There is a particular kind of heat that only Mississippi can produce once summer starts finding its legs. It does not simply sit in the air. It leans on you. It follows you from the parking lot to the door, waits outside while the amps warm up, then walks back to the car with you after the final note is gone.

That was the weather waiting outside Backline Music Hall when The Bright Light Social Hour came calling on Tupelo for the first time in their career. Inside, though, the heat had a different source. The crowd had arrived early, staking out the good seats before the night had even begun. That is becoming one of the best signs of what Backline is building. You are starting to see the same faces from week to week now, regulars forming in real time, a small venue still growing into itself while the people who get it keep showing up.

That is a beautiful thing to watch happen. A venue does not become part of a city by simply opening its doors. It becomes part of a city when people start planning their weeks around those doors. Backline is getting there. Night by night, show by show, the room is gathering its own pulse.

And on this night, that pulse had a little space dust in it.

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Who Are These Sultans of Sound?

The Bright Light Social Hour are not an easy band to flatten into a clean little genre tag, which is part of the fun. The Austin, Texas band has been orbiting the psych-rock world since forming in 2004, but calling them only psychedelic rock leaves too much meat on the bone. Their sound bends through southern rock, soul, funk, synth-heavy space rock, and that strange late-night zone where grooves start acting like weather systems.

The band’s own universe has always had some stretch to it. Their 2010 self-titled debut helped push them into the indie conversation, and over time they evolved from a sweat-soaked rock-and-soul machine into something wider, stranger, and more cinematic. Albums like “Space Is Still the Place” and “Emergency Leisure” opened up that larger sound, bringing in deep synth textures, heavy bass movement, rich harmonies, and guitar tones that feel like headlights cutting across desert highway at 2 a.m.

The current lineup of Jackie O’Brien on bass, Curtis Roush on guitar, Mia Carruthers on keys, Juan Alfredo Ríos on percussion, and Zac Catanzaro on drums arrived in Tupelo as a full-body band. Not just a band you hear. A band that takes up space in the chest and behind the eyes.

They have a reputation for immersive live shows, and that reputation did not feel inflated once the night got moving. This is a group that knows how to make a small room feel cosmic without losing the grit under its boots. Their songs tackle heavy emotional terrain, including grief, mental health, and community, but they rarely sink into the mud. Instead, the music keeps lifting, glowing, swerving, and expanding. There is darkness in it, but it comes with motion.

Elvis Weekend in Tupelo

The timing gave the night a little extra local color. The first weekend in June usually brings Tupelo into its Elvis Festival rhythm, with downtown filling up with bands, visitors, and enough Elvis energy to make the whole city feel like it has sideburns and a jumpsuit hidden somewhere in the closet. It is one of those local events that pulls people in from every direction and still feels welcoming once they get here.

So, while Tupelo was already buzzing with festival traffic and summer celebration, The Bright Light Social Hour brought a different kind of pilgrimage to Backline Music Hall. Less Graceland, more galaxy. Less rhinestone, more reverb. Still deeply southern in its bones, but looking upward instead of backward.

The crowd seemed ready for it. They were not waiting around to be convinced. They had come early, settled in, and gave the band the kind of attention a room needs when the music has that many moving parts. Backline is intimate enough that you can feel when people are locked in, and this crowd was not drifting. They were with the band from the first launch.

According to the band afterward, this first Tupelo visit will not be the last. That is good news for Backline, good news for Tupelo, and good news for anyone in north Mississippi who likes their rock music with some atmosphere, some muscle, and just enough organized chaos to make the ceiling feel negotiable.

Space Is Still the Place

The band kicked off with “Alternative Loving,” and once that door opened, they did not waste time tiptoeing through it. The set moved with purpose, pulling from across their catalog, from the 2010 debut era through 2023’s “Emergency Leisure.” It was not a scattered greatest-hits sweep. It felt organized, paced with care, and built to remind the room how many versions of this band can exist inside one night.

The heaviest gravitational pull came from “Space Is Still the Place,” which made sense. That album remains the cleanest portal into their classic space-rock identity. The songs from that world carried the night’s best mix of harmony, groove, and cosmic weirdness. The vocals rose in those rich layered shapes, the guitars cut and shimmered, and the rhythm section kept everything moving with enough low-end force to stop the whole thing from floating away.

Jackie O’Brien, in particular, seemed to spend much of the night halfway between the stage and some private lunar broadcast. Bass players can sometimes disappear into the machinery of a band, but not here. Jackie had that “Jackie Blue, I see you” presence all night, locked into the grooves but also giving the songs their strange center of gravity. The bass did not just support the songs. It steered them.

“Sweet Madelene” landed as one of the first real crowd-connection points, the kind of song that lets a room sing without turning the night into karaoke. “Dreamlove” brought that drifting, wide-screen pull that The Bright Light Social Hour do so well, where melody and atmosphere start braiding together until the song feels bigger than the room. “Ghost Dance” and “Sea of the Edge” kept pushing the set outward, each one finding that balance between tight musicianship and the sensation that the whole thing might come apart beautifully if the band leaned any harder into it.

That is the trick with this band. They can make the music feel loose without actually playing loose. There is a lot happening, but it does not feel cluttered. The percussion, keys, drums, guitar, bass, and harmonies all keep moving, each part flashing in and out, but the songs still travel in a clear direction. The chaos is organized. The dust cloud has a compass.

The Room Finds Its Orbit

Backline Music Hall has been proving itself as a place where a band can actually be heard, not just endured. That matters especially for a group like this, where the details are part of the ride. A psych-rock show can turn into soup quickly if the room is wrong or the mix gets swallowed by volume. This night avoided that trap.

The songs had room to breathe. The grooves had room to stretch. The heavier moments did not bury the harmonies, and the prettier moments did not lose their teeth. You could feel the band working with the room instead of trying to overpower it.

The crowd helped. They sang along when invited by the songs themselves, not because someone had to beg them into participation. There is a difference. A good crowd does not always have to be loudest. Sometimes a good crowd is simply present in the right way, leaning forward, catching the changes, giving the band something to push against.

By the time “Escape Velocity” closed the night, the title felt less like a song name and more like an instruction. The band finished with the same force they had brought at the start, pure motion, good noise, space dust in the gears, and the right amount of beautiful mess. It did not feel like a polite ending. It felt like the last streak of light from something leaving the atmosphere.

Another Chapter at Backline

And just like that, another one went into the books at Backline Music Hall.

Cid and Christina Gardner, Meredith Poole Martin, Brian Baldwin, Brent Martin, and the rest of the team continue to stack these nights into something bigger than a calendar. You can feel the work behind it. You can feel the patience, the hustle, the booking instincts, and the willingness to build a live music room one audience at a time. Backline is not pretending to be a massive venue. It is doing something better. It is becoming a place people trust.

That kind of trust is earned in small ways. A good show. A good sound. A good staff. A room that feels like somebody cares whether the night works. A band leaving town saying they want to come back.

As of this writing, The Daily Journal has also featured Backline Music Hall and the people behind it, which feels deserved. Tupelo needs rooms like this. Every city with a pulse does. The touring circuit is held together not only by the famous rooms and festival fields, but by venues where a hundred people can gather close enough to see the sweat, hear the fingers move, and leave feeling like they found something before the rest of the world caught up.

After the show, there was time for a few minutes of conversation with Curtis and Mia, a few goodbyes, a few “see ya next times,” and then the night opened back up outside. That Mississippi air was waiting, muggy and thick, the kind that lets you know summer is not asking permission anymore. It is here.

There was a thought of swinging by a second show, because that is how these nights can get when the city is awake and the music is still moving somewhere nearby. But it had gotten later than expected, so this one ended with the simpler choice. Cruise home. Let the ears ring a little. Let the night settle.

Afterglow

Some shows leave with a bang. This one left more like a vapor trail.

The Bright Light Social Hour came into Tupelo for the first time and gave Backline Music Hall a set full of heavy grooves, cosmic turns, and Texas psych-rock heat. They arrived during a weekend when the city was already celebrating its musical ghosts, but they brought something different into the room. Not nostalgia. Not costume. Not a tribute to what Tupelo has already been.

They brought a glimpse of what a growing music room can still become.

Outside, the Mississippi summer was starting to press down. Inside, for a while, space was still the place.

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Saturday night at Levitt at the Falls had the kind of Sioux Falls summer ease that makes free outdoor music feel less like an event and more like a weekly ritual. People came early, found their spots on the lawn, drifted toward food trucks, and let Falls Park West do what it does best.

By the time music started at 7 p.m., the night had already settled into that familiar Levitt rhythm of lawn chairs, kids moving through the grass, conversations softening as the first songs began, and the smell of dinner from Valentino’s, Double D BBQ, Willy’s, and Street Sweets hanging around the edges.

The night’s lineup paired two artists who both work from the same essential country truth: songs land harder when they sound lived in. Sioux Falls native Alexis Lorene opened the evening with a songwriter’s presence and a voice that pulled from rock, country, and blues without treating those styles like separate rooms. Later, Britnee Kellogg stepped in as the headliner, bringing the kind of polished country confidence that comes from years of chasing the bigger stage without losing the personal story underneath it.

A Sioux Falls Voice Starts the Night

Alexis Lorene came into the night already carrying the advantage of hometown familiarity. The Levitt’s own event listing describes her as a Sioux Falls native with a warm, genre-blending acoustic sound, and that fit the way she handled the opening slot. Her set leaned into the songwriter/storyteller lane, but not in a delicate coffeehouse-only way. There was more grit in it than that. The songs moved between original rock and country, with a blues vocal style giving the performance its darker grain.

That blues edge helped keep the set from becoming too clean around the corners. Lorene has the kind of voice that suggests the backstory before she explains it, which is exactly what you want from a songwriter opening an outdoor country night. The melodies had that small-town Friday-night feeling, but the phrasing gave them some road dust. She did not sound like someone trying to imitate Nashville from a distance. She sounded like someone turning local miles, personal scenes, and hard-earned observations into songs with a front-porch spine.

There is also something fitting about an artist like Lorene playing the Levitt. The venue’s Share the Stage structure gives local and regional artists a chance to stand in front of crowds that might not have found them otherwise, and Lorene made good use of that space. Her original songs worked best when the story behind the music and the shape of the melody felt tied together, almost like she was inviting the crowd into the room where the song first happened.

Away from the stage, Lorene also teaches line dancing at Pave every Thursday night at 8 p.m., which makes sense after seeing how naturally she fits into the live-music ecosystem of Sioux Falls. She is not just passing through the local scene. She is part of its weekly machinery, one boot step and one lyric at a time.

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The Levitt Lawn Does Its Job

One of the best parts of a Levitt night is that nobody has to choose between “concert” and “community gathering.” The design of the space lets both happen at once. Happy hour at JJ’s at the Levitt started at 6 p.m., giving the evening a long runway before the music began. By showtime, the lawn had already become a patchwork of friend groups, families, casual listeners, and country fans who knew exactly who they came to see.

That setting matters for a lineup like this because both artists rely on connection rather than spectacle alone. Lorene’s opening set needed space for stories to breathe. Kellogg’s headlining set needed room to turn personal material into something bigger and more communal. The Levitt lawn gave both artists that kind of room.

There is no bad mystery to solve here. Free outdoor music in downtown Sioux Falls works because it lowers the barrier between artist and audience. People who might not buy a ticket for a new artist will still sit down on the grass and listen. Kids who might not know the difference between a touring country singer and a local opener still absorb the feeling of live music happening right in front of them. That kind of night builds listeners quietly.

Britnee Kellogg Brings the Bigger Road to Sioux Falls

When Britnee Kellogg took over the stage, the night shifted from local intimacy into touring-country lift. Kellogg has the kind of résumé that gives a performance some built-in momentum. She has been through American Idol, released a full-length album in 2024, and recently gained national visibility through CBS’ The Road, the competition series built around emerging musicians performing as opening acts for Keith Urban at venues across the country.

Kellogg is not presented as someone waiting for a story. She already has one. Her music is built around resilience, motherhood, ambition, disappointment, and the stubborn decision to keep moving anyway. The Levitt event description framed her goal as making songs people can connect to their own personal stories, and that was the lane she occupied on stage: country music as autobiography, but with enough punch to keep the lawn engaged.

Her vocal presence carried the set. Kellogg’s voice has richness without losing clarity, and she understands how to sell a lyric without sanding all the feeling off it. The best parts of her performance came when the songs felt like testimony dressed in country-pop muscle. She brought a party to the stage, yes, but not the empty-calorie kind. Her version of a party still had a reason behind it.

That is where her background helps. Anyone who has lived through reality competition exposure, national attention, and the long grind of the music business has to learn how to make a crowd believe them quickly. Kellogg did that by treating the Levitt stage like a place worth taking seriously. She did not come across as an artist doing a casual summer stop. She came across as someone carrying a road-tested show into a city ready to receive it.

Country Music With the Door Open

The strongest thread between Lorene and Kellogg was not simply genre. It was accessibility. Both artists write and perform in a way that gives the crowd a door into the songs. Lorene’s version came through local-rooted storytelling and a bluesy acoustic foundation. Kellogg’s came through bigger, radio-ready country phrasing and songs built around perseverance.

That pairing gave the night a clean arc. The opener brought Sioux Falls into the show, then the headliner widened the lens. Lorene’s set felt like back roads, dance floors, and the kind of stories that start with “you know what happened?” Kellogg’s set felt like the next chapter of the same book, the one where those stories get carried onto a national stage and returned to a summer lawn with more miles on them.

Country music can sometimes get trapped between polish and sincerity, but this show worked because both artists kept the human part visible. Lorene’s bluesy vocal color gave her songs texture. Kellogg’s stage presence gave hers lift. Neither performance needed to pretend to be something it wasn’t.

Afterglow

By the end of the night, Levitt at the Falls had done what it keeps doing so well: it gave Sioux Falls a place to gather around live music without making the night feel overproduced or out of reach. Alexis Lorene opened with the voice of a local storyteller still carving her path in real time. Britnee Kellogg followed with the confidence of an artist whose road has stretched through television, touring stages, and personal reinvention.

The lawn emptied the way summer concert lawns do, slowly and without much ceremony. People packed up chairs, finished the last bites from food trucks, and drifted back toward downtown with songs still hanging in the air. The night did not need a grand final gesture. It had already made its point in smaller ways: a hometown opener, a national country voice, a free stage, and a Sioux Falls crowd willing to listen.

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Faith in Focus is a weekly reflection on what God has been teaching me throughout the week regarding my faith. Whether it’s personal interactions, reading, or the Sunday sermon, God speaks through it all, and I hope this helps you focus on His mission.

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Sermon Reflection

Psalm 139 confronts one of humanity's oldest fears: if God truly knew everything about us, would He still want us? David's answer is both comforting and challenging. The God who knows us completely is also the God who lovingly leads us in the way everlasting.

Based on the sermon by Joe Obermueller, Connection Church Sioux Falls, June 7, 2026.

Known, Pursued, and Led: The Comfort and Challenge of Psalm 139

There are few things in creation more humbling than looking into the night sky.

Modern astronomy continues to reveal a universe so vast that our minds struggle to comprehend it. Distances are measured in light years. Galaxies number in the billions. The farther we look, the more we realize how small we are. Yet as overwhelming as the universe may seem, David points us toward something even greater.

This week in our Summer in the Psalms series, elder Joe Obermueller led us through Psalm 139, a psalm that reveals not merely the greatness of creation, but the greatness of its Creator. David repeatedly points to truths about God that stretch beyond our ability to fully understand. In Psalm 139:6, he declares, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.”

The mystery isn’t simply that God is big. The mystery is that this infinitely great God knows us completely. And for many people, that thought can feel terrifying.

Sin whispers a familiar lie into every human heart that if God really knew everything about you, He would reject you. If He saw every failure, every secret thought, every hidden struggle, He would turn away.

Psalm 139 dismantles that lie.

The World Behind the Text

Psalm 139 is one of David’s most personal. Unlike many psalms that focus on external enemies or national concerns, this one turns inward. David reflects on God’s character and his own relationship with Him.

Throughout the psalm, David celebrates three attributes of God that theologians often describe as omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence.

