Porch Light
Porch Light is an indie-rock group based out of Minneapolis, consisting of members Zac Fogarty (guitar), Jackie Uhas (vocals), Henry Hughes (bass), Kyle Siemon (guitar) and Isaiah Trimbo (drums). The project quickly came together in the Summer of 2024 with a mission to break the barriers that they have been accustomed to in the Indie world. Leaning into a raw and authentic live process “Porch Light’ creates a sense of relatability and intimacy for anyone experiencing this group. Inspired by blending the sounds of ’90s Radiohead with Hayley Williams’ Paramore, Slow Pulp, Big Thief and many more. The organic content with their signature ‘basement rock’ vibe has amassed them over 450k combined followers on socials. With just 3 songs released, be on the lookout for their debut EP arriving on April 11th, 2025! Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Soundcloud | Spotify
Drink The Sea
This is a seated show. Drink The Sea began three years ago in 2022, when Alain and Barrett jammed at Barrett’s studio in Olympia, WA just to see what kind of magic they could conjure together. Two years later, Barrett and Duke toured together in England and Iceland, before recording additional songs in Reykjavik. After that, Barrett, Duke, and Peter met in Sao Paulo to record more songs, which continued with Alain joining them in Joshua Tree, and then some additional recording at Alain’s studio in Santiago, Chile. Final production happened at Barrett’s studio in Olympia, WA, and mixing took place in Barcelona, Spain. The two debut albums the band recorded were literally recorded around the world. Taking their name from a lyric that Duke wrote, the albums are produced and mixed by Barrett and Alain and reflect the members vast experience as songwriters, arrangers, and singers. It also shows a strong world music influence that permeates the music, because although the songs are built around traditional guitar, bass, and drums configurations, the songs also shimmer with the sounds of Arabic oud, Indian sitar, Indonesian gamelans, and various exotic percussions like Brazilian surdo, frame drum, vibraphone, marimba, and kalimba. The band will begin touring in October of 2025, and the first single will be released on May 23rd with new singles following every two weeks. The two albums will be released on September 19th and October 3rd, respectively.
Watchhouse
Watchhouse, the North Carolina based duo of Andrew Marlin & Emily Frantz, have announced a new studio album called Rituals, due out May 30, 2025 via Tiptoe Tiger Music / Thirty Tigers. The collection marks the pair’s first release of all new, original songs since their 2021 self-titled album, which earned praise from Rolling Stone (“pristine acoustic picking collides with hazy, dream-like psychedelia”) Mojo, NPR Music, American Songwriter and more. Starting over a decade ago playing coffee shops and local restaurants around North Carolina, Watchhouse is a grassroots success story that’s been driven by Marlin’s poignant songwriting. With sold-out shows at legendary venues like Red Rocks and the Ryman Auditorium, and hundreds of millions of streams, they’ve earned a reputation for creating music that “redefines roots music for a younger generation” (Washington Post). The duo – now with a family of their own – are two singers and musicians with profound chemistry, performing earnest yet masterfully crafted songs that encompass the unknowable mysteries, existential heartbreak, and communal joys of modern life. The forthcoming album is no exception. Website | Facebook | Spotify | TikTok
Watchhouse
