack never can: it pulls the feeling out of the screen and puts it in the room with you, at full volume, with a crowd of people who felt it too and were maybe a little embarrassed by how much. This is for the ones who stayed through the credits to catch the composer's name. Tuesday, September 15, 2026, doors 7pm, show 8pm, The Magnolia in El Cajon. Come hear the music that scored the stories that raised you, finally loud enough to fill a body instead of a pair of headphones.

This Happened

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W.A.S.P. - 1984 to Headless

Sep 10, 2026 $54+ The Magnolia, 210 E Main St, El Ca…

Heavy metal has always been theater, and few bands ever staged it harder than the ones who turned Sunset Strip menace into something halfway between a horror movie and a church service. Four decades on, W.A.S.P. is walking its faithful back through the whole arc — from the raw 1984 debut that got them banned in half of America to the newer, darker material — one long communion of leather, volume, and the particular joy of a crowd that never once apologized for what it loves. KK's Priest, led by a Judas Priest founding guitarist, opens the mass. This is not a heritage act phoning it in; it is a scene that raised itself on the fringes showing up for its own. The Magnolia gets loud and gloriously unrepentant. Thursday, September 10, 2026, doors 7pm, show 8pm, El Cajon. If you know, you already know — bring the battle vest and find your people.

This Happened

Liz Phair & Sleater-Kinney: The Flannel and The Fury 2026

Sep 6, 2026 $65+ The Magnolia, 210 E Main St, El Ca…

For a certain kind of person, these two names are not a concert bill — they are the reason they picked up a guitar, or told a boss off, or stopped apologizing. Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville rewrote what a woman was allowed to say on a record; Sleater-Kinney turned righteous fury into three-piece precision that still sounds like a warning. Putting them on one stage in El Cajon, at the very first date of the co-headlining tour, is the kind of thing that makes a generation of listeners drive two hours without thinking twice. Expect flannel, expect volume, expect a room full of people who found these records at exactly the moment they needed permission to be loud. The Magnolia keeps it close and unpolished, the way this music was meant to be heard. Sunday, September 6, 2026, 5:30pm. Bring the friend who taped Whip-Smart off the radio with you — this one has been twenty-five years coming.

This Happened

Kathy Griffin: New Face, New Tour (18+ w/ ID)

Sep 13, 2026 $82+ The Magnolia, 210 E Main St, El Ca…

Few comedians have been thrown out of the building as many times as Kathy Griffin, and none has come back swinging quite like her. Blacklisted, investigated, written off — and still here, still telling the stories nobody else will, with the gleeful specificity of a woman who has nothing left to lose and a lifetime of celebrity dirt to spend. A night with her is gossip as blood sport, delivered by someone who has been in every green room and burned most of the bridges on purpose. The Magnolia's close quarters make it feel like being let in on the secret. This is comedy for people who like their truth-telling messy, mean, and a little dangerous. Sunday, September 13, 2026, 6pm, El Cajon, 18+ with ID. Come for the scandal, stay for the strange inspiration of watching someone refuse, again and again, to be told she is finished. Bring the friend who texts you every piece of celebrity news the second it breaks — this is their church, and the sermon runs long.

While you are looking Different scene, same night out.

Coming Soon

7 days away

Shiner, Fotocrime, Nonexistent Night

In 8 days · Oct 15 Casbah, 2501 Kettner Blvd, San Die…

Too heavy for the radio and too melodic for the hardcore kids was a real commercial dead end, and the bands stuck in it spent the nineties being adored by about eleven thousand people who all still bring it up unprompted at parties. The headliner came out of Kansas City and made that particular trade-off sound deliberate: enormous low end, patient song structures, vocals that stay calm while everything underneath them gets heavier. Then look at who is opening. Fotocrime plays cold, drum-machine-driven post-punk that on paper shares nothing with the band above it, and in sequence makes complete sense — the same appetite for weight and repetition, routed through a different decade and a much colder set of tools. That is the actual reason to go. Bills this well-sequenced are rare, and the odds are good you arrive for one act and order the other one's record from the parking lot afterward. Doors seven-thirty, first act eight-thirty, a Thursday. October 15, Casbah, 2501 Kettner Blvd. Bring whoever you argue about record production with. The line between heavy nineties rock and the darkwave rooms across town is far thinner here than either crowd will admit.

