OUTPOST: Summer like the Season

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– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLY- RAIN OR SHINE “Summer Like The Season is an indie/art rock band based out of Detroit, MI.  A brainchild of multi-instrumentalist and producer Summer Krinsky, the tunes explore a hazy line where live instrumentation and modern electronics meld into one fluid sonic playground. Inspired by artists like tUnE-yArDs, St. Vincent, and Animal Collective, Summer’s sound is characterized by poppy vocals mingling with unique harmonies, breakbeats, and ethereal soundscapes. Summer Like The Season has played on bills with Soccer Mommy, Dan Deacon DJ, Speedy Ortiz and Bent Knee. For the live show Summer plays drum kit and sings alongside electronics/synth musician Scott Murphy, and guitarist Liam McNitt”” Mary Metal is based in Asheville, NC and includes band members Charlie Graham, Max Kline, Alex Cain, Lucas Ross andHaven Hager. Indie/Alternative Rock/DreamPop.”Acid Jo “On rare and horrific occaisions the other side breaks through”  

PATIO: Ladies in the Round featuring Alexis Jade, Alma Russ, Sierra Bryan

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ALL AGES LIMITED PATIO SEATING IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVEALEXIS JADEAlexis Alexis Jade is an old soul with a new sound. Growing up in the small town of Rosemark, Tennessee, outside of Memphis, she has been influenced by a mix of country, folk, and rock ‘n’ roll. Coming from such a rich music area, her dreams of performing have been cultivated from a young age. Her debut EP “With Love, Alexis Jade”, is an ambient, country expression of heartache, triumph, and the journey to finding your worth. After years of honing in on her confidence and skills as a powerful female lead, Alexis Jade stands front and center of her band, Alexis Jade and the Gemstones.  Leaning into the unwavering, fearless trailblazers who carved a path for women in country music, Alexis Jade brings a new flare to the time old tailes of heartbreak, determination, and hell-raisin.ALMA RUSS Alma (say it like “Alamo”) lives in Whittier, NC when she’s not on the road. She plays patchwork music: country, folk, and Appalachian roots sewn together to make something unique. Songwriting is cheaper than therapy, and old songs make her happy.  She fell in love with Appalachian culture and music as a child, started learning historic Scotch-Irish murder ballads, and took up fiddle at 12. Banjo and guitar followed, and then she made friends with a hobo who taught her to write songs, so that’s what she keeps doing. Music has taken her lots of places, from the hometown bars, to church, to the highway. She spent a while performing as an entertainer on the passenger train in Bryson City, NC, and once she wound up getting 3 yeses from ABC’s American Idol Judges on Season 1 and being sent to Hollywood, CA. She recently recorded a critically acclaimed album in an abandoned church in the West Texas desert. Her influences include John Prine, Townes Van Zandt, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Dolly Parton, among others.SIERRA BRYANA spunky blend of Americana and indie-rock based out of Flagstaff, AZ, Sierra Bryan’s sound draws inspiration from the likes of Phoebe Bridgers and Joni Mitchell. Her debut album “Breathing In, Breathing Out” showcases her melancholy yet goofy approach to song-writing that holds storytelling at the center of her lyrics. She combines pop sensibilities and vulnerable melodies with acoustic roots to create a unique modern folk sound

Madison McFerrin

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ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYMADISON McFERRIN Independent artist and musician Madison McFerrin has come into her own. Madison holds a fruitful and robust solo career with three self produced EPs and numerous performances and curatorships across the country and internationally. Madison’s distinct vocal and meticulously layered stylings of a capella and self-harmonizing culminate in work that blends the genres of R&B, pop, soul and jazz, all with a sense of softness. Her genre-bending work has led to Questlove dubbing her early sound “soul-appella,” AdHoc to describe her work as “an oasis of serenity,” and The FADER noting how Madison’s “warm harmonies feel effortless.” The throughline of Madison’s work is independence and she is often looking towards a kind of inner liberation. Whether she is writing about understanding one’s intuition and inner beauty or the cyclical violence of anti-Blackness and sexism, Madison explores how to get free and how to care for oneself along the way. In this, Madison works at the intersection of artistry and community building. She often looks back and honors a Black music canon while creating her own unique style, utilizing her voice as a central instrument and drawing upon lifelong inspirations like Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Erykah Badu, Pharell, Missy Elliot, and the Spice Girls. She is in community with other artists, cultural workers, and activists, and has been able to prioritize the work of women and POC in her curatorial tenures at venues like C’mon Everybody, the WNYC Greene Space and the BRIC Jazz festival. The result of Madison’s work is an enduring commitment to finding ways to think better, express ourselves honestly, and nurture a sense of possibility.