Watchhouse, the North Carolina based duo of Andrew Marlin & Emily Frantz, have announced a new studio album called Rituals, due out May 30, 2025 via Tiptoe Tiger Music / Thirty Tigers. The collection marks the pair’s first release of all new, original songs since their 2021 self-titled album, which earned praise from Rolling Stone (“pristine acoustic picking collides with hazy, dream-like psychedelia”) Mojo, NPR Music, American Songwriter and more. Starting over a decade ago playing coffee shops and local restaurants around North Carolina, Watchhouse is a grassroots success story that’s been driven by Marlin’s poignant songwriting. With sold-out shows at legendary venues like Red Rocks and the Ryman Auditorium, and hundreds of millions of streams, they’ve earned a reputation for creating music that “redefines roots music for a younger generation” (Washington Post). The duo – now with a family of their own – are two singers and musicians with profound chemistry, performing earnest yet masterfully crafted songs that encompass the unknowable mysteries, existential heartbreak, and communal joys of modern life. The forthcoming album is no exception. Website | Facebook | Spotify | TikTok
Robert Lester Folsom
Sunshine Only Sometimes: Archives Vol. 2, 1972-1975 continues Anthology Recordings’ excavation, and exploration, of southern singer, songwriter, and psychedelic serviceman Robert Lester Folsom’s bountiful archives. Recorded across Georgia in various bedrooms, a barn, and a motel room with a reel-to-reel and a revolving cast of whip smart studio musicians in the first half of a dazed and confused decade, Sunshine Only Sometimes furthers Folsom’s place in the canon of long lost but eventually found independently spirited, high-flying American folk rock. When Anthology’s reissue of Music and Dreams, the sole contemporaneous album released in 1976 by Folsom, surfaced in 2010, little else was known of Folsom’s nearly five-decade deep archive of unreleased demos and fully formed studio recordings. Born and raised in Adel, Georgia — both then, and now, a sleepy hamlet with a population of less than 5,000 — Folsom was fortunate to be minded after extremely supportive parents. Exhibiting a precocious affinity for music, things went widescreen when he observed the same ferry from ‘cross the Mersey as many others of his generation, carrying the four musical moptops to their paradigm shifting appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Soon thereafter, Folsom began religiously absorbing every morsel of musical output The Fab Four offered, as well as that of their contemporaries. Yet, it wasn’t long before observation transformed into a motivation to create. Even a children’s record player bought by his parents as a gift to him was traded off to a neighborhood friend for a stringless, disheveled guitar (which Folsom’s father shined to prime and function for him in short order). As time went on, Folsom’s innate drive and field of vision broadened; he began enlisting neighborhood friends, classmates, and family members to fulfill his small-scale musical dreams, which would increase in weight with the passage of days. Over the next several years, while employing ingenious, home brewed over-dubbing techniques with his “love at first sight,” a Sears 3440 two-track reel-to-reel tape recorder, Folsom served as the de facto producer/arranger for any and all scrappy garage band or aspiring singer songwriter in the radius of Adel. Abetted by his mobile recording unit, across a number of unusual locations, and assisted by guitarist and collaborator Hans VanBrackle, this period produced the bounty of Folsom’s self-penned compositions which make up Ode to a Rainy Day and Sunshine Only Sometimes. And eventually, this period of woodshedding led to the formation of his rural-tinged, progressive, southern rock outfit Abacus. Though carrying Folsom’s own singular sound and vision, Music and Dreams, in equal measure, chartered the seas of smooth West Coast AOR before the yachts to come, while tracing the distinctly Californian sound of Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter soft rock Americana, which tussled on the waters before the large vessels overtook the big blue. Folsom’s earlier compositions found on Sunshine Only Sometimes reflect a darker-hued mixture of mellow folk, downer vibes, and rural tones, revealing his talent for melody and hook was intact far before Music and Dreams, with a keen sense of introspection making the dark and light equally resonant. Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | TikTok | Soundcloud | Spotify
Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy and Friends play R.E.M.’s Lifes Rich Pageant
Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy And Friends are thrilled to announce a spring 2026 U.S. tour celebrating the 40th anniversary of R.E.M.’s iconic album, Lifes Rich Pageant. After the pair’s rapturously received run earlier this year honoring the band’s famed 1985 album Fables of the Reconstruction, which saw the four original members of R.E.M. join Shannon & Narducy on- stage at their two shows in Athens, GA, the extensive Lifes Rich Pageant tour will take Shannon & Narducy to stops in Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia, and more. Additionally, they will return for two shows in R.E.M.’s hometown of Athens, GA. Kicking off Wednesday, Feb. 11 at Summit in Denver, CO, the tour will see Shannon & Narducy— alongside Jon Wurster (drums), John Stirratt (bass), Dag Juhlin (guitar), and Vijay Tellis-Nayak (keyboards)—playing Lifes Rich Pageant in full each night in addition to many other beloved R.E.M. classics. Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
Love Plus One – An All Vinyl 80’s Dance Night
Speed Stick
The Carrboro, NC supergroup Speed Stick is an ever-evolving project among a group of friends—Ash Bowie (Polvo), Charles Chace (The Paul Swest), Laura King (Bat Fangs), and Thomas Simpson (The Love Language)—whose musical achievements reach back as far as the 1990s. But as its live shows attest, the band does not want to rehearse old accomplishments. On stage, Speed Stick wants to shatter epochs. Step into a world of thunder where lighting strikes rewire nervous systems. Ride waves with peaks that precede disquieting calms. Float in spaces where dark and light collide to set blood afire. To participate in a Speed Stick show is to enter a space of bodily and psychological endurance. Off-kilter guitar riffs shadow the raging intensity of drums; blistering drum beats dance to the feedback of guitars.The songs for Volume One were created in unusual fashion over the course of a year. Initially, Speed Stick only consisted of two drummers. They distributed nine studio tracks and a single live track to select musicians. The musicians’ task was simple: draw inspiration from the beats in order to create music that spreads laterally and horizontally like a rhizome. Indeed, Volume One has utterly discarded the yoke of genre by instead tethering intricate, interlocking drums to myriad creative personalities: Mac McCaughan (Superchunk), Kelley Deal (The Breeders, R. Ring), Mike Montgomery (R. Ring), Stuart McLamb (The Love Language). But no one can stop with just the album. Your ears will yearn to see the shapes of sound and your eyes will beg to taste color. For what Volume One heralds is that the supergroup Speed Stick is the super show of shows.Bandcamp | Facebook Saul Goode spent the better part of a decade navigating the music industry in Seoul, South Korea with rap duo Part Time Cooks. The international duo became the first foreign hip hop act to be signed to a major Korean label, and released music and performed alongside some of the biggest names in South Korea and Japan. Following a successful run to the semi-finals on Jay Park’s TV show ‘Sign Here,’ the pandemic landed Saul back in his hometown of North Carolina. It was there in Chapel Hill, NC where he began writing music in his native tongue again and finished recording his second solo album entitled ‘Sebastian.’ Bursting with introspective lyrics on the difficulties that came with returning home after things didn’t turn out quite as planned, the project is definitely his strongest to date. Produced by e.m.p.c, ‘Sebastian’ is one of the most complete offerings in recent memory. The album features New York emcee The Musalini, as well as instrumentation from Saul’s brother and father, talented jazz musicians also living in the triangle area.