Strangelove - The Depeche Mode Experience

Coming Soon

9 days away

Strangelove - The Depeche Mode Experience

In 10 days · Oct 17 – Oct 18 Ventura Music Hall, 1888 E Thompso…

Tribute acts get dismissed until you stand in a room where four hundred people are singing a synth line together, and then the argument gets much harder to make. Depeche Mode occupies an unusual place in Southern California specifically — it is the band that a generation of Latino kids in the Inland Empire and East LA claimed as their own, so completely that the devotion here has no real parallel anywhere else in the country. That crowd is who fills these nights. The band doing the playing takes the material seriously enough to get the gear right rather than just the haircuts. Expect black clothing, expect people who came with the same friends they went to the original shows with. Music at 9:00 PM in Ventura on East Thompson Boulevard. This particular devotion is a whole regional subculture, and the shows are where it becomes visible to itself.

Coming Soon

12 days away

Julia Jacklin, Jordan Patterson

In 13 days · Oct 20 Observatory North Park, 2891 Unive…

Breakup records are their own genre. Records about the specific administrative indignity of dismantling a shared life — who keeps which furniture, how to be polite in a doorway — are much rarer, and this Australian songwriter has made more than one of them. The writing is almost uncomfortably plain. No metaphor doing the heavy lifting, just exact sentences about things that actually happen, delivered in a voice that stays steady while the content does not. Live, the quiet passages are the loud part; a theatre full of people going completely silent is a specific sound and this is a set that produces it repeatedly. Jordan Patterson opens. A Tuesday at the North Park theatre, doors at seven, music at eight. October 20, Observatory North Park, 2891 University Ave. Bring the person you would not have to explain yourself to afterwards. The songwriter rooms in this county run on a circuit most people never notice until somebody they love is playing one.

Gary Clark Jr. at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay — Night 1

Coming Soon

19 days away

Gary Clark Jr. at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay — Night 1

Oct 27, 2026 2241 Shelter Island Dr, San Diego,…

Gary Clark Jr. plays guitar the way a thunderstorm rolls across a Texas plain — slow at first, building, inevitable, and by the time it fully arrives you have forgotten that you were ever dry. The two-night stand at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay puts one of the most important guitarists of his generation in a room that was designed for exactly this: close quarters, harbor acoustics, and a crowd that came to listen, not to be seen. The phone-free Yondr pouch policy means the room is full of people watching instead of filming, which is the only way to experience a performer whose gift is making you forget anything exists outside the notes. General Admission, standing room only. Humphreys is a cashless venue, and the marina setting on Shelter Island makes the walk in feel like part of the show. Monday, October 27. Doors at 6:30 PM, show at 7:30 PM.

Coming Soon

15 Gathering

28 days away

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Alex Cameron at Soda Bar San Diego

Nov 5, 2026 Soda Bar, 3615 El Cajon Blvd, San …

Alex Cameron writes songs about the worst version of every man you've ever met, and somehow you root for all of them. The Australian singer-songwriter is a character actor who happens to play synth — his albums are populated by deadbeat dads, failed businessmen, and internet creeps who all believe, sincerely, that they are the hero of the story. Live, he performs with the commitment of someone who has fully become the person in the song, and his saxophone player Roy Molloy stands beside him like a man who has seen too much and chosen to keep playing anyway. Soda Bar on El Cajon Boulevard is the kind of room where you stand close enough to see the sweat and the joke lands harder because nobody's checking their phone. If you've ever described an artist to a friend and watched their face go from skeptical to 'wait, play that again,' Cameron is the artist you were talking about. Thursday, November 5, 2026, 7 PM at Soda Bar, 3615 El Cajon Blvd in City Heights. There are three more rooms like it within walking distance, worked by the same crowd.

Coming Soon

10 Gathering

37 days away

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MOVEMENTS - HAPPIER NOW USA TOUR

Nov 14, 2026 $40+ Observatory Festival Grounds, 3503…

Plenty of bands sing about heartbreak; Movements sing about the stuff nobody puts on a t-shirt — dissociation, depression, watching someone you love come apart. Their post-hardcore is gentle and brutal at once, spoken-word confessions that swell into choruses a whole room screams like a group exhale. For the kids who found them during the worst year of their lives, a Movements show is closer to group therapy than a concert: hundreds of people admitting the same quiet thing out loud, together, and feeling lighter for it. Balance and Composure, Midrift, and Niis open a bill built for catharsis. The Observatory grounds get tender and loud. Saturday, November 14, 2026, doors 6pm, Santa Ana, all ages. Bring the person who checked on you when you were not okay, and spend a night in a crowd that treats being honest about the hard stuff as the whole point. You will leave hoarse, a little raw, and somehow steadier than you came.

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