Follow up the Labor Day weekend with rock and roll by going to see the group Wilco (with warm-up act Bahamas) at the Akron Civic Theatre, a Knight Arts grantee. Wilco is an award-winning Chicago sextet led by founder and singer/songwriter and guitarist Jeff Tweedy, with bassist John Stirratt , drummer Glenn Kotche, guitarist Nels Cline, guitarist/keyboardist Patrick Sansone and keyboardist/vocalist Mikael Jorgensen.

Established in the 1990s, Wilco’s brand of classic roots rock, promoters has said, incorporates folk, pop and genre-spanning experimentalism. The band’s 10-album catalog includes 2002’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” which was named one of the 500 greatest albums of all time by “Rolling Stone.” It also caused some controversy apparently, and had a difficult time reaching the mass market. Yet it finally became the band’s biggest seller.

In 2005, the sextet produced the Grammy award-winning “A Ghost is Born,” another Grammy nomination for the alternative rock band’s “The Album.”

Wilco. Photo from captainsdead.com

National Public Radio has called Wilco “the best rock band in America,” while the “Los Angeles Times” has heralded the group as “an amazing machine whose six players seem more at one with their music than any rock group working today.”

Wilco reportedly took its name from the military slang term for “will comply.” Why not, for it’s short and memorable.

The name game works for warm up act Bahamas. Afie Jurvanen, who is Bahamas, isn’t from the Bahamas. Event organizers say he is a Finnish-Canadian from Barrie, Ontario. Apparently, though, his chosen epithet is fitting, for since 2009 Jurvanen has been making music under the name Bahamas and has been writing songs about sunsets, love affairs and making out with crooked smiles.

Bahamas (Afie Juvanen). Photo from nowtoronto.com

Promoters have said that through simple arrangements, the artist charts an escape route from the snowbelt to the coral reefs.

Jurvanen’s new album, “Bahamas Is Afie,” will be released in August and is described as a coming of age record. Self-produced, the album is said to be the next step in the evolution of Jurvanen’s songcraft and musicianship and has been touted as being a sparse, moving headphone album, complemented by a more developed arrangement of strings, brass, winds, orchestral percussion and chamber choruses that transport the listener.

Wilco and Bahamas will perform at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 4 in the Akron Civic Theatre, 182 S. Main St., Akron; 330-253-2488; www.akroncivic.com. Tickets are $35-$59.50.