Omniscience means God knows all things.

Omnipresence means God is present everywhere.

Omnipotence means God possesses all power.

While those words may sound technical, David presents them through poetry rather than theological formulas. He wants us to feel these truths as much as understand them.

God knows every word before it is spoken. He knows every thought before it is formed. He knows every step before it is taken.

God is present in every location. Whether David ascends into heaven or descends into Sheol, God’s presence remains. Whether he travels to the farthest reaches of the sea or finds himself surrounded by darkness, God is already there.

God is also the Creator who formed him in the womb. Every detail of his existence originated from God’s careful design and sovereign purpose.

For David, these truths are not frightening. They are deeply comforting.

Walking the Passage

The opening verses establish a remarkable reality.

“O Lord, you have searched me and known me!” (Psalm 139:1).

David isn’t speculating that God might know him. He’s declaring that God already does.

God knows when he sits down and when he rises up. God understands his thoughts from afar. God knows every path he walks and every place he rests.

Nothing is hidden.

At first glance, that level of exposure can feel uncomfortable. We spend much of our lives carefully managing what others see. We reveal certain parts of ourselves while concealing others.

God can’t be managed. He sees beneath every mask.

Yet David doesn’t describe God’s knowledge as oppressive. Instead, he describes it as loving care. God surrounds him behind and before. God lays His hand upon him.

Joe illustrated this beautifully through the image of an MRI machine.

An MRI reveals what can’t be seen on the surface. Its purpose is not to shame the patient but to identify what needs healing. In a similar way, God’s knowledge penetrates deeper than appearances. He sees beneath our outward actions into the hidden places of the heart.

Not to condemn. Not to humiliate.

But to heal.

David then shifts from God’s knowledge to God’s presence.

“Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?” (Psalm 139:7).

The answer is nowhere.

If he ascends to heaven, God is there. If he makes his bed in Sheol, God is there. If he flies to the farthest reaches of the sea, God is there. Even darkness can’t hide him.

This is one of the most comforting truths in all of Scripture. There’s no location where God’s people can find themselves beyond His reach. No season of suffering, no valley of grief, no moment of confusion exists outside His presence.

David concludes this section with a fascinating statement.

“If I awake, I am still with you” (Psalm 139:18).

At first glance, we might read this as waking up from sleep. Yet throughout Scripture, sleep often serves as a metaphor for death.

David uses similar language in Psalm 17:15.

“As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.”

Likewise, Job declares,

“For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26).

Neither David nor Job possessed the full revelation that we now have through Christ’s death and resurrection. Yet both expressed remarkable confidence that death would not be the end. Both anticipated a future day when they would behold God Himself.

What they hoped for, we know with certainty because Christ rose from the grave.

Because Christ lives, death has lost its final word.

A Fair Counter-Reading

One of the most challenging parts of Psalm 139 appears in verses 19-22.

After eighteen verses celebrating God’s greatness and care, David suddenly begins speaking about the wicked and expressing hatred toward those who oppose God.

To modern readers, this can feel jarring. It almost appears as though David is throwing a spiritual tantrum.

Yet David’s concern isn’t personal revenge.

Instead, Joe advised us that these verses reveal covenant loyalty. David loves God so deeply that he hates anything that opposes God’s goodness, holiness, and purposes.

His words reflect grief over sin’s destruction and a desire for God’s justice to prevail.

At the same time, the New Testament reminds believers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them (Matthew 5:44). The church is called to oppose sin while extending grace to sinners, just as Christ extended grace to us.

The tension is intentional. We should hate evil because God hates evil. Yet we should also long for redemption because God delights in saving sinners.

The Turn

The psalm concludes with one of the most courageous prayers in Scripture.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23-24).

This isn’t a request for information. God already knows David’s heart. This is a request for transformation.

David recognizes that there are blind spots within him. There are sins he can’t see. There are motives he doesn’t fully understand. There are patterns hidden beneath the surface.

Only God can reveal them.

More importantly, only God can lead him out of them.

The prayer isn’t simply, “Show me my sin.”

The prayer is also, “Lead me in the way everlasting.”

The Gospel reminds us that God’s conviction is never separated from His grace. He reveals sin not to crush His people but to conform them to the image of Christ.

The same God who searches us is the God who saves us. The same God who exposes our hearts is the God who heals them. The same God who knows us completely is the God who loves us completely through Jesus Christ.

Carry It Into the Week

Most of us naturally want God to search other people.

We notice the sins, weaknesses, and failures around us far more easily than the ones within us. David takes the opposite approach.

Before asking God to deal with the wicked, he asks God to deal with himself.

That’s a prayer worth repeating.

What if every morning this week began with Psalm 139:23-24?

What if we invited God to expose our pride, our selfishness, our bitterness, and our unbelief?

What if we trusted that His purpose was not shame but healing?

The beauty of Psalm 139 is that we never have to fear what God discovers. He already knows everything.

The God who searched us before we ever sought Him is the same God who sent His Son to redeem us.

There’s nowhere we can run that He isn’t already there.

There’s nothing He can uncover that Christ hasn’t already paid for.

And there’s no heart so broken that He can’t lead it in the way everlasting.

Song of the Week: Evidence - Citizen Way

Love is the evidence. This hook is the core of this week’s song, “Evidence” by Citizen Way. Mercy, grace, and compassion are beautiful words, but if they never move beyond our lips and into our actions, they remain little more than concepts. Love is what puts flesh on those words. It is what transforms theology from something we merely understand into something we actually live.

This idea echoes what Jesus taught His disciples in John 13:34-35 when He gave them a new commandment to love one another just as He had loved them. He then made a remarkable statement, saying that all people would know they were His disciples by their love for one another. Notice that Jesus didn’t say people would recognize His followers primarily by their church attendance, Bible knowledge, political views, or social media posts. While those things may have their place, the distinguishing mark of a Christian is love.

The kind of love Jesus spoke about is not simply a feeling. It’s sacrificial. It chooses patience when frustration would be easier. It extends forgiveness when resentment feels justified. It serves others even when there is nothing to gain in return. It notices the lonely, encourages the discouraged, and carries the burdens of those who are struggling. This is the same love Christ demonstrated when He laid down His life for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8).

When believers live this way, love becomes evidence of God’s work within them. It becomes visible proof that the Gospel is not just information but transformation. A watching world may debate doctrine, question beliefs, or challenge convictions, but genuine Christlike love is difficult to ignore. People may forget a sermon, but they often remember the person who showed up during their darkest moment. They may not recall every Bible verse quoted to them, but they remember the grace they experienced when they least deserved it.

Lives are changed when we act in love because love reflects the heart of God. Every act of kindness, every moment of forgiveness, every sacrifice made for another person points back to the One who first loved us. Love isn’t merely a byproduct of the Christian life; it’s one of the clearest pieces of evidence that Christ is truly at work in us. As followers of Jesus, we are called to be living proof of His love, allowing our actions to testify to the grace that has transformed our own hearts. When we do that, the world doesn’t just hear about Jesus, it catches a glimpse of Him through us.

Week in Reflection

This week has been rough, but honestly, not because of anyone else. The choices were mine. Several nights this week I stayed up past midnight, far beyond my normal routine. Some of that time was spent doing genuinely good things like hanging out with friends, traveling for a photography gig, and editing photos from the show afterward. None of those things are wrong. In fact, they’re all things I’m grateful for. I love the friendships God has given me, and I’m thankful for opportunities to use photography creatively.

But somewhere in the middle of all that, I ignored my limits. I traded rest for “just one more hour,” over and over again. And while staying up late isn’t automatically sinful, I started to notice the effects piling up. My mind felt foggy, my discipline weakened, my time with God became rushed, and the temptations I normally fight with more clarity suddenly felt louder. Little compromises became easier to entertain. My guard dropped.

That’s the part that’s hardest to admit. It wasn’t one dramatic moment; it was a slow drift. Exhaustion has a way of making spiritual vigilance feel optional, and I let that happen. I can see now how important rhythms and boundaries really are. God designed us to need rest, and when I consistently ignore that, it affects more than just my energy level. It affects my heart.

Right now, I feel ashamed and worn down. There’s that familiar feeling of disappointment, “I should know better by now.” But even in that, I’m reminded that the Gospel is not built on my ability to keep myself together. It’s built on Christ’s finished work. My failure doesn’t surprise God, and it doesn’t cancel His love for me. He invites me to come honestly, not pretend I’m fine.

So that’s where I’m at, not excusing my choices, but bringing them into the light. Repentance means turning back to Him, trusting that His mercy is real, and asking for strength to walk differently moving forward. I’m grateful that God’s grace is not exhausted by one bad week, or ten bad weeks. He is patient with His children.

I don’t have some polished conclusion or a neat lesson tied up in a bow on this one. I’m just reminded again that I need Jesus every single day in my routines, my sleep, my friendships, my work, and my battles with sin. And even when I feel beaten down, I know I can still run to Him, because He is faithful to forgive and restore those who come to Him in repentance.

And always remember, God loves you, and so do I.

Connection Church in Sioux Falls is a gospel-centered community committed to helping people follow Jesus through authentic relationships, biblical teaching, and everyday mission. Rooted in historic Christian belief and aligned with gospel renewal movements, the church exists to see lives transformed by Jesus. Learn more: https://siouxfallsconnection.com/who-we-are

Before the First Chord

Before the music ever started, the night already had its own little cast of characters.

After checking in at Grand Falls Casino & Golf Resort, Hope and I headed straight for the buffet, which was fantastic. Ben and Jeremy, our photographers, and our editor-in-chief went the smash burger route. Karn, our drone guy, did not waste much time lingering around the food. He looked like a modern-day Doc Holliday in a cowboy hat and waxed mustache, which is exactly the kind of look that makes sense when you are surveying a country event from the edges, scanning the layout like the show itself might try to draw on you at high noon.

The setup gave the anniversary show a clean shape. VIP seating sat closer to the stage, with beverage bars placed within easy reach. Behind that, general admission spread out with people bringing their own chairs, settling in for a long evening instead of just passing through. It had that warm-weather country-show logic to it: come early, claim your patch of grass or gravel, keep one eye on the stage and the other on your people.

Getting through the front entrance of the main building was pretty seamless, which is not a small thing at an event like this. A bottleneck at the gate can sour the first half-hour before a single chord lands. Here, the night opened without friction. People filed in, drinks moved, chairs unfolded, and the host kept the crowd engaged between sets by throwing T-shirts out into the audience. It gave the evening a casual rhythm before the bigger names arrived.

Rowan Grace Opens the Gate

Rowan Grace was first up, and she did exactly what an opener should do without overselling the moment. She warmed the space instead of trying to bulldoze it.

A South Dakota-raised singer-songwriter, Grace has built her sound around pop, rock, and classic songwriting instincts rather than a straight country template. On a bill like this, that gave her set an interesting edge. She did not feel like a smaller version of the headliners. She felt like someone walking in with a different map.

Her set mixed originals with covers, and the choices helped explain her lane. She joked about not having a Southern accent in conversation, then admitted that something close to one seems to show up when she sings. That little self-aware moment made the set easier to enter. Instead of pretending to be something she was not, she let the contrast become part of the performance.

The covers gave the crowd familiar footholds. “Cowboy Take Me Away” by The Chicks brought a soft, open-road pull to the early part of the evening. “Picture to Burn” added a sharper edge, and “Ain’t It Fun” by Paramore made for a strong closer, not because it copied the original’s bite note for note, but because it gave her band room to lean into a brighter, looser groove.

There was a jammy, funky movement underneath parts of her band’s sound, enough that it brought The String Cheese Incident to mind more than once. That is not the first comparison someone expects at a country event, but it made sense in the moment. The players gave the songs room to breathe around the edges. Love, casual relationships, and emotional gray areas kept surfacing in the material, but the music never sank into coffeehouse stillness. It moved.

By the time Rowan Grace finished, the event had found its footing. People were settled, the host had worked the room, shirts had gone flying, and the field had shifted from arrival mode into listening mode.

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Mitchell Tenpenny Brings the Boom

Then Mitchell Tenpenny arrived with the subtlety of someone entering a wrestling arena.

A Nashville native, Tenpenny has spent the last several years turning heartbreak, rock muscle, and country-radio hooks into a sound with big shoulders. Live, the most immediate thing was not biography. It was impact. He came in with a boom, carrying himself like a performer who understood the value of a hard entrance.

The first song opened with playful Mortal Kombat sounds, and by the end, the familiar “finish him” cue dropped in. It was a ridiculous detail in the best possible way: a little arcade brutality stitched into a country-rock set. It also worked because Tenpenny and the band had the stage presence to sell it. Without that commitment, the bit could have felt like a novelty sticker slapped on a truck bumper. Instead, it snapped the set into gear.

The electric guitar stood out immediately. This was not decorative country guitar, tucked politely into the mix for texture. The solos and slides had weight. They grabbed attention, especially when the bassist and guitarist moved toward the front during the covers, helping steer the set through its changes. The band leaned into rock-and-roll posture without abandoning the honesty that makes country music land when it is done right.

Somewhere in the set, Hope and I talked about why country works so well when it is at its best. I mentioned the old line from a movie: country music is “three chords and the truth.” That phrase can sound almost too tidy until you are standing in a crowd full of denim, hearing songs move between hard work, heartbreak, love, family, bad choices, and survival. Country has a way of saying the plain thing without dressing it in too much perfume. When it misses, it can feel manufactured. When it hits, it cuts clean.

Tenpenny thanked the crowd and mentioned he had never been in the area before. That kind of comment can feel like a stock touring line, but paired with the way his band interacted afterward, it felt more grounded. Two of the band members thanked us for being there as press after their set, which is the kind of small gesture that stays in the margins of a review but says something about the people moving behind the performance.

The covers gave Tenpenny’s set a rowdy middle stretch. “Fly” made an appearance, along with “This Is How We Do” and Nelly’s “Ride wit Me.” The band also moved into Bob Marley’s “Don’t Worry,” letting the covers blur into a party-band looseness without losing the country-rock frame. The crowd did not need much instruction. People knew the words, or at least enough of them to shout the parts that counted.

Tenpenny also spoke about his wife and shared that they have a little one on the way, a personal aside that fit naturally with the emotional terrain of his music. His songs often live where relationships have taken damage but not lost their pulse. Even one lyric fragment from the notes, “bottom of my broken limbs,” points toward the kind of bruised imagery country can carry without blinking.

By the time he closed with “Iris”, the song landed beautifully. It is a dangerous cover because everyone knows it, and everyone has some private weather attached to it. Tenpenny did not need to reinvent it. The strength was in letting the song’s ache sit inside his own rougher, country-shaped delivery. It gave the end of his set a wide-open feeling, less like a curtain drop and more like the last light hanging over the field.

Dustin Lynch and the Long Road Home

Dustin Lynch came in built for the larger canvas.

Where Rowan Grace brought discovery and Mitchell Tenpenny brought country-rock force, Lynch brought the kind of polish that comes from years of knowing how to pace a crowd. He has been doing music for more than 15 years, and his career reflects that long climb. His catalog stretches across the modern-country lane with the kind of scale that turns a set into a communal singalong before the chorus even arrives. Live, that polish did not make him feel distant. It made him feel prepared.

He opened with “Honky Tonk Heart,” arriving like a proper country rockstar with visuals that fit the song’s shape. The production gave the set an immediate identity without overwhelming the performance. Lynch’s lane is built on clean hooks, Tennessee confidence, and songs that know their way around both a radio speaker and a summer crowd.

During “Thinking ’Bout You”, a paramotor trike with a fan on the back drifted slowly from the sunset toward the back of the venue. The crowd caught sight of it, and the moment briefly pulled attention upward. Lynch noticed too. He paused long enough to point it out, because how could you not? Only in the Midwest do you get a country show, a sunset, and what looked like someone casually lawn-chairing through the sky with a motor strapped behind them.

Shortly after, Lynch joked that they had a live fly inside the drums. Between the paramotor overhead and the insect apparently joining the rhythm section, flying creatures were trying very hard to get a credit in the production notes.

