Rock picks

Versatility is R&B singer Anthony Hamilton's blessing, as well as his curse. It certainly keeps him busy. Over the years, the Charlotte native has sung with an amazingly wide range of artists, adding his old-school soul-man growl to albums by Al Green, The Game, Chingy, Nelly, Buddy Guy, Ying Yang Twins and even Santana. He's just so good at playing the support role that his own quite-fine work is often overshadowed. But maybe his upcoming album "The Point of It All" (due out next month) will put Hamilton out front once and for all. In the meantime, he plays Saturday at Raleigh's Lincoln Theatre. Other highlights

• Tonight: Peerless guitarist Will McFarlane lets fly at Papa Mojo's Roadhouse in Durham; Raleigh native Julie Foldesi, Broadway star and current cast member of Lincoln Center's "South Pacific," takes a turn into singer/songwriter folksiness with a new album called "This Part of Town," which she sings at Raleigh's Pour House; and Eagles of Death Metal come screaming into the Lincoln Theatre (see Page 9D).
• Saturday: Get your Christmas bombast on with two shows worth of Trans-Siberian Orchestra at Raleigh's RBC Center; venerable jam-band forerunners the Radiators bring their 30-year-anniversary tour to the Pour House; Mojave 3's Neil Halstead goes solo at Chapel Hill's Local 506; and three different spinoffs of the Charlotte band Antiseen play at Raleigh's Volume 11 Tavern. Lud's long-in-the-works album "V" (Fractured Discs) covers an immense amount of ground, from sunny rural twang to electro-funk to punky snarl to the self-explanatory "Tribute to German Jam Bands of the Late 1960s and Early 1970s." Yet somehow, it hangs together as an expansive listening experience that doesn't feel piecemeal at all. This quintessential Chapel Hill band plays a release show at the quintessential Chapel Hill joint, The Cave.
• Sunday: Bruce Robison, the pen behind excellent country hits for Dixie Chicks and many others, sings 'em himself at the Pour House; Method Man and Redman spin verses at Carrboro's Cat's Cradle; and if TSO isn't enough premature holiday cheer for ya, country singer John Berry brings his "Classic Christmas" show to Durham's Carolina Theatre.