Dan DeLuca's picks: Steve Earle, Nina Simone, Nicki Minaj, and more

Steve Earle & the Dukes. The roots-rock troubadour brings his vast catalog and Terraplane, a new album of Lightnin' Hopkins-inspired Texas blues, to town. 8 p.m. Tuesday at World Cafe Live.

"What Happened, Miss Simone?" Liz Garbus' superb documentary about fierce pianist and singer Nina Simone, who was known by her birth name, Eunice Waymon, until rejection by the Curtis Institute of Music pushed her to find a job - and craft a Simone Signoret-inspired stage name - at Atlantic City's Midtown Bar in the 1950s. On Netflix.

"A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me: Stories and a Novella" by David Gates. The former Newsweek cultural scribe and author of Jernigan and The Wonders of the Invisible World offers a new collection. It specializes in character sketches of self-destructive men who ruin their relationships but keep their wit intact while trying to hold regret at bay. (Knopf, $25.95)

Nicki Minaj and Meek Mill. The cutest couple in rap are together on her Pinkprint Tour, an extra-newsy affair thanks to recent Twitter feuds, with Minaj squaring off with Taylor Swift, and Meek Mill's ongoing beef with Drake, spurred by the Philadelphia emcee's claim that the Toronto rapper doesn't write his own rhymes. 7 p.m. Thursday at the Susquehanna Bank Center.

Los Straitjackets. The mysterious instrumental surf-rock band, in their Lucha Libre wrestling masks, are always entertaining. 8 p.m. Thursday at World Cafe Live at the Queen in Wilmington, and 8 p.m. Friday at Havana in New Hope.