But Lynch kept the show anchored. “Cowboys and Angels” gave him room to turn the set inward. He explained that he wrote the song for his grandparents, whose marriage reached 71 years on April 12 of this year. That detail changed the way the song sat in the air. It was no longer just a love song from the early part of his career. It became a family heirloom with a chorus.

That is where Lynch tends to be strongest live: not in trying to make every song enormous, but in knowing when to let one feel close. The best country performers understand scale as a dial, not a switch. Lynch could push the crowd wide with a cover, then pull it back toward the center with a story about his grandparents. The set had enough motion to keep people on their feet, but enough personal weight to keep the songs from floating away.

His cover of George Strait’s “You Just Come Natural” was a strong choice and fit him well. It let him tip his hat toward a classic country lineage without turning the set into an imitation exercise. His red, white, and blue Toby Keith cover landed solidly too, carrying the kind of patriotic punch that can work at a country show when the room is already leaning into that language.

Then came the looser, funnier moments. “Give Me the Beat Boys” in a countrified form was solid, giving the crowd another familiar hook to grab onto. Afterward, Lynch read a fan’s phone aloud: “roads aren’t the only thing I’m trying to ride tonight.”

Lynch also brought “American Girl” into the set, and that cover went over well. He got right down into the crowd for it, collapsing the distance between the stage and the people who had been watching from their chairs, drink lines, VIP seats, and open pockets of the venue all evening. It was a smart move near the end of the night. After the bigger visuals, the flyover, the jokes, and the legacy songs, the crowd-level moment gave the show a final human jolt.

The Merch Table Kept It Country

The merch setup matched the night without trying too hard. Under the white canopy, the table looked less like a polished retail display and more like a roadside country-market checkpoint: black tees hanging from the frame, caps lined across the front, hoodies folded near the edge, and camo patterns popping up between the darker shirts.

Dustin Lynch’s merch leaned into the clean country-rock image he brought to the stage. One black shirt featured his name with a Western-styled graphic, while another piece carried a bold “Country Shit Since 2010” design, the kind of shirt built for people who want their concert souvenir to say exactly where they stand. The hats were the real eye-catchers, though. There were trucker caps, camo brims, leopard-print accents, and orange stitching that felt right at home against the grass, denim, boots, and evening sun.

The black “Stay Country” hoodie gave the booth a heavier piece for fans who wanted something beyond the standard tee, and at $70, it sat as the bigger-ticket item of the spread. Most shirts appeared to sit around the $40 range, with hats marked around $35, giving fans the usual post-show decision: grab the shirt, grab the hat, or pretend you are being responsible before walking away with both.

It was a small detail in the larger anniversary celebration, but the merch table helped complete the scene. People were not just leaving Grand Falls Casino with phone videos and chorus fragments stuck in their heads. They had a chance to carry a piece of the night home, stitched, printed, and sun-warmed from the edge of the field.

Afterglow

The lasting image is not just Dustin Lynch in the crowd, or Mitchell Tenpenny’s band pushing forward on guitar, or Rowan Grace smiling through the joke about her accent. It is the paramotor easing across the sunset while a country show rolled on underneath it.

That little airborne interruption said a lot about the night without trying to. This was an event built with VIP seats, beverage bars, photographers, drone coverage, a host throwing T-shirts, and a polished headliner with years of road work behind him. But it also had people in lawn chairs, a fly in the drums, a fan’s phone getting read out loud, and a sky that apparently decided it wanted to participate.

Only in the Midwest, maybe.

It also made Dustin Lynch feel like the perfect early-June show for where our coverage calendar is headed next. Lynch recently crossed into the electronic world on “Die Living”, a collaboration with ILLENIUM and David Guetta, pulling his country grit into the kind of widescreen dance music built for festival fields. Later this month, ILLENIUM heads to Electric Forest in Rothbury, Michigan, where Intellectual Dissatisfaction will be on site as approved media covering one of the country’s most immersive festival weekends.

So in its own strange way, Grand Falls became a bridge. One Saturday night in Larchwood gave us country hooks, denim, family stories, a Midwest flyover, and a headliner whose voice already has one boot planted in the festival world we are walking into next.

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With “Take One”, the Sioux Falls trio steps out of familiar territory and into a sound built from friction, instinct, and sharp left turns.

Some bands introduce themselves politely. Indigent kicks the door with its shoulder and looks around afterward.

The Sioux Falls trio came together in the fall of 2025, when brothers Zach and Julian Lewis finally moved on a vision they had been carrying for a while. Both had already spent years playing in different local projects, learning the scene from the inside out, seeing how crowds react, how bands stall, and how certain sounds start to feel too predictable. They knew the local circuit well enough to understand what already existed. Indigent gave them a chance to chase something less obedient.

Once bassist Brett Kamerud joined, the lineup clicked into place and the band’s shape became clearer. Even with just three members, Indigent is not interested in a narrow approach. The music pulls from rock, punk, alternative, and experimental ideas, with each element pushing against the others instead of blending into some safe middle ground. The result, at least by design, is a band built to stay restless.

Zach and Julian also play in Sioux Falls death metal act Fed To Pigs, but Indigent is not just a side road branching off from that project. It points toward a different creative appetite entirely. This is a space for movement, texture, and unpredictability, a place where the songs can breathe weird air and do stranger things.

A band born from scene mileage

There is a difference between a band that appears out of nowhere and one that grows naturally from years of playing rooms, watching crowds, and surviving local music politics. Indigent belongs to the second category.

Zach and Julian were not newcomers trying to guess their way into a scene. They already knew the habits of Sioux Falls venues, the energy of local bills, and the grind it takes to build something real. That kind of experience does not guarantee great songs, but it does sharpen instincts. It teaches musicians what holds attention in a room and what dies on impact.

Brett Kamerud’s arrival completed the trio and gave the project the final piece it needed. From there, Indigent became more than an idea the Lewis brothers had been circling. It became a working band with its own identity, one less interested in fitting a scene label than in bending several of them until something original falls out.

Bands often describe themselves as genre-blending when what they really have is a playlist worth of influences and no governing personality. Indigent seems to be aiming for something more coherent than that. Not a random pile of sounds, but a collision with intent.

Beyond the shadow of heavier work

Because the Lewis brothers also play in Fed To Pigs, listeners might assume Indigent functions as the more accessible counterpart to a heavier main project. That is too tidy to be interesting.

This band does not come across like a softened version of anything. It feels more like a different lens. Instead of using brute force as the central organizing principle, Indigent opens the gate to a wider set of moods and structures. Punk brings urgency. Alternative opens room for melody and unease. Experimental impulses can twist a song before it settles into routine. Rock gives the whole thing a body sturdy enough to take a punch.

That mix can fail when bands treat influence like decoration. It can work beautifully when the players know exactly why each element belongs. Indigent sounds positioned for the second route. There is enough experience behind the members to suggest this is not guesswork. It is a deliberate turn toward a broader, more flexible identity.

What makes the band intriguing is not simply that it reaches across genres. It is that the reach seems to come from necessity rather than branding. They are not stretching to look eclectic. They are writing from a place that clearly refuses one lane.

A first show that changed the conversation

Every band has a point where rehearsal-room theory collides with actual human beings in an actual room. For Indigent, that moment came in December 2025.

Their debut show gave local audiences a first live look at what the band could do, and it seems to have landed hard enough to get people paying attention. Since then, Indigent has kept stacking performances and slowly turning curiosity into a genuine following. Across South Dakota and Iowa, the audience has been growing, and that sort of regional spread tends to tell the truth better than online vanity metrics ever will.

A crowd that shows up once is nice. A crowd that starts bringing other people is the real signal.

The live reputation appears to be a major part of the band’s early rise. Indigent is already being described as a must-see act, and while every emerging group loves to attach that phrase to itself, it only sticks when the room agrees. In local scenes, live credibility is still the oldest lie detector around. Either the set works or it does not. Either the songs hold bodies in place or they drift past like background smoke.

Indigent seems to be earning that reputation the hard way, which is usually the only way that counts.

“Take One” arrives without sounding tentative

In January 2026, the band released its debut EP, “Take One”, a title that fits the project’s current moment with almost suspicious neatness. It sounds like an introduction, but not a timid one. More like a first document of a band already moving with conviction.

The EP was recorded in rural South Dakota at Riff Ranch Recordings and produced by Doug Barrett and Wyatt Bartlett of Rifflord. Barrett also plays in the Atlanta noise rock band Whores., which adds another layer of underground pedigree to the release. Between Rifflord’s production experience and Barrett’s own background in abrasive, weighty music, the team behind “Take One” feels well matched to a band trying to keep its edges intact.

The EP is being positioned as a real statement of purpose, not just a rough draft or a placeholder while the band figures itself out. It presents an early version of Indigent that already seems fully committed to its own contradictions. Grit and structure. Noise and shape. Hooks and abrasion. A beginning, yes, but one with enough force behind it to suggest the ceiling is still nowhere in sight.

The best debut releases do two things at once. They tell you what a band is doing right now, and they hint at all the dangerous places it could still go. “Take One” sounds built for that exact balancing act.

A regional band for now, not necessarily for long

There is a certain stage in a band’s life where “promising” still feels useful. Not as a vague courtesy word, but as an honest description of momentum that has not yet fully bloomed. Indigent appears to be standing right there.

The lineup is set. The debut EP is out. The live show is building a reputation. The audience is expanding beyond Sioux Falls into neighboring states. None of that guarantees a breakout, of course. Music history is littered with excellent bands that never caught the wider wave. But Indigent has already done more than simply announce itself. It has started building the kind of foundation that makes a longer climb possible.

The broader appeal will likely come down to whether the band can keep sharpening what already makes it distinctive. Plenty of groups can play hard. Plenty can gesture toward multiple genres. Fewer can make those impulses feel personal. That is the line Indigent will need to keep pressing as it moves forward.

The encouraging part is that the project does not sound overly polished or trapped inside a prefab identity. There is still a little volatility in the story. A little mess. A little risk. Those are usually good signs. Bands that know exactly how safe they want to be rarely make anything worth remembering.

Catch them before the adjectives get boring

One of the worst things that can happen to a rising band is that the language around it becomes too settled too early. Once everyone agrees on the neat summary, surprise starts draining out of the picture.

Indigent has not reached that stage yet. The group still feels like it is becoming itself in public, which is a much more interesting place to encounter a band than the polished aftermath. The members know the underground they came from. They have already proven they can hold a room. The debut release is out in the world. The audience is widening. None of it feels static.

There is motion here. Pressure. The sense of a project still testing what it can get away with.

That tends to be where the electricity lives.

There are some shows that do not try to be polished into perfection. They are better than that. They walk in with inside jokes, broken strings, friends in the crowd, somebody saying something absolutely unprintable into a microphone, and a room full of people who already feel like they are part of the story before the first chorus lands.

That was the feeling at The Den for a three-band night with Lovely Ave., Aliens Do Exist, and stop.drop.rewind. It had the shape of a local scene gathering, the kind where the bands do not feel separated from the crowd by some invisible wall. Friends were there. Familiar faces were there. People were singing along, laughing at stage banter, noticing ridiculous details, and letting the night become its own little pocket universe.

The lineup itself felt like a good map of what makes a room like this work. Lovely Ave. brought the local punk-rock spark, the kind that starts fast and does not waste time warming up. Aliens Do Exist leaned into covers, chaos, and the familiar pull of pop-punk nostalgia. Then stop.drop.rewind came in from Northwest Indiana with a stranger, sharper bag of tricks, turning mathy time shifts and jam-band looseness into something that could make the room laugh one minute and lean in the next.

By the end, there were homemade shirts, crowd chants for one more song, and enough jokes about “Horny Rob” to make anyone walking in late wonder if they had missed a very important town meeting.

The Merch Table Told Its Own Story

Before the night had fully settled into its final form, the merch area already had its own little gravity. Flyers lined the front counter like a paper map of what has been moving through The Den, each one carrying a piece of the local scene’s pulse. In the background, Lovely Ave. was already visible onstage, but the front of the room had its own quiet kind of introduction happening through stickers, shirts, hats, and the people gathered around them.

Lovely Ave.’s merch had a clean, personal feel to it. Their logo stretched across black beanies and bright stickers in blue, pink, and purple, catching the light against the dark tabletop. It was simple, but it looked intentional, the kind of table that says a young band is thinking beyond the set itself. Not in a corporate way, but in the real local-band way, where every sticker and hat becomes a small piece of evidence that this thing is growing.

There was also plenty of humor folded into the table, especially around Zach Dresch. The “Dresch” shirt on display had the kind of strange, funny confidence that fit the night perfectly, and the tip sign nearby made the whole setup feel less like a polished sales station and more like a living corner of the room. It matched the tone of the show itself, where inside jokes, friendships, and stage banter were not side details. They were part of the night’s character.

Even the odd little details felt at home, including the tall bird-like figure standing in a blue Drop shirt, watching over the room like some unofficial mascot of the evening. It was funny, slightly absurd, and somehow exactly right for a show that would later include broken-string jokes, thruple folklore, “Horny Rob” shirts, and a band compared to different stages of Weird Al.

The merch table gave the night another layer before the music even had to explain itself. It showed the community around the bands, the personality behind the posters, and the way these shows become more than a lineup on a flyer. People bring their jokes, their designs, their friends, their cash apps, their handmade pieces of scene mythology, and then the room slowly turns into a memory.

Lovely Ave. Starts the Night With a Push

Lovely Ave. opened the night by getting the crowd properly riled up with Cage the Elephant’s “No Rest for the Wicked,” a choice that landed well because it already carries that scrappy, tired, still-moving feeling that fits a young band chasing music before the world has fully caught up to them.

There was something fitting about starting there. A song like that makes sense for artists still somewhere between passion and career, doing it because they love it, because the songs are there, because the stage keeps calling even when the practical world has plenty of opinions. It was not hard to feel that thread running underneath the set.

Their original “Take Me on the Road” carried that same pull. It had dominant guitar parts that did not quite become a full solo, but still pushed through the song with enough character to stand out. The guitar moved over the track rather than simply decorating it, giving the song a little extra lift without pulling it away from the band’s overall punk-rock drive.

Then came the gorilla song, inspired by the Yeastie Boys after Lovely Ave. saw them at Full Circle Book Co-op. The song had a similar musical lane to what came before, but the band slowed things down enough to do proper introductions. The gorilla sounds brought a fun bit of looseness into the set, the kind of thing that reminds everyone in the room that local rock is allowed to have a sense of humor. It does not all have to arrive with a serious face and folded arms.

By the time they moved into Bowling for Soup’s “1985,” the crowd was fully with them. People were bopping, singing, and letting themselves fall into the song’s familiar pop-punk bounce. Lovely Ave. has a punk-rock sound that likes an immediate start. Their songs did not wander around looking for the door. They kicked it open. The guitarist also had some genuinely solid solo moments throughout the set, adding flash without turning the whole thing into a guitar clinic.

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Aliens Do Exist Bring Covers & Banter

Aliens Do Exist came in with a Strokes cover to get the crowd engaged, and it worked. There was an immediate feeling of recognition in the room, and I have to admit, I was fully aware and invested pretty quickly. Some bands use covers like filler. Aliens Do Exist used them like a door into the room.

Their set had the kind of banter that only works when the band is comfortable enough with each other to let the jokes breathe. There was talk about a guitar string breaking, followed by a joke about the bassist’s G-string breaking, because of course that is where the night decided to go. It was dumb in the best live-show way, and the crowd was there for it.

They came in hot with a Paramore cover, with the bassist tricking us into thinking it was going to be “Airplanes.” That little fake-out got the exact kind of reaction it was built for. Unfortunately, the lead was hard to hear during that song, and there were moments where the vocal pushed into more of a yell into the mic than a clean cut through the mix. Still, the band kept moving, and the room stayed with them.

Their third song was an original with a very punky Blink-182 kind of sound, built around a main line of “I wanna.” It had that youthful, forward-leaning pop-punk feel, the kind where the point is not overcomplication. It is motion. It is wanting something. It is saying the line until it sticks.

One of the smaller details of the set somehow said a lot about the band’s presence and the generation around them. My bestie, Emily, pointed out that the main lead singer had a vape in her hand for an extended period of time, and honestly, it felt completely of the moment. Not staged. Not dramatic. Just there, part of the posture, part of the young-scene visual language in the same way studded belts and side bangs once told on all of us.