CHAT PILE

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ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYCHAT PILE Like the towering mounds of toxic waste from which it gets its namesake, the music of Oklahoma City noise rock quartet Chat Pile is a suffocating, grotesque embodiment of the existential anguish that has defined the 21st Century. Between a dying planet, ever-increasing socio-economic disparity, and a general quality of life in a tailspin, one can’t help but muster a chuckle at this self-destructive dumpster fire of reality. It’s self-parody in its bleakest form and within that nihilism something undeniably alluring that four slacker okies would channel into a sound that has captivated the underground and beyond.   From the very get-go, there was an immediate allure to the idea of four otherwise ordinary guys all coming together, smoking copious amounts of weed and recording some of the heaviest, hellish, and harrowing music to ever emerge from the American heartland, if not the world. For as oppressively bleak as its sound is, Chat Pile provides a distillation of the universally relatable modern dread felt by countless people every day.   Formed in 2019 and adopting the aliases of Stin (bass), Captain Ron (drums), Luther Manhole (guitar), and Raygun Busch (vocals), Chat Pile generated an immediate stir amid a burgeoning Midwest noise rock renaissance and beyond, releasing two EPs, This Dungeon Earth and Remove Your Skin Please. Its debut full-length record God’s Country, released via The Flenser in 2022, would take the world by storm, receiving universal critical acclaim, numerous accolades including Pitchfork’s Best New Music and countless year-end lists, including Rolling Stone’s Best Metal Albums of the Year and SPIN’s Best Albums of 2022. In a similarly explosive fashion, Chat Pile would enter 2023 with a bang, in just the first six months alone, the band served as support for Lingua Ignota’s final run of shows, released Brothers In Christ, a split EP with fellow “Flyover-Country” noise roc ade its fiery international live performance debut at Roadburn 2023. PORTRAYAL OF GUILT Portrayal of Guilt eschew predictability. While the Austin, Texan outfit have released material at a rapid clip since their formation only six years ago, it has been near-impossible to predict what each ensuing release might sound like. The only window into what to expect has been those releases’ titles, wallowing in themes of affliction, isolation, and just plain underworld allusion. Naturally, this leads to…Devil Music. After shifting their sound over several immediate releases (most recent, 2021’s widely acclaimed CHRISTFUCKER), Portrayal of Guilt has transformed from masters of the traditional ‘90s screamo template, to fit a more blackened and sludgy metal intensity. Citing a wide spectrum of influences, Devil Music, tracked in two different sessions in early 2022, is an experimental approach to writing heavy music. It offers five new original songs on Side A; and then a reimagining of those same five songs on Side B, replacing much of the traditional guitars and bass setup with an orchestral string section, acoustic bass, and brass. NIGHTOSPHERE    

OUTPOST: Jake Xerxes Fussell & Twain

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– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLY- RAIN OR SHINE  Jake Xerxes Fussell is a singer and guitarist based in Durham, NC. He is, according to Ann Powers of NPR, “maybe the leading interpreter of American folk music right now…” Fussell’s album Good and Green Againwas released to critical acclaim in January of 2022. The album was produced by James Elkington and featured some formidable musicians, including Casey Toll on upright bass, Libby Rodenbough on strings, Joe Westerlund on drums, Joseph Decosimo on fiddle, and others. Bonnie “Prince” Billy contributed additional vocals.“…Fussell is the rare contemporary to approach folk in its pure form, shunning self-penned compositions about bummer relationships to concentrate on material handed down from bygone, hardenedtimes.” –The New Yorker“(Fussell) is one of the great magpies of American song, collecting forgotten, tarnished gems with a folklorist’s zeal… his renditions aren’t so much cover versions as composites…” –The GuardianTwain “There is nothing remarkable about my life that is necessary to know in order to appreciate the songs,” says Matthew Davidson of Twain. He describes the project as “a modern folk-opera of indefinite length consisting of songs and images from my life, a self-caricature of the musician and writer Matthew Davidson.” “Some of the songs deal with the experience of male-ness, but it isn’t necessary to identify as male or female to understand them. A lot of the music comes out of depressive or ecstatic states, but it is not necessary to have experienced those feelings in order to appreciate the music. The offering is supposed to be a very naked voice which the listener can commune with.  If it were up to me, I would share this music with people who don’t know a single fact about my self, my name, my story.  I make music in order to take a break from those things, and I hope the music I make offers others a chance to take a break from their own selves, names, stories.”  

