Tigers Jaw
This is a 18+ event with standing room only I Won’t Care How You Remember Me, by the Scranton, Pennsylvania-based band Tigers Jaw, is an ode to living in the present. As this hectic era of distraction whirrs, ticks, swipes, and scrolls by each of us at an alarming speed, the ability to maintain a sense of priority for the human elements in our lives as well as a reflective understanding of self, remains a lost art. But here, the group has seized upon it. Tigers Jaw’s sixth album—and first for new label home Hopeless Records—finds members Ben Walsh (vocals/guitar), Brianna Collins (vocals/keyboards), Teddy Roberts (drums), and Colin Gorman (bass) at the height of their powers, fusing their collective skills with the synchronicity and energy the band honed over several years of non-stop touring. The result is a back-to-the-basement approach elevated by the unmistakable production of their longtime friend and collaborator Will Yip. The band’s most sonically ambitious and lyrically affecting album to date, I Won’t Care How You Remember Me sees a newfound freshness and creative freedom crystalizing the lush and dynamic world of Tigers Jaw.
Mustard Plug wsg The Abruptors, K-Man &the 45’s, The Write Ups
This is a 18+ and over event with standing room only Mustard Plug started out in 1991 in the punk clubs, basements, and dive bars of the Midwest, playing punk-influenced ska music before most people in the U.S. had ever heard of ska. They embraced a DIY work ethic that had been ingrained in them growing up in the 1980s hardcore punk scene, and applied it to everything they would ever do together as a band. Mustard Plug self-released their first cassette tape, 1992’s Skapocalypse Now!, and played constantly to earn enough money to record their first album, 1994’s Big Daddy Multitude, which was released on legendary NYC label Moon Records. With their newfound national distribution and exposure, the band climbed into their van and performed their music for new fans across North America.For their next album they enlisted their heroes, the Descendents’ Bill Stevenson and Stephan Egerton, to record their breakthrough ska-punk classic Evildoers Beware at The Blasting Room. After meeting the crew from Hopeless Records in the beer line at a Descendents show at the Whisky-A-Go-Go, the band teamed up with the then-fledgling LA punk label to release the album to an eager and rapidly expanding fanbase. Released in 1997, Evildoers Beware solidified the band’s own take on the genre, combining the edginess of punk and the danceability of ska with sure fire melodic pop hooks. Through relentless touring and word of mouth, Evildoers Beware sold over 150,000 copies and solidified the band’s position within the burgeoning third wave ska scene. The band even flirted with commercial radio play with their cover of The Verve Pipe’s “The Freshman,” but decided mainstream pop fame was not for them. They never shot a video or commercially released the song despite the radio buzz.During the first decade of the new millennium, as the media’s focus on ska waned, the band returned to the ska underground, touring constantly and taking their explosive live show further afield to Europe, Brazil, and Japan. While many of their 90’s ska peers went on hiatus or moved from the genre, Mustard Plug doubled down, organizing the hugely successful Ska Is Dead tours from 2004-2009. In 2007 the band returned to The Blasting Room and released their darkest and most critically acclaimed record, In Black and White. The 2010s brought more touring and playing higher profile festivals including Riotfest, Back to the Beach, Amnesia Rockfest, The FEST, Pouzza, Groezrock, and more.In March 2020, while touring Australia, Mustard Plug watched as the live music industry began to collapse in front of their eyes. As the COVID-19 pandemic spread, the band was forced to take a 16-month hiatus. Stuck at home, they workshopped songs for a new album.The band returned to The Blasting Room recording studio in January 2023 with their longtime producer, Bill Stevenson. Teaming up with ska label Bad Time Records, they released the new album on September 8, 2023. Where Did All My Friends Go is a return to form for Mustard Plug, with melodic dance floor bangers and darker lyrical themes inspired by the pandemic and the unraveling of modern society. The album is sure to please both older fans from the 90s and the new generation of ska fans who have been building the genre’s momentum in recent years.The band is currently doing what they do best: touring in support of the new album. They will be playing around the U.S. throughout the next year, continuing their 32-year run and adding to their career tally of over 1,900 shows.