The crowd was energized, especially with plenty of friends in the room and local favorite Zach Dresch tied into the night. That kind of hometown connection changes the feel of a set. People are not just watching a band. They are watching people they know, or people their friends know, or people they have seen around enough times to already feel invested before the song starts.

The lead singer had great stage presence, and that helped carry the set through its rougher sonic moments. At one point, the bassist mentioned that she ripped the last song, and her response was that she thought he meant she ripped ass.

A Blink song came next, with one of the band members saying they felt it in their balls. Then they rolled into No Doubt’s “Sunday Morning,” another cover that gave the room something familiar to grab onto while still staying inside the band’s pop-punk and alt-rock wheelhouse.

Aliens Do Exist were not trying to be pristine. Their set worked because it felt present, funny, and socially alive. The imperfections did not sink it. They made it feel like a band playing to people, not at them.

stop.drop.rewind Turns the Room Sideways

By the time stop.drop.rewind began, the night had already built up its own personality. Then the Northwest Indiana band opened with a narrative, robot-like voice giving them a personalized intro, and the whole room shifted into something stranger and more technically playful.

They came out with great energy and strong stage presence right away. There was a confidence to them, but not in a stiff way. More like they knew exactly how weird they could get and still bring everybody along. The band describes itself through a progressive-powerpop lens, pulling from pop-punk, jazz, and progressive rock, and that combination made sense once the set started bending in unexpected directions.

The band spoke about their connection to Zach’s pending mother-in-law from about eight years ago, then moved into a song connected to anxiety, mentioning how his mom has anxiety and that the previous song was about that. It was a small personal explanation, but it helped ground the set. For a band that can get rhythmically slippery and musically odd, those human moments kept the songs from floating away into pure musicianship.

The timing in their songs kept catching my ear. There were moments where the off-time hits felt like a school bell yelling, “Get to your class,” sudden and sharp enough to make your brain look up. But then the band would fall right back into normal time as if nothing had happened. It gave the songs this controlled sense of anarchy. They were so good they could make it sound like they were messing up, then prove they knew exactly where they were all along.

That is a risky trick. When a band plays with time like that, it can either feel clever in a way that leaves the audience outside the joke, or it can feel physical enough that people come along for the ride. stop.drop.rewind kept it alive. Their sound had its own version of a String Cheese Incident kind of jam-band looseness, but filtered through prog-punk instincts, sharper edges, and a lot less patience for staying in one lane.

Their storytelling between songs gave the set its own folklore. The vocalist and bassist talked about watching a thruple making out on a bench while he was onstage, then falling offstage because his attention was so locked onto them. That story became one of the funniest threads of the night, especially because about nine or ten people in the audience were wearing homemade shirts that said “Horny Rob,” inspired by the thruple story.

That is the kind of detail that makes a scene feel like a scene. Not just people arriving, buying a drink, and leaving. People made shirts. They carried the joke into the room. They turned a story into a uniform. By the time you see a cluster of “Horny Rob” shirts in the audience, you are no longer just watching a touring band pass through town. You are watching local memory being built in real time, one absurd phrase at a time.

Then there was “stop.drop.&behind,” a joke too perfectly fitted to the night to leave out. Somewhere in the middle of all this, Jamie, one of my favorite people, pointed out that all the members looked like different stages of Weird Al. Once that was said, there was no unseeing it. It became part of the visual texture of the set, folded right in with the mathy turns, the robot intro, the thruple mythology, and the strange little joy of watching a band completely understand its own oddness.

The ending came with a killer guitar solo, the kind that gave the set one last real punch before the crowd started cheering for another song. That response felt earned. After all the jokes, time changes, personal stories, and musical curveballs, people still wanted one more pass through the chaos.

There was also a moment with the lead girl vocalist from the previous band near the end, tying the night back to the shared-room feeling that had been there all along. This was not a lineup where each act disappeared into a separate compartment. The night kept folding people into each other.

Afterglow

Walking out of a show like this, you do not just remember the songs. You remember the things around the songs. The gorilla sounds. The broken string joke. The vape in the singer’s hand. The bassist’s G-string line. The robot voice. The anxiety story. The school-bell timing shifts. The homemade “Horny Rob” shirts. Jamie quietly detonating the Weird Al observation and changing the way the band looked for the rest of the night.

That is the charm of a room like The Den when the right bands are in it. The music is the reason everyone gathers, but the memory is built from all the little human sparks happening around it. Lovely Ave. started the night with punk-rock motion and a sense of local possibility. Aliens Do Exist kept the crowd laughing, singing, and leaning into the familiar pull of pop-punk covers and originals. stop.drop.rewind closed it by bending the room into something weirder, funnier, and more musically restless.

Somewhere between “No Rest for the Wicked,” “1985,” “Sunday Morning,” the off-time school-bell moments, and a small army of “Horny Rob” shirts, the night became the kind of local show people will retell badly and lovingly later, probably with someone interrupting halfway through to say, “No, no, you forgot the part where she thought he said she ripped ass.”

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Faith in Focus is a weekly reflection on what God has been teaching me throughout the week regarding my faith. Whether it’s personal interactions, reading, or the Sunday sermon, God speaks through it all, and I hope this helps you focus on His mission.

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Sermon Reflection

Fear has a way of exposing what we trust most. Psalm 62 invites us to loosen our grip on the fragile refuges of this world and find lasting rest in the God who alone is our rock, salvation, and fortress.

Based on the sermon by Jonathan Land, Connection Church Sioux Falls, May 31, 2026.

When the Turbulence Hits: Learning to Wait for God Alone

With 1 Corinthians now behind us, Connection Church begins its annual Summer in the Psalms series. This year starts with Psalm 62, a psalm often titled, “My Soul Waits for God Alone.” It’s a fitting place to begin because it addresses one of the most universal human struggles. Trust.

Pastor Jonathan opened with an image that was easy to picture. Imagine a passenger sitting on an airplane in severe turbulence. Every bump feels catastrophic. Every shake feels like the beginning of disaster. Their hands grip the armrests so tightly their knuckles turn white. They stare anxiously out the window, hoping the turbulence will stop.

Most of us can relate, even if we haven’t experienced that exact scenario. We know what it feels like to cling desperately to something when life becomes uncertain.

Yet there is a strange irony in that image. The passenger gripping the seat is trusting the wrong thing. The seat is not flying the plane. The armrest is not navigating the storm. The pilot is.

That analogy serves as a powerful picture of the Christian life. We often spend enormous amounts of energy clinging to things that were never designed to hold us up. Meanwhile, the One who truly carries us is already at work.

Psalm 62 calls us to stop trusting the seat and start trusting the Pilot.

The World Behind the Text

Psalm 62 is attributed to David, a man who knew instability better than most. Throughout his life he faced enemies, betrayal, political upheaval, family conflict, and seasons of deep personal failure.

The psalm itself suggests opposition. David describes enemies who seek to topple him from his position and delight in falsehood (Psalm 62:3-4). While we don’t know the exact historical setting, the language reflects someone under pressure, facing both external threats and internal temptations.

What makes the psalm remarkable is not the absence of danger. David never pretends everything is fine. Instead, he repeatedly directs his attention toward God.

The opening declaration sets the tone:

“For God alone my soul waits in silence; from Him comes my salvation.” (Psalm 62:1, ESV)

The word “alone” appears repeatedly throughout the psalm. David is intentionally narrowing his focus. His security is not found partly in God and partly in something else. God is not one refuge among many. He is the refuge.

That emphasis challenges a tendency that has existed throughout human history. We often want God plus something else. God plus financial security. God plus approval from others. God plus success. God plus comfort.

David refuses that arrangement.

Walking the Passage

One of the most convicting points from Sunday’s sermon was the idea of identifying our substitutes for God. Jonathan posed a simple but penetrating question, “What would you justify sin for?”

Consider lying. Most people know dishonesty is wrong. Yet many of us still find moments where we are tempted to bend the truth. Why? Usually because something else has become more important than obedience.

Perhaps we lie to protect our reputation. Perhaps we lie to avoid consequences. Perhaps we lie to preserve a relationship. In that moment, the thing we are protecting has become a functional substitute for God.

The issue isn’t merely the lie. The lie reveals what we trust. Psalm 62 exposes this reality. David warns against trusting power, wealth, and human strength.

“Put no trust in extortion; set no vain hopes on robbery; if riches increase, set not your heart on them.” (Psalm 62:10, ESV)

The warning remains relevant today. We may not place our hope in robbery, but we can easily place our hope in careers, achievements, relationships, possessions, or personal comfort.

The problem with these refuges is not that they are inherently evil. The problem is that they cannot bear the weight we place upon them.

Every worldly refuge eventually fails. Money can disappear. Relationships can change. Health can decline. Careers can end. Public approval can vanish overnight.

David points us toward the only refuge that cannot be shaken.

“He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken.” (Psalm 62:6, ESV)

Notice the confidence of that statement. David doesn’t say he MIGHT not be shaken. He says he SHALL not be shaken. That confidence doesn’t come from his circumstances. It comes from the character of God.

Jonathan encouraged us to practice what he called “self recall.” In other words, preach God’s promises to yourself. This is something David models throughout the psalm. Rather than allowing fear to dictate his thoughts, he deliberately reminds himself who God is.

When suffering comes, remember God’s faithfulness.

When loneliness arrives, remember God’s presence.

When temptation presses in, remember God’s promises.

When anxiety grows louder, remember God’s sovereignty.

The Christian life often involves speaking truth to our own hearts before we speak it to anyone else.

A Fair Counter-Reading

Some readers might hear Psalm 62 and conclude that trusting God means passively waiting for life to improve. If God is our refuge, does that mean we simply do nothing?

That interpretation misses the larger biblical picture.

Throughout Scripture, trusting God and acting faithfully go hand in hand. David trusted God deeply, yet he still fought battles, led people, prayed fervently, and made difficult decisions.

Waiting on God is not inactivity. It is dependence.

The difference lies in where our confidence rests. We work, serve, plan, and act, but we don’t place our ultimate hope in those efforts. Our confidence remains anchored in God rather than ourselves.

Psalm 62 is not a call to laziness. It is a call to surrender.

The Turn

Perhaps the most practical application from this week centered on prayer.

Many Christians unintentionally reduce prayer to a transaction. We bring requests. We offer thanks. Then we move on.

Yet the Psalms consistently present prayer as something far richer.

David doesn’t hide his emotions from God. He brings everything before Him.

Fear.

Anger.

Disappointment.

Confusion.

Joy.

Gratitude.

Hope.

Psalm 62:8 offers a beautiful invitation:

“Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.” (Psalm 62:8, ESV)

Pouring out your heart means holding nothing back. God already knows your frustrations. He already knows your doubts. He already knows your fears.

Prayer isn’t about informing God. It’s about bringing our hearts honestly before Him. At the same time, biblical prayer doesn’t stop with emotional honesty. It ultimately moves toward surrender.

Jesus modeled this perfectly in the Garden of Gethsemane when He prayed, “not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39, ESV).

That is where Psalm 62 leads us as well.

Trusting God means believing that His will is wiser than ours, even when the turbulence continues. It means believing that He sees what we cannot. It means believing that He remains in control when circumstances feel chaotic.

Most importantly, it means believing that our salvation rests not in our ability to hold on to Him, but in His ability to hold on to us.

Carry It Into the Week

Every one of us has a tendency to white-knuckle something.

For some, it’s financial security. For others, it’s a relationship. For others, it’s comfort, control, success, or approval.

Psalm 62 gently but firmly asks a difficult question, “What are you gripping that was never designed to carry your weight?”

The invitation isn’t simply to let go. The invitation is to transfer your trust.

God never asks us to abandon false refuges without providing a better one. He offers Himself. The God who sustained David. The God who fulfilled His promises through Christ. The God who knows every fear, every disappointment, and every struggle you carry.

When the turbulence comes, and it will come, remember the truth David discovered long ago.

“My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from him.” (Psalm 62:5, ESV)

The Pilot hasn’t lost control. The destination hasn’t changed.

And the One guiding your story can be trusted.

Song of the Week: Stigmata - Convictions

Convictions is a newer find for me when it comes to Christian music, and it is easily the heaviest Christian music I have ever heard. Which is probably why it works so well for me. Over the last few years, I’ve become increasingly convicted about the music I consume. Lyrics matter. Messages matter. What we repeatedly fill our minds with has an impact on us whether we realize it or not. At the same time, I have never been able to shake my love for hard hitting riffs, heavy breakdowns, and music that carries a certain intensity. For a while it felt like those two desires were at odds with one another. Then I discovered Convictions.

Convictions gives me the best of both worlds. They deliver the kind of heaviness that I naturally gravitate toward while also centering their music on biblical truth, redemption, and the Gospel. Their songs aren’t heavy just for the sake of being heavy. There is purpose behind the aggression and meaning behind every lyric.

I was first introduced to Convictions while covering a Demon Hunter concert, which you can read more about here. Their energy was contagious, but it was more than just a great live performance. The passion behind what they were singing felt genuine. It wasn’t simply entertainment. It felt like a testimony being delivered through distorted guitars and screamed vocals. As someone who spends a lot of time around live music, that authenticity stands out.

Enter “Stigmata,” a song about, you guessed it, the stigmata. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it refers to, in Catholic tradition, the bodily wounds corresponding to those suffered by Jesus during His crucifixion. The song uses that imagery to point listeners directly back to Christ’s sacrifice. The chorus absolutely grabs me every time:

“Stigmata! His scars are the proof. No matter what you say, His words are the truth. Stigmata! Push these nails through. I sing for the Son.”

It’s a guttural reminder of what Christ did for each and every one of us. The brutality of the music almost serves as a reflection of the brutality of the cross itself. We often sanitize the crucifixion in our minds, reducing it to a familiar symbol we see every Sunday. But Christ’s sacrifice was violent, painful, and costly. Songs like this force us to confront that reality in a way that feels raw and unfiltered.

I know that some people won’t enjoy how heavy this song really is, and that’s completely understandable. Heavy music has always been a niche genre, especially within Christian circles. But personally, when I read some of the laments and cries for help throughout the Psalms, I can’t help but imagine David pouring out those words with a similar intensity. These weren’t polished, reserved prayers. They were desperate cries from a man who was afraid, angry, heartbroken, repentant, and completely dependent on God. While David may not have had distorted guitars and breakdowns, the emotions behind many of his Psalms feel anything but quiet.

That’s why I’ve always believed that the genre itself is secondary to the message being proclaimed. We can debate musical styles all day long, but we shouldn’t dismiss the truth being communicated simply because it comes packaged in a form we don’t personally enjoy. Even if screaming vocals and punching riffs aren’t your thing, the lyrics still point directly toward Christ and the hope found in Him.

One line that stands out to me is, “I lay my burdens at the tree. Only in death am I set free.” At first glance, it sounds incredibly morbid, but it captures a foundational truth of the Christian faith. We are called to die to ourselves, surrender our own desires, and place our burdens at the foot of the cross. Freedom isn’t found in holding tighter to our struggles; it’s found in giving them over to the One who already carried them for us. Every sin, every fear, every failure can be brought before Christ, knowing that His grace is sufficient.

And the beautiful thing is that He never asks us to carry those burdens alone. Time and time again, Scripture reminds us that God is present with His people. In seasons of joy, suffering, uncertainty, and victory, He remains faithful. That reality is summed up perfectly in the final stanza of the song, “Kingdom Come, Thy will be done.” It’s a statement of surrender, trust, and hope. A recognition that God’s plans are greater than our own and that His kingdom is worth pursuing above everything else.

No matter how chaotic life becomes, no matter how heavy the burden feels, Christ is still on the throne. His scars remain the proof. His promises remain true. And His presence remains constant for those who call upon His name.

Week in Reflection

This week was an amazing reminder of how God works through community. Over the course of several evenings, I had the opportunity to spend time with friends watching movies, playing pickleball, sharing meals, and simply talking late into the night. None of those moments were particularly extraordinary on their own, but together they became a powerful reminder of how God often uses the ordinary things in life to accomplish something extraordinary in our hearts.

