Ex-child star, Michael Jackson protegé Corey Feldman in concert

Omaha (Nebraska) World-Herald writer Kevin Coffee summed up ex-child star Corey Feldman’s March 20 concert as an “altogether odd experience.”

Feldman played a small Omaha pub called Maloney’s and the audience was in a constant state of streaming in, then streaming back out.

“It was pop music — mostly bland but often bad pop music — played into the wee hours as more and more people fled through the doors after having enough of it or perhaps after having their curiosity sated,” Coffee wrote, noting that Feldman dressed like a modern-day Michael Jackson.

If you watch Feldman on YouTube it’s easy to see the comparison. And if you know anything about the 46-year-old actor’s past, you know the Jackson conjuring is intentional. Feldman, who brings his all-female Corey’s Angels band to Rialto Theatre on Tuesday, Aug. 1, met the pop icon when he was just 12 years old. He still considers him his mentor and role model, despite the pair’s very public parting. Feldman later claimed that Jackson had befriended him as a child and then dropped their friendship when the superstar became bored.

Coffee said fans at Feldman’s March concert “initially went wild for the entertainer.”

“People screamed for him, and they danced during the opening salvo of songs,” Coffee wrote. “But enthusiasm quickly waned. He didn’t have particularly good songs.”

Feldman, who is backed by a band of women dressed in white with angels wings, comes here a month after accidentally knocking out a tooth with a microphone at a show in Milwaukee, according to the Milwaukee Record.

Feldman is in the midst of an ambitious world tour that will bring him across the United States for the fifth time; he’s toured as a solo artist and a member of his former band, Truth Movement. Feldman in June released the album “Angelic 2 the Core.”

If you’re into breaking up your week with a concert, we recommend these two shows:

Bakersfield, California, country twanger Dwight Yoakam shares a bit of Hollywood with Feldman. Yoakam has credits in several movies, most notably 1996’s “Sling Blade,” playing opposite Billy Bob Thornton in the Thornton-penned and directed movie. Yoakam played the cruel boyfriend who finds out the hard way what Karl Childers (Thornton) could do with a sling blade when properly provoked.

But Hollywood will be worlds away when Yoakam, 60, takes the stage at the AVA at Casino del Sol Resort & Casino, 5655 W. Valencia Road, on Thursday, July 27. He’ll pull out his classic cowpunk hits — “Guitars, Cadillacs,” “A Thousand Miles From Nowhere,” “Ain’t That Lonely Yet” — as well as cuts off his new bluegrass album “Swimmin’ Pools, Movie Stars ...,” a collection of his hits stripped of electric guitars and amped up with fiddle and dobro. If we’re lucky, he will play his acoustic cover of Prince’s “Purple Rain.” (Check out the video at tucson.com)

Brandy Clark and King Leg are on the bill and the show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25-$75 through tickets.casinodelsol.com

Country music veteran Tracy Lawrence pulls the tour bus into Desert Diamond Casino, 1100 W. Pima Mine Road, Wednesday, Aug. 2, for a 8 p.m. show. This might be the best bargain of the week when it comes to big name shows: Tickets start at $10 and top out at $25 (for the prized standing-only dance space in front of the stage). Personally, that’s our favorite spot, especially for Lawrence, 49, whose honky-tonk tunes — “Alibis,” “Time Marches On,” “Texas Tornado,” “Find Out Who Your Friends Are,” “Paint Me A Birmingham,” “Lessons Learned,” “Any Fool Can See,” “You Can’t Hide Redneck” — dare you to keep still.

Get tickets at the door or in advance at startickets.com