OUTPOST: For the First & Last Time: Grateful Shred & Circles Around the Sun

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– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLY – LIMITED NUMBER OF VIP TICKETS AVAILABLE GRATEFUL SHREDAfter a meteoric rise from obscurity to a national touring band, Los Angeles-based Grateful Shred has made the most of its time in the spotlight. The lineup, featuring Dan Horne and Austin McCutchen alongside keyboardist Adam MacDougall woke the Grateful Dead cosmos with a unique laid-back harmony driven sound. The band literally went from playing the Shakedown Street vendor area prior to Dead and Company shows to touring the United States. The moment that sent the band’s popularity soaring is the “Busted at the Bowl” video, a YouTube video that features Shred members starting an impromptu set in the parking lot of the Hollywood Bowl before a Dead and Company show in 2017. They don’t get too far before drawing so much attention that the police shut them down. Instantly creating Shred-cred, this was a bit of good fortune that doesn’t get past McCutchen. “We’ve been dealt some pretty good cards,” he states. “It’s been cool to roll with it and push forward and continually make stuff happen. Things have gone our way. Even that video happened magically. It was put together at the last minute, and boom!” The thing is, Grateful Shred manage to channel that elusive Dead vibe: wide-open guitar tones, effortless three-part vocal harmonies, choogling beats, and yes, plenty of tripped out, Shredded solos. The look, the sound, the atmosphere. It’s uncanny. Far from being a historical re-enactment, Grateful Shred’s laissez faire vibe infuses the band with a gentle spirit, warmth, and (dare we say it) authenticity. From their killer merch game to their eminently watchable YouTube channel, they’re clearly having a rad time and spreading the love. Strangely enough, in a world overflowing with wax museum nostalgia and Deadly sentimentalism, we need the Shred, now more than ever. CIRCLES AROUND THE SUN Originally formed from an idea that concert impresario Peter Shapiro had about commissioning original set-break music at the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary concerts (“Fare Thee Well”), Circles Around The Sun is a first-of-its-kind band that has continued to trail-blaze the instrumental cosmic disco space for nearly a decade, shapeshifting through several iterations. Not just spiritually but actually and tangibly linked to Grateful Dead history, the band’s music shares shelf space with post-rock, surf-rock, jazz-funk, and good old fashioned psychedelia, while their recorded output has included collaborations with such diverse luminaries as Joe Russo, Billy Strings and Mikaela Davis. Original instrumentals form the bedrock of CATS’ live show, taking fans on a whole different journey every time.