It can be easy to overlook the value of these seemingly small moments. We often think life changing experiences have to come through major events, dramatic breakthroughs, or significant accomplishments. Yet God frequently works through simple conversations, shared laughter, and faithful friendships. A casual game, a movie night, or an honest discussion about life can become a source of encouragement exactly when it’s needed most.

One of the greatest blessings from this week was being reminded that I have friends who are more than just people to spend time with. They are people who are willing to walk through life together. They celebrate victories, listen during struggles, and provide support when things become difficult. When depression, anxiety, discouragement, or hardship begin to creep in, having a community of people who genuinely care can make an incredible difference. Their presence serves as a reminder that I do not have to carry life’s burdens alone.

This is one of the reasons Scripture places such an emphasis on Christian community. Hebrews 10:24-25 encourages believers to consider how to stir one another up to love and good works and to not neglect meeting together. God never intended for us to navigate life in isolation. From the very beginning, He created us for relationship first with Him and then with one another. Christian community isn’t simply a nice addition to our faith; it’s an essential part of how God strengthens, encourages, and matures us.

Looking back on this week, I am thankful for the friendships God has placed in my life. The conversations, laughter, competition on the pickleball court, and shared experiences may seem small in the grand scheme of things, but they have served as tangible reminders of God’s goodness and provision. Through these relationships, God continues to point me toward Christ and remind me that I am never alone.

My prayer for those reading is that you would find and invest in a community of Christ centered friends who encourage your faith and walk alongside you through every season of life. We were never meant to do life alone. God designed us to live in community, supporting one another, bearing one another’s burdens, and continually pointing each other back to Jesus.

And always remember, God loves you, and so do I.

Connection Church in Sioux Falls is a gospel-centered community committed to helping people follow Jesus through authentic relationships, biblical teaching, and everyday mission. Rooted in historic Christian belief and aligned with gospel renewal movements, the church exists to see lives transformed by Jesus. Learn more: https://siouxfallsconnection.com/who-we-are

And we are back.

After the electric, fuzzy, rock ’n’ roll thunder of The Weeks and Modern Bodies the night before, it would have been easy to call the weekend complete. That show had already filled the tank. The room had already done its job. Tupelo had already reminded everybody what a packed house sounds like when the amps are hot and the crowd shows up ready.

But live music has a funny way of refusing to clock out.

So here we were again, back inside Backline Music Hall, this time for a different kind of night. Not a legacy celebration. Not a long-running Mississippi band marking twenty years. This one had the charge of a beginning. The kind of show where the room is not just watching a band perform, but watching a young artist step into something she has been building toward.

Jacee & The Weekdays had been on the calendar for weeks, and the anticipation around this debut had been growing louder with every mention. I had heard nothing but good things about Jacee Harlow, and by the time the night arrived, it felt less like curiosity and more like the local scene gathering around a spark to see what kind of fire it could become.

By the end of the set, the answer was pretty clear.

This was not a “first show” in the way people often use that phrase, with all the soft expectations and friendly excuses attached to it. This was a full band walking into a sold-out room with production, confidence, range, preparation, and enough nerve to open with Black Sabbath.

That is not easing into the water.

That is cannonballing in with boots on.

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A Young Artist Takes the Room

At the center of it all was Jacee Harlow, frontwoman of Jacee & The Weekdays, a young singer with the kind of range that makes genre feel less like a border and more like a hallway full of open doors. Across the night, she moved through pop, rock, metal, and country without making the set feel stitched together. It was more like watching someone flip through the stations of her own musical education, pulling out the pieces that shaped her and letting the crowd hear how much ground she can already cover.

There is something powerful about watching a young artist reach for goals in real time. Not in some distant, polished, industry-approved way, but right there in the room, with family, friends, fans, newcomers, and a hometown venue all leaning in. Hard work has a sound when it finally gets to breathe. Dedication has a posture. Support has a temperature. You could feel all of that inside Backline.

This was a night built on rehearsals, planning, nerves, and belief. Jacee did not walk out alone. She had a band around her that treated the moment like it deserved muscle, not just applause. Devin Parker on bass, Vincent Longoria on guitar, and Avery Dilworth on drums gave her the platform to stretch out, and they did it with the kind of commitment that makes a young frontwoman look not exposed, but launched.

The official Backline Music Hall debut listing promised a special night, the kind where people would eventually get to say they were there. That can sound like venue hype until the show actually proves it. This one did.

Max Capacity, Max Production

For a band making its debut as a full group, Jacee & The Weekdays did not show up small.

The production alone made that clear before the set had really opened up. The light-up walkway at the front of the stage immediately gave the room a different shape. It was not just decoration. It became part of the performance, a strip of glow cutting across the front line, giving the band room to move forward, claim space, and play directly to the crowd instead of staying pinned in place.

That walkway was bookended by a pair of massive subwoofers, and those subs did exactly what they were brought there to do. They filled the room with all the thump it needed. Backline is already an intimate room, the kind of place where you do not have to fight to feel connected to the stage, but this setup gave the night a bigger frame. It made the debut feel like an event rather than a trial run.

That is the thing Cid and team at Backline Music Hall keep proving with this room. You do not have to be in a big city to get a real show. You do not have to drive half a day, pay big-market prices, or stand fifty yards from the stage to feel production value and care. When a venue is built by people who understand music from the inside out, the room starts to carry its own pulse.

Backline has become a mainstay for exactly that reason. It feels like a place where artists can grow, not just pass through. One night, a Mississippi rock band can pack the room for a sold-out celebration. The next, a new young artist can walk in with her band, her family, her support system, and a full-production debut, and the room knows how to hold both kinds of moments.

That is how scenes get built. Not by accident. Not by one show. By stacking nights like this until people start realizing the best music around them may be closer than they thought.

Red Light and Heavy Riffs

The room was bathed in red when the opening riff of “War Pigs” kicked in.

As opening statements go, that one has teeth.

It was a gutsy way to begin, especially for a young band’s first full show, but it worked because it immediately changed the air in the room. “War Pigs” is not casual music. It demands weight. It demands control. It makes a band prove early whether it can handle drama, patience, and impact. Jacee & The Weekdays leaned into it, and the choice set the mood for a set that was not afraid to jump eras, genres, and vocal demands.

From there, the night became a musical journey in the truest sense. The setlist pulled from heavy classics, rock radio staples, alternative anthems, country flavor, and original material, but the band kept the pace moving with enough confidence that the variety felt intentional instead of scattered.

“Sweet Child O’ Mine” brought out the kind of instantly recognizable guitar line that can expose a band if they are not locked in. Vincent Longoria had plenty of six-string work to handle throughout the night, and there was no hiding during a song like that. He brought the necessary fire, treating the guitar parts with the right mix of respect and showmanship.

Then came moments like “Dirty Diana,” where the band had to shift from classic rock swagger into darker pop-rock tension. That song lives on atmosphere as much as hook, and it gave Jacee another lane to work in. She has the kind of voice that can press into a song without flattening it. She can belt, but she also seems to understand that power is not always about volume. Sometimes it is about timing, attack, and knowing when to let a line burn instead of explode.

The set moved through “Zombie,” “Creep,” and another Ozzy classic, “No More Tears,” each one asking something different from the band. “Zombie” needs conviction. “Creep” needs vulnerability without slipping into imitation. “No More Tears” needs weight and patience, especially from the rhythm section.

The Weekdays answered those calls well.

Devin Parker on bass was one of the most interactive players on the stage, and that worked beautifully in a room this close to the band. He did not just hold the low end. He worked the crowd, moved with the music, and gave the set a showman’s edge without pulling focus away from Jacee. A good bassist can be the floor. A great live bassist knows when to become part of the architecture, walking the audience through the song without making a production of it. Parker had that feel.

Behind him, Avery Dilworth handled the thunder. The boom boom. The engine room. Whatever phrase you want to put on it, he brought the force and kept it fun. There was ease in his playing, but not laziness. He gave the set the impact it needed and kept the band from floating away during its more genre-jumping moments.

When the band dipped into Shania and Nirvana, it only widened the picture. A little country, a little grunge, a little metal, a little pop, a little rock. On paper, that could sound like a jukebox trying to win every table in the room. Onstage, it felt like a young artist showing the size of her toolbox.

“Evolution” and the Shape of What Comes Next

Cover-heavy sets can be tricky, especially for a debut. They give the audience familiar ground to stand on, but they also raise a question. What does this band sound like when it is not walking through someone else’s songbook?

Jacee & The Weekdays answered that by bringing original material into the set, and “Evolution” proved to be the crowd favorite.

The room’s response said plenty. A crowd will always wake up for songs it already knows. The real test is whether an original can stand in that same fire without disappearing. “Evolution” did not disappear.

That is where the future starts to show itself.

The covers proved range. The originals hinted at direction. The production proved ambition. The crowd response proved there is already support underneath this thing. Now comes the next part, the part every young band has to face after the celebration. More shows. More originals. More refinement. More pressure. More chances to turn a strong first impression into a real body of work.

But for one night, “Evolution” did exactly what an original song should do at a debut. It made the room lean forward.

The Weekdays Behind Jacee

A frontwoman can only fly as far as the band’s wings will carry her, and the Weekdays did their job.

Devin Parker on bass looked completely at home, not only as a player but as a presence. He gave the performance motion, character, and that extra bit of crowd connection that keeps a room from becoming passive. He was clearly enjoying the moment, and that kind of visible joy spreads. You could see people responding not just to the notes, but to the fact that the band looked like it wanted to be there.

Vincent Longoria had the hardest lane in some ways because the setlist demanded so many guitar identities. Sabbath weight. Guns N’ Roses melody. Ozzy-era heaviness. Alternative restraint. A little rock flash. A little country-friendly flexibility. He handled the six-string work with skill and confidence, proving there was no shortage of shred when the songs called for it.

Then there was Avery Dilworth, bringing the boom from behind the kit. Every band like this needs a drummer who can handle the shifts without making the set feel like it is constantly changing clothes. Avery kept the thunder steady and gave the performance the backbone it needed. He played with ease, but there was plenty of power there. He brought the boom, and sometimes the simplest truth is the best one.

Together, Devin, Vincent, and Avery did more than back Jacee. They helped frame her. They gave the room a reason to see this as a band, not only a singer with players behind her. For a debut, that distinction is huge.

When the set ended, the band took a well-deserved breather before coming back out to the waiting crowd. Family, friends, new fans, and newcomers all gathered around to deliver congratulations and celebrate the first-show success. That after-show scene said as much as the performance did. This was not just a gig. It was a milestone, one of those nights people will keep referring back to when the band has more shows, more songs, and more miles behind them.

Afterglow

By the time the night settled, it felt like the perfect ending to a wild, positive week.

It started with Buddy Guy and the Civil Rights Award show, a night full of amazing talent and history. Then came Modern Bodies and The Weeks, electric and fuzzy and Mississippi through and through. And now, Jacee & The Weekdays had closed the run with a debut that delivered on its promise and met the expectations that had been building around it.

The best part was how little travel it took to find that much quality music.

A short drive. A familiar room. A sold-out crowd. A young artist stepping forward with a band ready to make noise behind her.

Sometimes people act like great shows only happen in bigger cities, under bigger lights, with bigger names on the marquee. Nights like this prove otherwise. The good stuff is not always far away. Sometimes it is right down the road, inside a room where the subs hit hard, the stage glows red, and a young singer opens her first full-band show with Sabbath like she has somewhere to be.

Jacee & The Weekdays put in the work. Backline gave them the room. Tupelo showed up.

And now the first one is in the books.

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This has been a good week. One of those weeks where everything seems to have a little extra shine on it. Buddy Guy on Wednesday, a pile of other great players jamming, and a whole who’s who of Florence turning up for the event. By the time the weekend rolled around, the road was already warm under the tires, and there was only one place that felt right to land.

Backline Music Hall.

At this point, Backline Music Hall has become something close to a mainstay for me. Tupelo already has its own musical gravity, but what Cid and the crew are building there feels special in the way good rooms always do before everyone outside the room catches on. It is not just a stage with lights and a bar. It is a gathering place. A listening room. A rock room. A spot where you can walk in hungry, leave ringing, and somehow feel like the night gave you more than you paid for.

The drive up the highway was short enough to feel easy and long enough to let the week shake loose. By the time we arrived, the night already had that little static charge around it. You could feel Tupelo leaning toward the building. Both nights at BMH were sold out this weekend, which says plenty about what is happening there right now. People are not drifting in by accident. They are showing up early, filling the room, and treating these shows like events.

Tonight’s bill had a clean Mississippi thread running through it. Modern Bodies, local Tupelo guys with a fuzzy psychedelic rock sound, were opening for The Weeks, another Mississippi namesake celebrating 20 years as a band. Modern Bodies brought a crowd with them, too. Not a polite opener crowd. A real one. The kind that fills in early and starts the night with its elbows already on the rail.

Before the music, though, there was unfinished business.

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The Elusive Grilled Cheese

First off, this is important.

I finally got a grilled cheese from Bleu Collar Toasties.

I know. I know. How it took me this long is between me, my stomach, and whatever poor life choices caused the delay. But I fixed it. I ordered The Soprano, and I can say with confidence that I have been missing out. Provolone, pepperoni, bacon tomato mayo, arugula pesto, all pressed into hot garlic focaccia bread that came out fresh, crisp, and dangerous. Dangerous as in, “I am already thinking about the next one before this one is gone.”

That sandwich had no business being that good inside a rock venue. Usually venue food exists somewhere between survival ration and napkin regret. This was not that. This was a proper grilled cheese with ambition. The kitchen at Bleu Collar Toasties deserves its flowers, its applause, and possibly its own encore.

Backline’s partnership with Bleu Collar Toasties has become one more piece of what makes the room feel lived-in. You are not just grabbing something to eat because you have to. You are adding another layer to the night. Music, friends, lights, walls shaking, and a hot sandwich that can hold its own against the amplifiers.

So yes, I am late to the party. That mistake will not happen again. If you are going to rock out at BMH, do not skip the grilled cheese. Check the menu, make a decision, and then tell us in the comments which one we need to try next.

Now, to the entertainment.

Modern Bodies and the Fuzz in the Walls

Modern Bodies formed in Tupelo in 2019, and the current lineup consists of Preston George on lead vocals, guitar, and synth; Matthew Pugh on backing vocals, guitar, and synth; Jesse Sutton on bass; and Trey McCarter on drums. Sutton and McCarter both joined in 2022, and the band has spent the years since shaping a sound that feels homegrown without feeling small.

Their music has that good basement-born haze to it. Not sloppy, but organic. It wanders without getting lost. It lets the guitars fuzz out, lets the synths blur the edges, and then snaps back into rhythm before the whole thing floats too far downstream. Their official bio puts them in a world of “murkiest and most wandering sonic landscapes” and “fuzzy kaleidoscopic explosions,” and honestly, that is not too far off from what happened inside Backline.

They came in with a set that pulled from their earlier work and their newer material, giving the crowd a look at both where they have been and where they are headed. Fan favorites like “Sitting and Waiting” and “New Way Out” sat comfortably beside newer tunes like “Drowned Out,” “Person of Interest,” and “Sage.” They also worked in the title track from their upcoming effort, Down the Line, giving the set the feeling of a band stretching into its next shape in real time.

The thing about psychedelic rock is that it can go one of two ways live. It can either pull a room into a trance, or it can disappear into its own fog. Modern Bodies did the first one. They kept the songs moving. The drums gave everything a backbone, the bass kept the floor humming, and the guitars sounded like they had been dipped in smoke and neon. There was fuzz, yes, but there was also control. The band knew when to let a groove open up and when to tighten the bolts.

“Under the Light” had the room leaning in. “New Way Out” gave the set a sharper edge. “Drowned Out” carried that heavier, washed-out pull that makes their newer material feel ready for bigger rooms. By the time they got to their cover of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s “The River,” the choice made perfect sense. It was not a random cover dropped in for recognition. It fit their bloodstream. Modern Bodies took that winding, psych-rock current and used it as a closing stretch, sending the room into that final drift before the headliner storm rolled in.

