Your Memphis Labor Day Weekend

Hey Memphis 👋 It's Thursday. Sunny and 99, heat index climbing to 110, and the Weather Service has a heat advisory up through 8 p.m. Saturday.

Which is a shame, because it's Labor Day weekend and nearly everything worth doing is outside. So we built this one around the clock: mornings, evenings, and a few rooms with real air conditioning. Five things tonight, then all four days — Monday included, because a long weekend is the whole point.

🌙 Tonight

Live at the Garden: Alabama — Radians Amphitheater, 750 Cherry Rd., gates 5:30, show 8. Moved from June, so dig through your inbox for old tickets. BYOB, which at the Garden is half the point. Details

Modern Jazz Masters: Jon Cowherd with the Ted Ludwig Trio — The Green Room at Crosstown, 7:30–10 PM, $25 advance, $35 door, $10 students. A listening room where people actually shut up during the solos. Details

Redbirds vs. Durham — AutoZone Park, first pitch 6:45, from $9.01. The cheap night: $7 student tickets, $2 PBR. Details

Thirsty Thursday — Meddlesome Brewing, 7750 Trinity Rd. #114, Cordova, 4–10 PM. Every beer $5, and the River Rat Rounders run free poker from six. Details

Bluff City Liars Improv — Hi Tone, 282 N. Cleveland St., doors 7, show 7:30, $13.50. Downstairs room, made-up scenes, thirteen and a half dollars. Details

☀️ Your Long Weekend in Memphis

FRIDAY

Delta Fair & Music Festival opens — Agricenter International, 7777 Walnut Grove Rd., gates 4–11 PM. $15 for 13 and up, $10 for kids 5–12 and seniors 65+, free for 4 and under, a couple dollars less online. Friday wristbands $31. Runs through September 13. Details

Metal Night: KaRRot — Overton Park Shell, 1928 Poplar Ave., 7–9 PM, free. A Korn tribute band on the Shell's free series, the warm-up for the Metal Museum's big day. Dress code, per the museum: best metal attire, blacksmith or rock. Details

Memphis Symphony Big Band — The Grove at GPAC, 1801 Exeter Rd., Germantown, gates 6, music 7–8:30 PM. $30 plus fees, $5 ages 5–18, free for 4 and under. Bring a lawn chair. The band keeps the old Peabody Skyway Ballroom archive — the same big-band radio remotes a young Sam Phillips announced before he built Sun. Details

Clownvis / IV and The Strange Band — Hi Tone big room, doors 8, show 9, $24.50–$29.50. A full Elvis revue performed in clown makeup. In Memphis that's either sacrilege or exactly right. Details

SATURDAY

Fair warning: four of the weekend's biggest things all start between five and seven. Pick one.

Metal Museum Grand Opening — 1930 Poplar Ave., 12–4 PM, free, RSVP requested. After 47 years on the bluff, the Metal Museum opens its new Overton Park building — inaugural exhibitions, live smithing demos, hands-on stuff for kids. Their words: everyone is invited. Details

Memphis Tigers vs. Arkansas State — Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium, 6 PM, from $9. The home opener, and the first game since the $226.5 million renovation finished. Nine dollars to see what a quarter-billion bought. Details

Memphis PowerPop Festival — Overton Park Shell, 5–9 PM, free. Four hours, four bands, no ticket, and The Smithereens close it out from 7:30. Details

Wrestling Night at the ballpark — AutoZone Park, first pitch 6:05, from $9.01. Live wrestling on the plaza, a Rockey bobblehead to the first 1,400, fireworks after the last out, and a free Jimmy Hart autograph signing — yes, the same one from Wednesday's Listening Lab. Details

Hernando Farmers Market — Hernando Town Square, 2535 Hwy. 51 S., 8 AM–1 PM, free. Worth the drive south: a certified Mississippi market on the old courthouse square, where SNAP dollars double up to $20 on produce. Go early. Details

Free hours at the Brooks — 1934 Poplar Ave., 10 AM–12 PM, free every Saturday morning, air conditioned, and one of the last autumns before the Brooks moves downtown. Details

SUNDAY

1st Annual Labor Day Blues & Southern Soul Celebration — 3648 Faulkner Rd., gates noon, music 3 to 8, parking $10. Bring a tent, cooler and lawn chair; leave the grill home. First year, homegrown — the kind of thing that makes nobody's calendar. Details

Singer Songwriter Sunday — Meddlesome Brewing, Cordova, 4–7 PM, free. Local writers playing their own material, no cover. Details

MONDAY — LABOR DAY

Most of the city takes the day, so here's what's actually open.

Splash pads, final day of the season — David Carnes, Douglass, Hollywood, McFarland, Orange Mound, Peabody and Whitehaven Parks, 10 AM–7:45 PM, free. All seven shut off after Monday and don't come back until May. In this heat it's the best free plan in the city, and it expires. Details

Delta Fair — Agricenter, 11 AM–10 PM on Labor Day, same gate prices, ride wristbands $31. Details

Closed for the holiday: every Memphis Public Library branch, plus the Brooks, the Dixon and Stax, which all take Mondays anyway. The Zoo is open 9 to 5:30, and there's no Redbirds game until Tuesday.

👶 Kids & Family this weekend

Family Movie Night — Cordova Library, Friday 6–8 PM, free, all ages. Somebody else's air conditioning, and nobody has to cook. Details

Meet children's author Kayle Boyd — Cordova Library, Saturday 11–11:45 AM, free. A real live author for the picture-book set. Details

Kids run the bases — AutoZone Park, Sunday, first pitch 1:05, from $9.01. Day game, and the field is theirs when it's over. Details

📰 The Rundown

No city trash pickup Monday for Labor Day. Monday and Tuesday customers roll their carts out Tuesday the 8th instead, and the rest of the week shifts a day behind. (via City of Memphis)

The Children's Museum is closing at 4 p.m. Saturday because of football traffic next door. If Saturday was your CMOM plan, make it a morning. (via Children's Museum of Memphis)

If you can't make Saturday's party, the Metal Museum opens for regular admission Friday, September 11. The building isn't going anywhere. (via Metal Museum)

🍽️ Food & Drink

7th Annual Craft Food and Wine Festival — Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, 1934 Poplar Ave., Sunday 5–7 PM, 21 and up with ID. More than 35 local vendors handing out small bites through the galleries, plus wine, cocktails and a live band. Prices are on the museum's ticket page. Details

🎟️ Looking Ahead

Zoo Rendezvous — Friday, September 11, 6:30–10:30 PM, VIP entry at 5:30. Unlimited food and drink tastings, five DJs and an Eras-tour tribute. Details

Live at the Garden: Kool & the Gang and Patti LaBelle — Friday, September 18, Radians Amphitheater. On sale now, and that's a bill worth planning a table around. Details

🏡 Community Corner

Yesterday we asked about the Memphis room where you saw something you still bring up — a club that's gone now, a church basement, somebody's garage off Cooper. That question stays open, so hit reply. And a Labor Day version: what's your standing three-day-weekend move? The drive you always make, the place you always end up.

The tip line never closes — a pop-up, a band, a Saturday we missed. No gatekeeping — send it to hey@heymemphis.co.

That's it for today — see you tomorrow at 6.

— Josh