of Montreal

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ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYOF MONTREAL Kevin Barnes did not believe they could ever leave Georgia. Barnes arrived in the erstwhile college-rock hub of Athens around 1996, a pop four-tracker in their early twenties with permissive images of Bowie, Prince, and Iggy Pop prancing through their head. Almost immediately, of Montreal became a signal flare for a slowly changing South. Barnes, who will answer to any pronoun you proffer, bent gender and genre through complicated and ever-delightful records, trouble and woe fueling kinetic tunes of radical incandescence. But there is only so much energy one can expend on the vanguard, living in a town that often felt like a frat house suffused with regressive notions of race, sexuality, and decency. It all exhausted Barnes.They had, however, built a life there—a home, a family, a studio, a reputation. Could Barnes ever really exit? The new Lady On The Cusp is not only a rapturous synthesis of most everything of Montreal has ever done but also Barnes’ final transmission from Athens, as they’re now a fresh Southern expatriate delighted to be living among the snowy peaks and progressive politics of southern Vermont. Written and recorded in the months when Barnes and partner, musician Christina Schneider, prepared to leave, Lady On The Cusp combines a keen reckoning with the past with hopeful glimpses of the future, all clad in Barnes’ purposefully scattershot pop kaleidoscopes. The glittering trauma confrontation of “PI$$ PI$$,” the devotional R&B surrealist fantasy of “Soporific Cell,” the nuevo jazz lamentation of “Sea Mines That Mr Gone”: These 10 tracks—funny and sad, sexy and brooding, playful and serious—find Barnes finding new paths ahead. Barnes is moving both from situations that felt suffocating and toward musical ideas that feel evermore freeing.   Barnes and Schneider met nearly seven years ago, when of Montreal and Schneider’s Locate S,1, shared a tour. They fell in love on the road, and she relocated to Athens to begin their life together there. Barnes had certainly contemplated leaving the South but worried about the existential anxieties: Where would they go, for instance, and how would they make friends wherever that was? Easier just to stay in place, right? But the couple began visiting Vermont together, slowly seeing every season in the state where Schneider had gone to school. Barnes imagined another way to exist. What’s more, Schneider—whose own band was in part a vehicle for confronting childhood damage—encouraged Barnes to engage with the wreckage of their past, to grow beyond it in a way they admit they never had. “Christina has been extremely helpful,” Barnes says with more than a touch of relief, “in realizing that who you’ve been doesn’t make you who you are.”   Nostalgia is not Barnes’ thing, never really has been. While of Montreal’s peers from mid-’00s indie bloom have often circled back for seemingly endless reissues, reunions, and retreads, Barnes mostly hasn’t, choosing instead to press for novel ways to make the kind of jubilant but tumultuous tunes they have long loved. With its views of the past not as a crutch but as a cage, its nods to what’s next, and sounds that tinker with the idea of what it means to make  pop at all, Lady On The Cusp is a compelling reintroduction to of Montreal—a project that has never stalled but has here found and used several new wellsprings of inspiration, all at once.TELE NOVELLA

KIM GORDON

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ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYKIM GORDONThere was a space in Kim Gordon’s No Home Record. It might not have been a home and it might not have been a record, but I seem to recall there was a space. Boulevards, bedrooms, instruments were played, recorded, the voice and its utterances, straining a way through the rhythms and the chords, threaded in some shared place, we met there, the guitar came too, there fell a peal of cymbals, driving on the music. We listened, we turned our back to the walls, slithered through the city at night. Kim Gordon’s words in our ears, her eyes, she saw, she knew, she remembered, she liked. We were moving somewhere. No home record. Moving.   Now I’m listening to The Collective. And I’m thinking, what has been done to this space, how has she treated it, it’s not here the same way, not quite. I mean, not at all. On this evidence, it splintered, glittered, crashed and burned. It’s dark here. Can I love you with my eyes open? “It’s Dark Inside.” Haunted by synthesised voices bodiless. Planes of projections. Mirrors get your gun and the echo of a well-known tune, comes in liminal, yet never not hanging around, part of the atmosphere, fading in and out, like she says – Grinding at the edges. Grinding at us all, grinding us away. Hurting, scraping. Sediments, layers, of recorded emissions, mined, twisted, refracted. That makes the music. This shimmering, airless geology, agitated, quarried, cries made in data, bounced down underground tunnels, reaching our ears We recalled it – but not as a memory, more like how you recall a product, when it’s flawed.   She sings “Shelf Warmer” so it sounds like shelf life, it sounds radioactive, inside our relationships, juddering, the beats chattering, edgy, the pain of love in the gift shop, assembled in hollow booms, in scratching claps. Non-reciprocal gift giving, there is a return policy. But – novel idea – A hand and a kiss. How about that. Disruption. I would say that Kim Gordon is thinking about how thinking is, now. Conceptual artists do that, did that. “I Don’t Miss My Mind.” The record opens with a list, but the list is under the title “BYE BYE.” The list says milk thistle, dog sitter…. And much more. She’s leaving. Why is the list anxious? How divisive is mascara? It’s on the list. I am packing, listening to the list. Is it mine, or hers.   She began seeking images from behind her closed eyes. Putting them to music. But I need to keep my eyes open as I walk the streets, with noise canceled by the airbuds rammed in my ears. quiet, aware, quiet, aware, they chant at me. What could be going through Kim’s head as she goes through mine?  -Written by English artist Josephine PrydeBILL NACE