Future Living w/ Moon Orchids, Tambourina
18+ Event standing room only Future Living hails from Kalamazoo and Chicago, hugging Lake Michigan with all their might. This syrupy space rock is the work of Anne and Chafe Hensley, Neal Markowski, and John Patterson. Their first record, Solutions-Based Entertainments, was released in 2021.
PUP w/ Snotty Nose Rez Kids
2023 Bell’s Beer Garden Series21+ EventStanding Room Only Every PUP record arrives with an implied “contents under pressure” warning; the tension between the band’s instinct for the melodic and its gift for chaos propels the songs forward while making them also seem close to flying apart in a horrifying spray of tears and gore. To listen to PUP enough is to spend parts of every day mentally echoing some hilariously self-lacerating, utterly undeniable choruses; you will find yourself thinking “this is the mosh part” at moments when you would otherwise be tearing yourself apart. All that tension is always just barely held in place by the band’s craft. It couldn’t be anything but uneasy, but THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND is the sound of a band that is not just comfortable with but in command of that chaos. PUP is not really that kind of band, though, and THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND is not that kind of record. It is still very much a PUP album, but relocating from the literal basement where they wrote Morbid Stuff to the janky manse in which they put together its follow-up afforded the band space to grow, and to make not just the next PUP record but the most PUP record. There is no faking that, which of course makes it all much harder to do. In the best PUP songs, the whole process is not just visible but thrilling—the anguish and doubt that drives the songs is nurtured, over a few loud minutes, into something first legible and then somehow empowering. There are a lot of these songs on THE UNRAVELING. The alternately plaintive and anthemic “Matilda” is a classic galloping PUP shout-along recrimination-fest that sounds bigger than previous entries in this robust subgenre without losing any of the signature acid. “Waiting” is pure paint-stripping heat, topped by some legitimately towering choruses. “Robot Writes A Love Song” dissolves into a wash of nervous synthesizer before becoming what is surely the most emotional song ever written from the perspective of a computer being overwhelmed unto death by actual human emotions. THE UNRAVELING is not a departure from what got PUP here, really; for all the new breadth, this is still very much the fourth album by the band that has spun songs about The Bad Decisions Lifestyle into scrappy art. The hooks are as bright and barbed as always; the poison threaded through every song is no less potent. But a fourth album should be different from the first, or even the third, and THE UNRAVELING is. THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND is that next step—not towards perfection, or even towards some more perfect version of writing songs about fucking up, but just in the direction of its choice. It’s a product of this endless awful broader moment, but also very much a step forward into that uncertainty. “The whole album process really brought us closer together, even as things unraveled,” Babcock says. “It’s hands down my favorite PUP record, and I don’t think it could’ve been made under any other circumstances.” It’s the sound of a band learning how to share the mansion with the bats.
Relix Presents Yonder Mountain String Band, Railroad Earth, & Leftover Salmon
2023 Bell’s Beer Garden Summer Concert Series21 + event Yonder Mountain: At 25 years old, Yonder Mountain String Band continues to exist at the forefront of the progressive bluegrass scene as undeniable innovators and pioneers of the modern jamgrass movement. Blending bluegrass with elements of rock, alternative, psychedelic and improvisational music, Yonder Mountain String Band brought their high-energy acoustic sound into rock n’ roll settings with tremendous success, proving it was possible for a bluegrass band to not only exist but excel in a rock world, without drums. The inroads they made created opportunities for like-minded acoustic bands to perform at festivals, rock clubs, theaters and stadiums previously considered off-limits for string bands. Yonder Mountain’s high-energy sound, compelling original music and anything goes attitude cultivated a spirit of collaborative improvisation that continues to fuel today’s progressive bluegrass and jamgrass scenes. It is a testament to the legacy of Yonder Mountain String Band that their original songs and unique interpretations/arrangements of covers are regularly performed by next generation bands in the scene. Yonder Mountain String Band celebrates their quarter century mark with a Grammy Nomination for their 2022 release, Get Yourself Outside, and an induction into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame.Railroad Earth: For over two decades, Railroad Earth has captivated audiences with gleefully unpredictable live shows and eloquent and elevated studio output. The group introduced