They delivered a blistering set. The kind of opener performance that does more than warm up the audience. They lit the fuse.

The air was electric already, and The Weeks had not even hit the stage yet.

A Room With New Teeth

When I first arrived, Cid asked if I noticed the changes. I told him I saw the curtained-off green room, but I had not noticed the giant subs until he pointed them out.

Hard to believe I missed them, because once the music started, those things made themselves known.

The subs were on loan from the next night’s sold-out Jacee and the Weekdays show, which was a cool move on their part. Good gear, good neighbors, good timing. With that extra low end in the room, the whole place seemed to have new teeth. Walls were shaking. Hearts were breaking. Shoes were probably reconsidering their life choices.

It gave the night a little extra voltage. Modern Bodies benefited from it, but you could tell the room was about to need every ounce of that added punch once The Weeks stepped up.

The Weeks Come Home Hot

The Weeks are Mississippi originals from Florence, now based in Nashville, and they have been at this since 2006, when they first formed as teenagers. Over the years, they have carried that Mississippi-born, road-tested rock sound through local rooms and much bigger stages, touring with names like Kings of Leon and Meat Puppets and building a catalog that sounds sweaty, bruised, Southern, punk-edged, and alive.

The current lineup still has that familiar charge. Cyle Barnes on vocals. Cain Barnes on drums. Samuel Williams on lead guitar and backing vocals. Damien Bone on bass. Together, they do not play like a band trying to remember what it once was. They play like a band that never stopped carrying the current, even if life, time, distance, and six-month gaps between shows tried to put a little dust on the wires.

Samuel mentioned this was the first time they had played together in about six months.

You could not tell.

There was no rust in the room. No stiffness. No awkward first-gear feeling. The Weeks hit the stage and immediately reminded everyone why their songs have stuck around. Their rock has grit in it, but not in some polished marketing way. It has actual scuff marks. It has sweat. It has that slightly wild-eyed feeling of a band that knows the song could either fall apart or lift off, and they are willing to chase the lift every time.

From the moment Cain came out fully equipped with a bubble gun and a sign that simply said, “We Love You,” the night cracked wide open. That small detail said everything about the mood. The Weeks were not there to pose. They were there to party with a Mississippi crowd that knew the words, knew the history, and knew exactly what kind of night they had bought into.

The set was packed with classic tunes, and the crowd knew them. Not half-knew them. Not phone-screen knew them. They sang like these songs had ridden around in trucks, dorm rooms, bars, kitchens, breakups, and backroads with them. The Weeks have always had that quality. Their songs feel personal without trying to be delicate. They can kick the door open and still hit a nerve.

Of course, no Weeks show would feel complete without “Brother in the Night” and “Buttons.” Those songs are permanent staples for a reason. They still carry the pulse of the band’s identity. “Brother in the Night” has that anthemic ache that makes a room feel bigger than it is. “Buttons” still lands with the kind of looseness and bite that makes people throw their heads back and shout instead of sing.

The sound was electric, fuzzy, hazy, and rocking. That is the best way to say it without dressing it up too much. The Weeks do not need a museum description. They need a hot room, a loud system, and a crowd willing to meet them where the songs live. Backline gave them all three.

Cyle had the crowd locked in. Cain drove the set like a man throwing sparks off the drum kit. Samuel’s guitar work cut through with that wiry, Southern-rock snarl, and Damien held the bottom together while the room bounced around him. There were moments where the whole thing felt like it might tip into chaos, but that is part of the appeal. The Weeks are best when they sound like they are running slightly too hot for the wiring.

And with those borrowed subs, that wiring was getting tested.

Tupelo Knew

Some nights, you can feel a venue trying to convince a crowd that something is happening. This was not that. Tupelo knew before the first note that Backline was the place to be this weekend. Sold out rooms do not happen by accident, especially not two nights in a row. They happen because people trust the room. They trust the booking. They trust the experience. They trust that if they show up, something worth remembering might happen.

That is what Cid and crew are building. A place where local bands can hit a real stage in front of a real crowd. A place where Mississippi names can come home and feel the floor shake back at them. A place where the food is better than it needs to be and the sound keeps getting bigger. A place where you might walk in for a show and end up feeling like you are watching a scene gather muscle right in front of you.

Modern Bodies were the perfect opener because they brought Tupelo into the room first. They made the night feel rooted. They made it feel like the city was not just hosting a show, but participating in one. Then The Weeks came in and stretched that local feeling across Mississippi history, from Florence to Tupelo, from teenage beginnings to 20-year celebration.

It felt like a circuit closing.

Modern Bodies brought the spark.

The Weeks flipped the breaker.

Afterglow

By the time the night ended, everyone seemed charged. Not just entertained. Charged. There is a difference. Entertainment gives you something to talk about on the drive home. A night like this leaves a low hum in your chest after the room clears.

Modern Bodies set the tone with a psychedelic rock set that made the walls feel soft around the edges. The Weeks followed with the kind of home-state rock show that reminds you why certain bands keep their people for decades. Backline Music Hall held it all together, loud and alive, with grilled cheese in the kitchen and thunder in the subs.

What a night for music in Tupelo. What a thing to be part of.

And if this was the spark, the only question left was whether the next night could reset the breaker before somebody blew the whole beautiful thing again.

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Grand Opening

Starting a card shop in today’s world isn’t just a dream. It’s a high-stakes opening hand—and most people fold before they ever get a chance to play it.

But in Harrisburg, South Dakota, someone kept drawing.

With the grand opening of Empire Cards, a new arena has entered the map. Not just for collectors, but for competitors, storytellers, and anyone who knows the quiet adrenaline of chasing something rare.

Playing Against the Odds

There was a time when opening a card shop felt simple. You applied for wholesale, showed your credentials, and ordered your starting inventory.

That world doesn’t exist anymore.

Distributors don’t just want proof anymore—they want to see a finished store before they even consider working with you. Shelves stocked. Displays filled. Photos that say, “this is already real.”

It creates a brutal paradox.

You need inventory to prove legitimacy… but you need legitimacy to get inventory.

For new shop owners, that’s not just a challenge. That’s a financial barrier that stops most before they ever open their doors.

Empire Cards didn’t stop.

They pushed through it—and built something real anyway.

Built by People Who Understand the Hobby

You can stock shelves.

You can’t fake understanding.

Empire Cards was built by James Hanson and Dustin Lybarger. These two don’t just sell the hobby, they live it. They know what it means to open a pack and hope for something special. Who understand that a shop like this isn’t just about product—it’s about the experience around it.

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A Deck Built Before the First Turn

Walking into Empire Cards doesn’t feel like a shop that just opened. It feels like one that’s already found its rhythm.

The shelves are stocked with intention. Sports cards line the cases like a highlight reel—modern stars, rookies, and flashes of greatness frozen in time. Pokémon products bring that familiar spark, the kind that pulls you right back to your first pack.

And then there’s Magic.

Rows of decks and booster boxes stretch across the shelves, offering something for every level of player. Whether you’re building, collecting, or just learning the game, it’s all there.

This isn’t a half-built storefront trying to figure itself out.

This is a shop that showed up ready.

The Glass Case: Where the Chase Lives

Every great card shop has a heartbeat.

Here, it’s the glass cases.

You lean in, and suddenly it’s not just browsing—it’s hunting. Rows of singles laid out with care. Some affordable, some rare, all carrying their own kind of gravity.

It’s the same feeling across every corner of the hobby.

The Pokémon card you’ve been chasing.

The Magic piece your deck has been missing.

The sports card that reminds you why you started collecting in the first place.

That quiet moment where everything else fades and you think, there it is.

More Than a Shop, It’s a Place to Stay

Empire Cards understands something a lot of shops miss.

People don’t just come to buy cards.

They come to spend time around them.

Tables are set up for sorting, trading, and playing. Not tucked away, not secondary—built into the experience. A place where games happen, conversations start, and regulars are made.

The lounge area slows everything down. A couch. A TV. A space that feels less like retail and more like somewhere you can exist for a while.

And then there’s the small details that matter more than they seem.

A snack rack. A drink cooler stocked and ready. The kind of setup that turns a quick visit into an afternoon.

Because the best shops don’t rush you out the door.

They give you a reason to stay.

Opening Day Felt Like a Full Room

The grand opening landed the day after Easter—no school, no rush, just time.

And people showed up.

Not in a chaotic wave, but in a steady, constant flow. Families, collectors, kids exploring every corner of the shop.

You could feel it.

A kid pressed up against the glass, pointing at cards and trying to decide what mattered most.

Collectors scanning displays with quiet focus.

Strangers talking like they’d known each other for years, connected by the same language.

That’s when a shop crosses the line.

From new… to alive.

The First Turn of Something Bigger

Every shop has a beginning.

Not every shop has momentum at the beginning.

Empire Cards does.

They stepped into an industry that’s harder than ever to break into and found a way forward. They stocked their shelves when the system made it difficult. They created a space that invites people to come in, stay awhile, and come back again.

That’s how communities start.

Not with noise—but with consistency, presence, and a place people want to return to.

Empire Cards didn’t just open its doors.

It dealt its first hand.

And Harrisburg just got a new place to play.

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It was a hot one down South, and by the time the night was done, the temperature outside would be the least of it.

The drive over to Florence and Muscle Shoals, Alabama, was short enough to call easy and long enough to feel like a little pilgrimage. Roughly an hour by Mississippi time, which is to say it takes as long as it takes, depending on who is driving, how much good music is playing, and whether the road decides to cooperate. This time, it did. The weather was beautiful except for the extra heat pressing down on a late May afternoon, the kind that makes the horizon shimmer a little and reminds you that the South does not need anyone’s permission to turn the thermostat up.

Then, crossing the Tennessee River, came the kind of moment that makes a photographer want to invent a new hand just to grab the camera faster. A rainbow dropped straight down into the water, bright and strange and gone almost as soon as it appeared. Traffic on the bridge was not heavy, but it was not light either, and there was no safe way to react quick enough. A missed shot, yes. But maybe also the right kind of omen. A little color falling into the river on the way to a night built from blues, gospel, rock, soul, memory, history, and six strings that have been telling the truth longer than most of us have been alive.

Florence and Muscle Shoals do that to you. They make even the drive feel loaded.

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The River Still Knows the Songs

Before Buddy Guy ever walked into the Renaissance Shoals Hotel Ballroom to receive the John Lewis Civil Rights Award, the room already had a ghost choir behind it. Not spooky. Not haunted. Just alive with the weight of where we were.

The Shoals area has always felt bigger than its map dot. This is the place that became known around the world because music kept happening here in ways nobody could quite manufacture somewhere else. It was not Nashville polish. It was not Los Angeles sheen. It was not New York muscle. It was a small North Alabama pocket near the Tennessee River where the groove had dirt under its fingernails and soul in its bloodstream.

FAME Studios gave the region one of its great beating hearts. Founded by Rick Hall, FAME helped define that hard-driving Southern soul and R&B sound that pulled artists from all over the world into a town most of them probably had to find on a map first. Then came Muscle Shoals Sound Studio at 3614 North Jackson Highway, opened by the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, better known to a lot of people as The Swampers. Those rooms did not look like temples from the outside. That was part of the miracle. They were workspaces. Human spaces. Places where the song had to earn its wings before anybody believed it could fly.

Aretha Franklin came here and found something that cracked open a new level of herself. The Rolling Stones came through and cut “Brown Sugar” and “Wild Horses.” Etta James, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and a long list of others came looking for that same hard-to-name thing. Muscle Shoals proved that American music does not always rise from skyscrapers and neon. Sometimes it comes from a river town, a rhythm section, a stubborn producer, and a room where everyone checks their ego at the door because the groove will embarrass you if you do not.

That history made Wednesday night feel less like a concert and more like a continuation. Buddy Guy was not just being honored in Alabama. He was being honored in one of the places where American music learned to tell the truth with a backbeat.

New Blood, Old Fire

The evening opened with Stanley Simmons, and there was no avoiding the names in the room. Evan Stanley and Nick Simmons are the sons of KISS icons Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, and any band walking in with that much rock mythology attached to their last names is going to face a crowd full of raised eyebrows. Fair or not, legacy walks in before the first note.

Then they started playing.

What came across first was not pedigree. It was chemistry. Real chemistry, the kind you cannot fake with a press release or a famous family tree. Stanley Simmons kicked things off with a smoking-hot set drawing from their highly anticipated debut album, “Dancing While The World Is Ending”, due in August. Because there was so much interest around their appearance, they were given a longer set, and they used it wisely.

“Dancing While The World Is Ending” made for a great opener, bright and immediate, the kind of song that knows how to step into a room without asking for permission. “Cellophane” had a wicked cool bite to it, slick without feeling plastic. “Hollywood Hearts” showed another strong lane from the album, and “Real Life” gave the set a closer that felt like a handshake and a warning shot at the same time.

The crowd took a few songs to fully warm up, which was understandable. A lot of people were probably curious first and convinced second. But by the end of the set, the room had shifted. The faces changed. The body language changed. That little test every opener has to pass, especially on a night with this many heavy names on the bill, had been passed cleanly.

These two young men are talented, yes, but more than that, they have a spark between them that feels rare. Their dads were always great collaborators and partners in rock history, but Evan and Nick are building something with its own fingerprints. The songs are strong. Their stage presence is loose and friendly. They look like they are having a blast without acting like the room owes them anything.

Clearly, they left their mark in Muscle Shoals. Clearly, this thing is about to move fast. Clearly, if you get the chance to catch them now, do it before everybody else starts pretending they knew all along.

A Night Built Like a Revival

From there, the evening began opening up into its full shape, and what a shape it was. The lineup covered about as much musical ground as a single ballroom could hold without the walls needing a breather.

John Paul White came next with a three-song set that settled the room into a different kind of attention. A four-time Grammy winner, local favorite, classic folk singer, and former half of The Civil Wars, White did not need volume to make his presence felt. His set was pleasant, melodic, and grounded, a reminder that this night was not going to live in one genre. It was going to wander the family tree.

Then the all-star band began taking shape, with performers moving in and out across the rest of the night like chapters in the same book. Tom Hambridge, Buddy’s longtime associate, friend, and drummer, stepped up early and gave the room a class in Chicago blues. Not a lecture. A class. There is a difference. Hambridge plays with the kind of feel that lets the song walk on its own two feet. He does not crowd the groove. He teaches it how to breathe.

Then came Robert Randolph, lap steel guitar extraordinaire, and good grief, that man can make the instrument talk the talk and walk the walk. Some players perform a solo. Randolph sends sparks off the thing. His playing had that sacred-steel fire, the kind that feels half Saturday night, half Sunday morning, and fully alive in the hands of someone who knows exactly how to bend joy until it screams.

And then there was Chanel Haynes. For a second, the brain has to catch up with the eyes. Wait, is that Tina? No, it is Chanel Haynes, powerhouse vocalist, member of gospel group Trin-i-tee 5:7, theatrical actress who starred as Tina Turner in “Tina, The Tina Turner Musical,” and a Rolling Stones favorite on tour, often stepping into the fire of “Gimme Shelter” with Mick Jagger. She brought that big-stage command with her, the kind of vocal presence that does not knock politely. It arrives.

By this point, the night had become something more than a tribute. It was an assembly. A gathering. A Southern music summit with a church fan in one hand and an electric guitar in the other.

The Sermon Arrives

Then the Blind Boys of Alabama took the stage and the room went to church.

There is really no softer way to put it. They delivered the sermon of the night. With more than eight decades of history behind them, the Blind Boys carry something that cannot be taught, streamed, packaged, or duplicated. You do not listen to them the same way you listen to a regular act on a bill. You receive them. They have been singing through American history long enough to make the word “legend” feel too small and too shiny.

Their “Amazing Grace,” performed to the music of “A Horse with No Name,” was absolutely beautiful to witness. It did not feel like a novelty arrangement. It felt like two roads crossing in the desert and somehow both leading home. Chanel joined them during “Take Me to the Water,” and together they pushed the room into that rare space where a performance stops being about notes and starts being about release.

This was joy. This was testimony. This was memory made audible.