Billy Jonas Band ‘Welcome Spring!’ Family Concert

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ALL AGESSEATED SHOWEARLY SHOW  BILLY JONAS BAND  Fun for All Ages! Bring the family, and welcome spring at an afternoon show on April 7.   The Billy Jonas Band loves to engage and delight both young and adult audiences. Whether performing for adults, families, school groups, faith communities, or a mix, they strive for a musical excellence that inspires, entertains, and moves people literally and figuratively. With “wild-winded word magic” (Dirty Linen Magazine), homemade “industrial re-percussion” instruments, exquisite 3 and 4-part vocal harmonies, plus guitar and bass, they love to create community through song and story. Their specialty: finding and pushing your “wonder” button.   In 2010, the Billy Jonas Band was honored with a performance at the White House!

Cloud Nothings

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ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYCLOUD NOTHINGSSome bands never miss. This rare breed consistently puts out great records every couple years, avoiding the lengthy hiatuses or egregious sonic missteps that often come with achieving longevity. It’s an often unsung reliability, as few realize how truly remarkable it is to put art into the world at this rate without letting the quality slip. For nearly 15 years, Cloud Nothings have continued to hit the target, steadily becoming a part of the fabric of modern indie rock as we know it with a run of fantastic albums. This streak continues unabated with their latest full-length, Final Summer–an album that’s so assured, so instantly satisfying, that it forces you to pause and realize you’re listening to one of the great American rock bands in their prime.Formed in 2009 by guitarist/vocalist Dylan Baldi, Cloud Nothings evolved over the years from a one-man lo-fi project into a finely tuned unit also composed of drummer Jayson Gerycz and bassist Chris Brown. Cloud Nothings, over so many years and so many records (nine or ten “depending on how you look at it,” laughs Baldi), have existed long enough to witness all sorts of musical moments come and go, but the secret to their endurance isn’t about savvily navigating trends. “We’ve just never felt inclined to stop,” Baldi explains. “It’s not like this makes us millions of dollars, but it’s a great gig, it’s what we love to do.” Gerycz adds, “It’s just still so fun every time we do it, every time we go get in the basement and start writing.”And it shows. Recorded with Jeff Zeigler (Kurt Vile, The War On Drugs, Torres, Purling Hiss), mixed by Sarah Tudzin (Porches, Tim Hiedecker, Pom Pom Squad), and mastered by Jack Callahan (Ryley Walker, Merchandise, Wolf Eyes), Final Summer is bursting with the unbridled joy that only comes from playing guitars and drums loudly. This is not the work of a scrappy new band cramming all of their ideas into a debut album or grizzled veterans grinding through another release: it’s one of the tightest and most invigorating rock bands active today, driven to make the best version of themselves. Very few bands take listeners on that kind of journey within a hooky rock song as effectively as Cloud Nothings, and the album’s opening title track proves exactly why. A wash of crackling synths sets the scene before the band roars to life with a cutting riff and Gerycz’s driving beat. From there, it’s layer after layer of interlocking melodies and guitar lines, all rising action while Baldi lays out the album’s overarching lyrical ideas. “It’s about feeling alright in the moment,” Baldi says. “A lot of these songs sort of ended up being about getting by or trying to keep improving despite everything.”On Final Summer closer “Common Mistake,” Baldi sings, “This is your life, it’s a common mistake. We’ll be alright, just give more than you take.” It’s the kind of deceptively direct lyric that he excels at, a clear and real sentiment filtered through a melody that’s stuck in your head before the end of the first chorus. The line could almost be an accidental mission statement for the band itself: a group that creates with a workman-likecommitment, providing listeners with something authentic and artful at an unflinching pace. Cloud Nothings don’t miss, and you won’t want to miss them either.WIND CULTS