its signature sound on 2001’s The Black Bear Sessions. Between selling out hallowed venues such as Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO, they’ve launched the longstanding annual Hangtown Music Festival in Placerville, CA and Hillberry: The Harvest Moon Festival in Ozark, AR—both running for a decade-plus. Sought after by legends, the John Denver Estate tapped them to put lyrics penned by the late John Denver to music on the 2019 vinyl EP, Railroad Earth: The John Denver Letters. Beyond tallying tens of millions of streams, the collective have earned widespread critical acclaim from David Fricke of Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, Glide Magazine, and NPR.Leftover Salmon: Few bands stick around for thirty years. Even fewer bands leave a legacy during that time that marks them as a truly special, once-in-lifetime type band. And no band has done all that and had as much fun as Leftover Salmon. Since their earliest days as a forward thinking, progressive bluegrass band who had the guts to add drums to the mix and who was unafraid to stir in any number of highly combustible styles into their ever evolving sound, to their role as a pioneer of the modern jam band scene, to their current status as elder-statesmen of the scene who cast a huge influential shadow over every festival they play, Leftover Salmon has been a crucial link in keeping alive the traditional music of the past while at the same time pushing that sound forward with their own weirdly, unique style
black midi w/ Circuit Des Yeux
2023 Bell’s Beer Garden Summer Concert SeriesThis is a 21 and over event. Five facts about black midiOne. black midi are: Geordie Greep (guitar, vocals), Cameron Picton (bass, vocals), and Morgan Simpson (drums). Two. Coincidentally, Morgan and Geordie both played in church bands growing up Three. The band met at the BRIT School. Geordie and Matt borrowed the name from a Japanese music genre where a MIDI file is stuffed with so many musical notes that its visual representation looks solid black. MIDI files do not contain sound. Four. After leaving school Cameron worked in the Wimbledon branch of stationery store Ryman. Geordie taught music. Morgan briefly toyed with the idea of becoming a professional footballer but eventually chose drumming and teaching music. Five. black midi got their first gig two weeks after leaving school, in June 2017, at south London’s renowned Windmill venue. It led to a Windmill residency, a publishing contract, a record deal, a Mercury nomination for Schlagenheim, and you reading this. Myths about black midiOne. black midi don’t expect, or want, you to take themselves or their music too seriously. black midi music can be exuberant, cathartic, theatrical, comic, absurdist, over-abundant, intense, cinematic, brutal, restlessly brilliant. Two. None of black midi’s released music is entirely improvised. They did spend a long time jamming at the start, but would record the jams and select the best bits to replay as part of structured recordings. Three. The BRIT School’s importance in the black midi story can also be overplayed. Yes, the school was where they met, and their generous facilities afforded the group time and space in their final year to experiment and rehearse until they had a better idea of what they could become.The album“Geordie had a dream that we called the album Hellfire, he kept saying it all the time” ‘Hellfire’ has long burned in black midi’s world. First, Geordie imagined it was the title of their debut album; Cavalcade was mostly recorded at Hellfire Studio, Dublin; then Cameron dreamed it should be the title of their third. The skeleton of the new album was assembled while Cavalcade was being made, with the meat put on the bones at London’s Hoxa HQ. The main difference between Cavalcade and Hellfire is a switch from third-person to first-person storytelling. Cavalcade depicted everyone from cabaret singers to cult leaders, while Hellfire largely sticks to more morally suspect characters, given power by their direct dramatic monologues, their flamboyant appeals to our degraded sense of right and wrong. You’re never quite sure whether to laugh at or be horrified by the tales these people tell. One connection between Cavalcade and Hellfire is that the mysterious military mining corporation behind the previous album’s Diamond Stuff reappears in Cameron’s new song Eat Men Eat. “I really enjoy the storytelling on Eat Men Eat, Welcome to Hell and 27 Questions,”says Morgan, who didn’t write any of Hellfire’s words.“I find myself laughing when we play them at gigs.”As on Cavalcade, most of the lyrics came from Geordie, but Cameron does some of his best-ever work on the forcefully sweet Still, the album’s least abstract, most lyrically personal song. The range, power and potent production of black midi’s music has never been greater than on Hellfire, partly thanks to genius producer Marta Salogni, who’d worked on Cavalcade opener John L. But, as always, the type of music black midi play isn’t as important as its quality. And whatever you think about black midi’s music isn’t as important as how you feel about it.