Afterward came a brief message from John R. Lewis’ nephew, and it gave the night one of its clearest emotional centers. The reminder was simple and needed. Remember what John Lewis stood for. Remember the courage. Remember the work. Remember that his idea of “good trouble” was not just a phrase for posters and speeches, but a way of moving through a world that often needs to be lovingly, stubbornly forced toward justice.

Looking around the room, that message had weight. There was diversity across races, generations, music tastes, and backgrounds, all gathered in the same place, getting along the way the world is supposed to. Blues fans, gospel fans, rock fans, soul fans, locals, travelers, old heads, newcomers, musicians, writers, photographers, people who came for Buddy, people who came for the history, people who came because Muscle Shoals still has a pull.

For a little while, the room looked like the better version of us.

Damn Right, He’s Got the Honor

The reason for the night stood at the center of it all. Buddy Guy, one of the last towering links to the electric Chicago blues tradition, was presented with the John Lewis Civil Rights Award, an honor with deep historical weight. The award had only been presented once before, to Congressman John Lewis himself, making Buddy Guy only the second recipient.

That is not a casual honor. That is not another plaque to put on the shelf beside the Grammys, Hall of Fame recognition, and lifetime achievement hardware. It is something different, because it ties Buddy’s musical legacy to a broader story of resilience, justice, cultural progress, and survival.

Buddy Guy grew up in Louisiana sharecropper country before moving to Chicago in 1957. From there, he became one of the fiercest guitar voices the blues has ever produced, influencing generations of players who followed. His sound is lightning in a bottle if the bottle had a switchblade in its boot. He can make a guitar whisper, bark, laugh, cry, and threaten to leave the building all in the same phrase. But the honor was not only about guitar pyrotechnics. It was about what a life in the blues represents.

The blues has always been more than entertainment. It is witness music. It is survival music. It is what happens when pain refuses to stay silent and somehow comes out swinging, dancing, laughing, flirting, praying, and telling the truth. Buddy Guy has carried that tradition across the world while also helping preserve the Black musical heritage that built so much of American music from the ground up.

He has mentored younger artists. He has kept the roots visible. He has stood as a living reminder that the music industry has often taken from Black genius before properly honoring it. And still, there he was, smiling, playing, giving, honoring the room by showing up with that same unmistakable spirit.

When Buddy finally took the stage, the air changed. Some performers enter from the side. Buddy Guy enters through history.

“Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues” landed exactly the way it should. Fiery. Familiar. Alive. Not preserved behind glass, but breathing in real time. Then “Champagne and Reefer,” the Muddy Waters classic, rolled through the room with grit and grin, a crowd-pleasing reminder that the blues can carry sorrow without losing its appetite for life.

The all-star jam that closed the night pulled the evening’s threads together: blues, gospel, roots, rock, lap steel fire, old souls, new blood, Muscle Shoals history, John Lewis’ legacy, and Buddy Guy standing in the middle of it all like a man who knows the river still has one more song in it.

Afterglow

On the drive home, the night still felt close. Enjoying the feeling that you have from seeing good friends and meeting a few new ones as well, so a quick shout out to Leslie Phillips, Mike Williams, Author Gary Miller, and David Havens, was great seeing and meeting you all! Till next time!

Maybe it was the heat finally easing off. Maybe it was the echo of the Blind Boys still hanging somewhere in the chest. Maybe it was Buddy’s guitar tone refusing to leave the ears quietly. Or maybe it was that missed rainbow over the Tennessee River, the one that dropped straight into the water before the night even began.

At first, it felt like a lost photograph. By the end, it felt like the night had answered it anyway.

A rainbow into the river. Gospel into the blues. Young artists stepping into their own names. Old masters still teaching the room how it is done. John Lewis’ “good trouble” remembered not as history sealed away, but as a living charge. Buddy Guy receiving an honor built for people who turn their lives into a bridge.

Florence and Muscle Shoals have always understood that music can do strange, beautiful work when the right people gather near the water. On May 27, the room got hotter than the Alabama afternoon outside, and not because of the weather.

Damn right, he’s got the blues.

And damn right, he earned the honor.

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Some albums you listen to. Others you step into.

But after sitting with Selwyn Birchwood’s Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues, the better question becomes this: what kind of person builds a room like that in the first place?

The album itself already told part of the story. Ten tracks. Forty-six minutes. A swampy, elastic stretch of blues, funk, soul, grit, humor, frustration, family pressure, digital paranoia, and hard-earned hope. It sounded rooted without sounding trapped. It honored the old language without embalming it. On songs like “The Church Of Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues,” “All Hail The Algorithm,” “Damaged Goods,” and “The Struggle Is Real,” Birchwood made the blues feel less like a museum and more like a living animal still dragging mud across the floor.

In conversation, that tension became even clearer. Selwyn Birchwood is not trying to be the future of the blues in some press-release, torch-passing, savior-complex kind of way. He is doing something both simpler and more dangerous.

He is trying to be himself.

That sounds almost too plain until you realize how much of modern genre work is built on avoiding exactly that. Plenty of artists talk about authenticity while sanding themselves into familiar shapes. Birchwood talks about tradition with reverence, but not obedience. He understands where the music came from. He knows the names, the records, the lineage, the road. But his relationship to the blues is not preservation under glass.

It is inheritance with fingerprints on it.

The Oldies That Tuned His Ear

Birchwood grew up hearing older music before he was old enough to understand why it mattered. His parents were born in the 1940s and had him later in life, which meant the soundtrack of his childhood was not necessarily the same one being fed to everyone around him. While other kids were absorbing whatever the present tense demanded, Birchwood was hearing Sam Cooke, doo-wop, old R&B, Motown, and the kind of songs that had already lived several lives before reaching him.

That distinction matters. Not because it turns his story into some neat origin myth, but because it tuned his ears early. The warmth was there before the theory. The phrasing was there before the vocabulary. The ache and lift of soul music had already gotten under his skin before the blues officially took hold.

His multicultural background, with Caribbean and British roots, could make for an easy headline. It would be tempting to frame Birchwood’s sound as a direct equation, one part Caribbean lineage, one part American blues, one part British-rooted family history, shake vigorously and serve swampy. But Birchwood doesn’t flatten it that way. He is careful about the cause and effect. He says the age of his parents may have shaped his listening more than multiculturalism itself.

That honesty is useful. It keeps the story from becoming decorative.

Still, he grew up with Caribbean music around him, and he does not dismiss that current either. Blues is his first love. Caribbean and island music sit close behind it. That combination helps explain why Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues moves the way it does. The album does not simply sit in twelve-bar sorrow and wait for admiration. It grooves. It sways. It slides into the pocket and then kicks dirt out of it. Even when Birchwood is writing about systems, suspicion, struggle, or damage, the music refuses to become stiff.

There is rhythm in his resistance.

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Imitation Should Lead Somewhere

The phrase Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues sounds like branding until you hear the record, and then it starts to feel more like a field report. Birchwood did not arrive at that sound by rejecting traditional blues. He arrived there by falling into it deeply enough to know copying it would not be enough.

In high school, he fell in love with traditional blues. Then came Jimi Hendrix, which led him toward Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan. From there came B.B. King, Robert Johnson, and the deeper architecture of the form. That path is familiar to a lot of players, but Birchwood’s response to it is what separates him. He did not want to become a tribute machine. He wanted the music’s vocabulary, not its cage.

The line that sits at the center of this whole follow-up is almost blunt enough to miss: imitation and inspiration should lead to creation.

That is the hinge.

It explains why Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues can feel so deeply connected to the blues tradition while still refusing to behave like a genre exercise. Birchwood is not interested in dressing up as the past. He is interested in what the past makes possible when filtered through a living person with modern frustrations, modern personal questions, and a lap steel screaming like it crawled out of a fever dream.

That commitment to original material is one of the defining choices in Birchwood’s catalog. In a genre where cover-heavy sets can still dominate, and where tradition is sometimes mistaken for repetition, he has built his work around writing. The blues has never really survived by standing still. It has survived by telling the truth in the language of the moment.

For Birchwood, the point is not to push the genre forward as a slogan. The point is to make art honestly enough that forward motion becomes unavoidable. He does not sound like someone trying to impress a committee of blues historians. He sounds like someone who understands that if you only copy what moved you, you eventually drain the movement out of it.

The Blues Can Still Talk About Right Now

That philosophy is all over the album. “All Hail The Algorithm” does not feel like a traditional blues subject on paper, but it is absolutely blues in spirit. It is a song about control, surrender, dependency, and the strange worship rituals of modern life. The machinery has changed. The pressure has not. The same goes for “Talking Heads,” where Birchwood aims at media culture and narrative manipulation with the kind of frustration that feels less polished than necessary and more alive because of it.

When asked whether he sees blues as a vehicle for contemporary storytelling, Birchwood does not overinflate the answer. He does not frame it as a grand responsibility. He simply recognizes that people in the tradition were singing about what was going on. The subject matter has changed because the world has changed. His job is not to cosplay someone else’s suffering. His job is to tell his own story.

That distinction is crucial.

Too much blues commentary gets stuck treating suffering like a required costume. Birchwood respects where the music came from, but he is not trying to mine pain that is not his. He is not writing from a textbook version of hardship. He is writing from lived pressure, modern absurdity, self-interrogation, family responsibility, and the daily ways people get squeezed by forces they may not even be able to name.

That is why “Labour of Love” lands with such quiet force. It is not flashy. It does not need to be. It understands commitment as something heavier than romance and more durable than sentiment. It is about family, responsibility, and the exhaustion of staying in the work when the work is also love. In the earlier review, that song stood out because of its emotional texture and unexpected saxophone coloring. After the interview, it feels even more connected to Birchwood’s larger worldview. He is not chasing drama for drama’s sake. He is paying attention to what actually wears people down.

The Work Behind the Mud

That same groundedness appears when Birchwood talks about the business side of music. Birchwood studied business and earned an MBA, which might sound like a strange footnote for a bluesman until you remember that survival has always been part of the job. His answer is not romantic. He says, do not look at music as a business, let alone a job. It is a ton of work, but it does not feel like work when you love doing it.

The road does not run on mythology. It runs on logistics, discipline, money, timing, relationships, stamina, and the ability to keep showing up when the romance has packed itself into a van and left you with the invoice. Birchwood’s music may sound loose, sweaty, and alive, but underneath that looseness is a working artist who knows the machine has to be navigated as much as the song has to be played.

That balance between instinct and structure may also explain why Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues feels expansive without becoming sloppy. The songs stretch, but they do not wander aimlessly. The solos breathe, but they know where the floor is. The grooves loosen time without losing the room. Birchwood may not describe his art in corporate language, thank God, but there is clearly architecture beneath the mud.

The Lap Steel Becomes Weather

Then there is the lap steel.

If Birchwood’s voice gives the music its narrative spine, and his guitar gives it muscle, the lap steel gives it weather. It changes the air around the songs. It can moan, slash, hover, or glow. It does not speak like a standard guitar. It bends the emotional language sideways.

The instrument entered Birchwood’s life through his mentor, Sonny Rhodes. Birchwood was 19 when Rhodes brought him into his band and took him across the United States and Canada, showing him what life as a traveling bluesman actually looked like. That first tour was also the first time Birchwood heard the lap steel in that context. He knew quickly that when he got off the road, he was going to save his money, buy one, and make it part of his own sound.

That detail feels almost cinematic because it is not just about gear. It is about apprenticeship. Rhodes did not only expose Birchwood to an instrument. He showed him how to dress, how to perform, how to move through the world of the music. There is a whole blues education tucked inside that answer, one that did not happen in a classroom and probably could not have.

It happened on the road.

That matters because Birchwood’s originality does not come from rejecting mentorship. It comes from absorbing it correctly. Sonny Rhodes gave him tools, not chains. Tradition, at its best, does not demand that the next artist become a replica. It gives them a map, then trusts them to find the road that is still missing.

You can hear that in the way Birchwood plays. The lap steel is not a novelty in his music. It is not a decorative “look what I can do” flourish. It is part of the grammar. It gives his songs a voice that can feel swampy, spectral, sly, wounded, or ecstatic depending on where he places it.

No Arrival, Just the Chase

“Should’ve Never Gotten Out of Bed” needs the blues’ old storytelling bones, but Birchwood delivers it with the comic exhaustion of somebody watching the day collapse in real time. “What I’ve Been Accused Of” leans into suspicion and tension with a grit that nearly tips into outlaw-country shadow. “Damaged Goods” turns scars into evidence of survival rather than proof of ruin. “Soulmate” pulls the record back toward hope before “The Struggle Is Real” sets down the final weight.

The album’s closing track hit hard in the original review because it refused easy resolution. After the interview, it feels even more like the natural endpoint of Birchwood’s storytelling philosophy. He is not writing suffering as an abstract tradition. He is writing from the place where personal experience meets social reality. He does not need to solve the world in five minutes. He just needs to tell the truth without sanding down the edges.

The most revealing thing Birchwood says may come near the end, when asked whether he feels he has fully arrived at his sound or is still chasing something. His answer is both confident and restless. He does not believe there is any arriving as an artist. You are always chasing something. But he does feel like he has found his sound.

That is the sweet spot. The dangerous spot. The artist’s knife-edge.

Finding your sound can make some musicians settle. Birchwood seems to treat it as permission to keep going. Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues does not sound like an artist asking who he is. It sounds like an artist who knows the answer well enough to start bending the walls.

That is why the album’s title phrase works. Electric. Swamp. Funkin’. Blues. Each word pulls its own weight. Electric gives it voltage. Swamp gives it earth. Funkin’ gives it body. Blues gives it bloodline. Put together, it becomes less a genre tag than a self-portrait.

The Thing Is Still Breathing

Maybe that is the real follow-up to the album review. Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues is not just a strong record because the playing is sharp, the grooves are deep, and the writing is timely. It is strong because it carries the logic of Birchwood’s life inside it. The older soul and R&B that tuned his childhood ears. The Caribbean music close to his heart. The high school blues obsession. The Hendrix doorway. The Buddy Guy fire. The B.B. King phrasing. The Robert Johnson shadow. The Sonny Rhodes road education. The MBA practicality. The refusal to copy. The insistence that art should move from imitation into creation.

None of that sits on top of the album as trivia. It is inside the sound.

The blues, in Birchwood’s hands, is not a fixed historical object. It is a working language. It can talk about algorithms. It can talk about media noise. It can talk about damaged self-worth, family labor, spiritual hunger, bad luck, suspicion, love, and systemic struggle. It can make room for doo-wop ghosts, Motown warmth, island pulse, psychedelic guitar, funk rhythm, lap steel weather, and modern unease.

That does not dilute the blues.

It proves the thing is still breathing.

To read the full album review visit this previous article:

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Faith in Focus is a weekly reflection on what God has been teaching me throughout the week regarding my faith. Whether it’s personal interactions, reading, or the Sunday sermon, God speaks through it all, and I hope this helps you focus on His mission.

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Sermon Reflection

After sixteen chapters of correction, encouragement, theology, and practical instruction, Paul's message to the Corinthian church remains remarkably simple. Whatever the question, whatever the struggle, whatever the circumstance, the answer is ultimately found in Christ and His resurrection.

Based on the sermon by Jonathan Land, Connection Church Sioux Falls, May 24, 2026.

The Thread Running Through 1 Corinthians

There is something deeply satisfying about reaching the end of a long journey.

Over the past several months, we have walked chapter by chapter through Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth. We have wrestled with difficult passages, explored complex doctrines, and confronted challenging applications. Along the way, Paul addressed division, sexual immorality, lawsuits among believers, marriage, singleness, Christian liberty, worship, spiritual gifts, and the resurrection.

At first glance, 1 Corinthians can feel like a collection of unrelated issues. One chapter discusses church conflict. Another focuses on marriage. Another dives into spiritual gifts. Yet another builds one of the most robust defenses of the resurrection found anywhere in Scripture.

But as we reach the end of the letter and look back, a remarkable pattern emerges.

Every road leads back to Jesus.

The World Behind the Text

The church in Corinth was messy.

Located in a prosperous and influential city, the Corinthian believers struggled to separate themselves from the values of the culture around them. They carried worldly assumptions into the church and then wondered why problems followed.

Sound familiar?