John Howie Jr. & the Rosewood Bluff
When North Carolina’s honky-tonk heroes the Two Dollar Pistols broke up in 2008- leaving behind a legacy that included five full-length CD’s, an EP of duets with Grammy nominee Tift Merritt, and several US and European tours- lead singer/songwriter John Howie Jr. already had the seeds planted for a new group, one that would continue the Pistols tradition of making soulful honky-tonk based music for contemporary times. Bringing drummer Matt Brown over from the Pistols, John recruited pedal steel guitar ace Nathan Golub, christened the new band John Howie Jr and the Rosewood Bluff, and set about writing a new batch of songs. After a solid year of playing live, opening for everyone from Junior Brown to Lucero, plans were made for the band to enter the studio. Brian Paulson (Wilco, The Jayhawks, Uncle Tupelo) was called on to take the producer’s chair, having done a stellar job in that capacity on the Two Dollar Pistols 2004 Yep Roc release, Hands Up! Studio time was blocked off at Kudzu Ranch, owned and operated by Rick Miller (Southern Culture on the Skids). Several months later, the band emerged with Leavin’ Yesterday, an album that expands upon the Pistols trademark sound, adding prominent pedal steel guitar, piano (by DB’s/REM member Peter Holsapple), and strings to the mix for a landmark country music collection that should please Pistols fans, while breaking new ground at the same time. Album opener “Watch Me Fall,” a defiant, ringing kiss-off in the grand tradition of country music, sets the tone for Leavin’ Yesterday. Straight-ahead country-rockers, “Trying Not to Think,” and, “Last Great Guitar Slinger,” sit comfortably next to ballads like, “Downhill,” and classic honky-tonk shuffles like, “Handful of Heartaches,”and, “Back to Basics.” The Jimmy Webb/Glen Campbell influenced “Dead Man’s Suit” comes off “like it could have been Gene Clark…if he’d packed a string section,” according to Shuffle Magazine, while “I’ve Found Someone New,” also featuring a string quartet, bears the influence of Billy Sherill’s 1970’s “Countrypolitan” productions as found on the George Jones and Charlie Rich records of the day. The album-closing title track rings out with 12-string Rickenbacker, pedal steel, and gorgeous harmonies. With Leavin Yesterday finished, Howie put together a crack band capable of capturing all of the moods in the country music idiom and doing full justice to his songs. Along with Golub on steel and Brown on drums, electric/upright bassist Billie Feather (The Bo-Stevens, Darnell Woodies) signed up, as did telecaster hero Tim Shearer (Hearts and Daggers), with Howie front and center on lead vocals and acoustic guitar. Response to the album – as evidenced by great reviews, airplay on Little Steven’s Outlaw Country, and choice slots at the Ameriserv Flood City Music Fest and an opening spot for country music legend George Jones – has been overwhelmingly positive. The fan base Howie built with Two Dollar Pistols and prime song placement in hit films like Jeepers Creepers and hot TV shows like Weeds and United States of Tara continues to grow. Two Dollar Pistols fans mourning the loss of North Carolina’s finest traditional country/honky-tonk band need not have worried. While the Pistols may be gone, one listen to Leavin’ Yesterday by John Howie Jr. and the Rosewood Bluff should prove that, as the Charleston City Paper says, “Howie’s best years may still be ahead of him.” Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram
Madison Cunningham – The Ace Tour
Depending on the game, an Ace can be the highest or lowest card, zero or infinity. A breakup feels similar—one path crumbles, while all others remain infinitely possible. How do you write about heartbreak when you’re going through it? Ace, GRAMMY award-winner Madison Cunningham’s third record for Verve Forecast, tracks every part of it: falling out of love, having your heart broken, and then falling in love again. Co-produced by Cunningham and Robbie Lackritz (Feist, Rilo Kiley, Bahamas, Peach Pit), the fourteen-track album is honest and full of heart, even as it breaks. Ace builds off of the success of Revealer (2022), a darkly funny portrait of an artist that won Cunningham her GRAMMY for “Best Folk Album,” but it is a different record. A slow burn until it wasn’t. It follows a period of writer’s block. On Revealer and her debut album Who Are You Now (2019), Cunningham says that she was writing songs about heartbreak, but they weren’t about her heartbreak. They were sketches, observations. Cunningham wanted Ace to be emotions first. Heartbreaking and lush and bold. Cunningham’s first single from Ace, “My Full Name,” was released to praise by PASTE who calls the lyrics, “simultaneously sprawling and intimate,” recalling “an ancient work of poetry.” On Ace, which Cunningham serves as co-producer, she wanted piano to move into the foreground. “I wanted it to feel like a mountain peak,” says Cunningham, “I wanted Ace to feel like a mountain we built together.” Ace is a record that feels alive and lush in all the ways Cunningham hoped for when she started writing. It is a record of mastery and honesty. Cunningham loves every single song on it. You can tell. Website | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | YouTube | Spotify