The Corinthians often approached their faith by asking questions similar to the ones Christians ask today.

How should we handle disagreements? What should our relationships look like? How do we use our freedoms? What does spiritual maturity look like? How should worship function? What happens after death?

Paul answers every one of these questions, yet he refuses to let the conversation stay merely practical. Instead, he consistently moves beneath the surface and addresses the deeper issue.

Their greatest need was not better techniques. Their greatest need was Christ.

Walking the Passage

One of the most fascinating observations from this study is how frequently Paul points to Jesus throughout the letter.

Across sixteen chapters, Paul uses the name Jesus twenty six times, Christ sixty four times, and Lord sixty six times. These aren’t accidental references sprinkled throughout the letter. They reveal Paul’s central focus.

Everything revolves around Christ.

When the Corinthians were dividing into factions, Paul pointed them to Christ crucified.

When they were tolerating sin, Paul pointed them to Christ’s holiness.

When they struggled with pride, Paul pointed them to Christ’s humility.

When they misunderstood love, Paul pointed them to Christ’s example.

When they questioned the resurrection, Paul pointed them to Christ’s victory over death.

Paul never treats Jesus as a supporting character in the Christian life. Jesus IS the Christian life. This is why Paul writes, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2, ESV).

That statement is not a rejection of theology or practical wisdom. Rather, it is a declaration that every aspect of theology and wisdom finds its center in Christ.

When we dig deeply enough into any issue, we eventually arrive at the cross.

When we ask how to forgive, we find Christ.

When we ask how to love, we find Christ.

When we ask how to endure suffering, we find Christ.

When we ask what gives life meaning, we find Christ.

When we ask what happens after death, we find Christ and His resurrection.

The world constantly offers competing answers. It tells us fulfillment can be found in success, relationships, wealth, status, self-expression, or personal achievement.

Paul disagrees.

Christ is not one answer among many. Christ IS the answer.

That truth can sound exclusive in a culture that celebrates endless options. Yet Christianity has always proclaimed that ultimate hope is found in a person, not a philosophy.

Jesus Himself declared, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6, ESV).

The gospel does not present Christ as an enhancement to life. It presents Him as life itself.

A Fair Counter-Reading

Some readers may object that reducing every issue to “Jesus is the answer” oversimplifies the complexities of life.

After all, Scripture contains practical commands, wisdom literature, and detailed ethical teaching. Doesn’t Christianity require more nuanced answers than simply pointing to Christ?

There is truth in that concern.

Paul certainly provides practical instruction throughout 1 Corinthians. He gives specific guidance regarding marriage, worship, church discipline, generosity, and spiritual gifts. Christianity is not opposed to practical wisdom.

Yet Paul never allows practical wisdom to become disconnected from the person and work of Jesus.

The issue is not whether practical answers matter. The issue is whether those answers remain rooted in the Gospel.

Paul’s genius is that he refuses to separate doctrine from discipleship. The practical instructions always flow from the reality of who Christ is and what He has accomplished.

The Turn

One of the challenges facing modern Christians is the temptation to blend into the surrounding culture. We often want to be accepted, understood, and comfortable.

Yet Paul consistently calls believers toward something different.

He calls them toward holiness, sacrificial love, and toward a life shaped by the cross.

In many ways, genuine Christianity should appear strange to the world.

Not because Christians seek to be offensive or are trying to stand out. But because the values of Christ often run contrary to the values of the culture.

Paul closes the letter with a simple but profound command: “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:14, ESV).

That sounds simple until we attempt to live it.

Responding to criticism with love, serving others before ourselves, forgiving those who hurt us, and choosing humility over self promotion are all countercultural.

Living every aspect of life through the lens of Christ’s sacrificial love will often make us appear strange in a world built on self interest.

But perhaps that is exactly the point. The church was never called to look like Corinth. The church was called to look like Christ.

Carry It Into the Week

As we close the book of 1 Corinthians, it is worth pausing to recognize what has happened.

You have journeyed through an entire book of the Bible.

That may not feel significant at first glance, but it truly is.

In a culture increasingly driven by short attention spans and quick answers, you have spent time dwelling deeply in God’s Word. You have wrestled with difficult passages. You have explored theology. You have followed Paul’s argument from beginning to end.

That is no small accomplishment.

More importantly, my hope is that this study has accomplished what Paul intended all along.

Not merely that you would know more about Corinth or that you would understand more theology. But that you would see Christ more clearly.

Because every chapter ultimately points to Him.

Every correction, every command, every promise, and every hope points to Him.

As we move into our Summer in the Psalms series, my prayer is that the same hunger for God’s Word continues to grow in anyone who reads this. Scripture is not simply information to consume. It is God’s revelation of Himself, culminating in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Thank you for walking through this journey with me.

I hope you’ll continue to join me as we turn the page and begin exploring the Psalms together.

Song of the Week: Confidence - Sanctus Real

We all have things that scare us. For some, it’s spiders crawling across the floor. For others, it’s standing in front of a crowd to speak or looking over the edge of a towering height. Fear is something every person experiences in one way or another. Yet some of the deepest fears are not physical at all. Sometimes the hardest fears to face are the spiritual ones. The fear of speaking openly about our faith at work. The fear of being judged by family or friends. The fear of defending what we believe when difficult conversations arise. Even as Christians, fear has a way of making us feel small and uncertain.

That is why Sanctus Real’s song Confidence resonates with people. The song is more than just catchy lyrics or a powerful chorus. It’s a prayer. A cry for God to give ordinary people extraordinary faith in the middle of life’s battles.

“So give me faith like Daniel in the lion’s den.” Daniel stood surrounded by danger, yet he trusted God even when fear should have overwhelmed him. That lyric becomes a prayer asking God to help us stand firm when life feels intimidating and uncertain. Help me not to run from the things that scare me. Help me trust You even when I feel surrounded.

“Give me hope like Moses in the wilderness.” Moses spent years wandering through uncertainty, yet God never abandoned His promises. Sometimes life feels like a wilderness season where prayers seem unanswered and the road ahead feels unclear. This line reminds us to ask God for hope that sees beyond present struggles and believes He is still leading us somewhere greater.

“Give me a heart like David, Lord be my defense.” David faced giants, enemies, and impossible odds, but his confidence was never in his own strength. His confidence came from knowing who fought beside him. That same prayer applies to our own lives when battles come in the form of anxiety, hardships, temptation, grief, or spiritual struggles. We ask God to fight for us when we are too weak to fight on our own.

“So I can face my giants with confidence.” That single line captures the heart of the Christian walk. Confidence doesn’t mean we never feel afraid. It means we know fear doesn’t have the final word because God is greater than whatever stands in front of us. The giants in our lives may not be literal warriors or lions, but they are still real. Fear, doubt, insecurity, suffering, and uncertainty can all feel massive in the moment. Yet through Christ, we are reminded that we do not face those giants alone.

True confidence is not rooted in ourselves. It is rooted in knowing that God is our salvation, our hope, and our strength. He is faithful in every season, present in every battle, and stronger than every fear we carry. My prayer is not only that God continues to grow this confidence in my own life, but that everyone reading this would pray the same thing. That God would give us faith when we are afraid, hope when we feel lost, strength when we feel weak, and confidence to face whatever lies ahead knowing He walks beside us every step of the way.

Week in Reflection

This week truly felt like the beginning of summer. The weather is getting warmer, the days are stretching longer, and suddenly calendars start filling with opportunities to connect with people outside again. Between bonfires with friends, dreaming about future travel plans, and stepping into a new opportunity with photography at church, it felt like one of those weeks where God quietly reminds me how much beauty can be found in everyday moments.

There is just something special about summer bonfires. Maybe it’s the slower pace, the glow of the fire cutting through the darkness, or the way conversations seem to naturally go deeper when everyone is gathered around together. This week brought a night like that, sitting around the fire with friends talking about life, interests, future goals, and everything in between. One of the biggest conversations ended up being the possibility of organizing a trip to Japan in 2027, which honestly still feels surreal to even talk about.

What started as a casual discussion quickly turned into excited conversations about places we would want to visit, food we would want to try, and experiences we would love to share together. Beyond the excitement of travel itself, moments like that remind me how important community really is. Fellowship is not always confined to church walls or organized Bible studies. Sometimes it happens around folding chairs in a backyard while smoke from a fire drifts through the air and everyone shares pieces of their lives with one another. Those moments matter deeply because they create opportunities to encourage one another, laugh together, and witness how God is moving in each person’s journey.

Alongside those moments of fellowship came an opportunity that honestly pushed me out of my comfort zone in the best way possible. This week I had the privilege of photographing services at Connection Church. From morning prayer before service began, to the welcome team greeting people at the doors, to baptisms during worship, and the sermon itself, it was an incredibly humbling experience to try and capture the heart behind everything happening throughout the morning.

Going into it, I was definitely nervous. Photography is always interesting because there is a balance between technical skill and simply being present enough to recognize meaningful moments as they happen. Walking into an environment where every moment carries spiritual significance added an entirely different layer to that responsibility. I wanted to do justice to the joy of baptisms, the sincerity of prayer, and the welcoming atmosphere that so many people work hard to create every Sunday.

Even though I have not received feedback on the photographs yet, I walked away feeling genuinely grateful for the opportunity itself. There were multiple moments throughout the services where I could feel God guiding my attention toward moments that deserved to be captured. A smile during worship, someone deep in prayer, or the excitement and emotion surrounding baptisms. Moments that may seem small from the outside but carry so much meaning within them. It reminded me that photography, at its best, is more than simply taking pictures. It becomes a way of preserving moments that reflect joy, community, faith, and the work God is doing in people’s lives.

As summer continues to unfold, I find myself increasingly excited for what lies ahead. The season is only beginning, yet already it has brought opportunities for deeper fellowship, new experiences, and reminders of God’s faithfulness in both big and small ways. Whether it’s conversations around a bonfire, planning adventures down the road, or stepping into opportunities that feel intimidating at first, I am thankful for the ways God continues to open doors and create moments worth remembering.

If this is only the beginning of summer, I truly cannot wait to see what the rest of the season holds.

And always remember, God loves you, and so do I.

Connection Church in Sioux Falls is a gospel-centered community committed to helping people follow Jesus through authentic relationships, biblical teaching, and everyday mission. Rooted in historic Christian belief and aligned with gospel renewal movements, the church exists to see lives transformed by Jesus. Learn more: https://siouxfallsconnection.com/who-we-are

Some nights feel bigger than the room.

Not because the room is packed wall to wall. Not because the bar line never ends. Not because the whole city suddenly decides to show up and prove it has been paying attention. Sometimes a night feels bigger because the people who do show up get handed something wild, loud, sweaty, ridiculous, and fully committed. Something that makes you look around halfway through and think, “There should be more people here for this.”

That was the feeling inside xBk Live on Thursday, May 21, when Minneapolis shock-rock outfit Caster Volor rolled into Des Moines with local support from Parabola and Psycho X. It was also my very first booking at xBk, which meant I walked into the night with the excitement of a toddler granted unsupervised access to a candy store. Obviously, I am not new to booking bands, but a touring act paired with original local bands is not my normal lane. That made the whole thing feel fresh, slightly terrifying, and absolutely worth doing.

This show had the best kind of collision built into it. Two bands from our own Des Moines scene helped anchor the night, while a touring band brought something strange and theatrical from outside the local orbit. That combination is exactly why nights like this are worth fighting for. Local music needs rooms. Touring bands need people willing to take a chance on them before everyone else catches up. And sometimes, when those two things meet in the right space, the result is not perfect, but it is alive.

Local Fire Before the Smoke

The night opened with Parabola, a Des Moines original rock band that brought the evening down to the floor level before the touring spectacle took over. In a bill that would eventually lean deep into theatrical shock-rock, Parabola gave the show its local foundation: gritty, direct, and rooted in songs that felt built from the same raw materials as the room itself.

The band describes itself best: “Parabola is a four-piece rock band that blends the raw energy of grunge with the timeless edge of classic rock. Drawing inspiration from the ’70s, ’90s, and early 2000s, our sound combines gritty guitar riffs, powerful rhythms, and introspective lyrics. Parabola channels the rebellious spirit and seeks to inspire listeners to think deeper and Imagine a Better World.”

That description lands because Parabola does not sound like a band trying to chase whatever version of rock is currently fashionable. Their music pulls from eras where guitars still carried dirt under the nails and lyrics were allowed to wrestle with something heavier than surface-level attitude. There is a lived-in quality to their sound, with enough grunge weight to keep things grounded and enough classic-rock edge to keep the songs from sinking into gloom.

As an opener, they did what strong local original bands are supposed to do. They did not simply warm the room. They claimed their corner of it. Their set gave the night an early pulse and reminded everyone that Des Moines has original bands worth putting in front of touring acts. In a scene that too often asks local musicians to prove themselves over and over again, Parabola walked in with the kind of confidence that says the songs are already doing the talking.

Psycho X followed with a different kind of local power. A respected Des Moines rock cover band, they are a true local supergroup, made up of highly talented and familiar musicians who have helped shape some of the area’s stronger acts over the years. That kind of history matters in a room like this because Psycho X does not feel assembled for convenience. They feel like musicians who know the circuit, know the crowds, and know how to move a night forward.

Cover bands have a different job than original bands, but it is not an easier one. They have to take songs people already know and make them feel immediate again. Psycho X understood that balance. Their set gave the crowd recognizable rock muscle while keeping the energy sharp enough to support the heavier, stranger world that Caster Volor would bring later. They were not there to simply fill the middle slot. They were there to connect the audience to the night.

Together, Parabola and Psycho X made the local half of the bill feel intentional. Parabola brought original Des Moines grit. Psycho X brought veteran scene presence and familiar rock firepower. By the time Caster Volor was ready to drag the evening into smoke, props, costumes, and chaos, the room had already been claimed by the city.

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xBk Keeps Proving the Point

I have covered shows at xBk Live several times now, so I will keep this part short. The venue has quickly become one of my favorite places for press coverage and concert photography in Des Moines. It is intimate without feeling cramped, professional without feeling sterile, and flexible enough to host a wide range of touring acts and local talent.

That flexibility was important for this night. Caster Volor does not arrive like a band content to plug in, play loud, and disappear. They bring props. They bring smoke. They bring costume changes. They bring a theatrical attitude that needs a room willing to bend with it. xBk gave them enough intimacy to make the chaos feel close and enough structure to keep the whole thing from flying completely off the rails.

For photographers, this kind of show is a gift and a workout. Smoke eats light. Movement refuses to sit still. Props appear without warning. Bodies climb, lunge, pose, collapse, revive, and sprint through frames before the shutter can catch its breath. But when it works, the camera gets rewarded. Caster Volor gave us a moving target all night, and that is exactly what made them fun to shoot.

The Freak Show Arrives

If you think rock and roll is dying, you have not seen Caster Volor.

The Minneapolis band does not simply play a set. They unleash one. Their world is hard rock, heavy metal, shock-rock spectacle, vaudevillian swagger, industrial steel, and glorious bad behavior all shoved into the same cannon. On paper, it sounds excessive. In person, the excess is the point.

The lineup for the night was Alex on lead vocals, Steven on guitar, Kasey on bass, Niko on drums, and Kaitlin on background vocals. Together, they moved less like a standard band and more like a finely tuned machine of madness. The stage became a playground for heavy metal theater almost immediately. Thick smoke poured through the room. Props appeared. The pacing refused to relax. There were multiple costume changes, nonstop movement, synchronized headbanging, dancing, antics, and enough visual chaos to make the room feel bigger than it was.

And yes, there was Clarice.

Clarice, for the uninitiated, is the infamous blow-up doll who apparently belongs in the Caster Volor universe as much as any guitar, drum kit, or microphone stand. That sentence probably tells you everything you need to know about the band’s commitment to the bit. They do not flirt with ridiculousness. They marry it in a smoke-filled chapel and drag it screaming across the stage.

Frontman Alex was the gravitational center of the madness, carrying the kind of stage presence that requires full-body commitment. His signature custom-lit codpiece was not just some visual gag either. It actually held his microphone, because apparently normal mic stands are for bands with less imagination and fewer insurance questions.

Guitarist Steven matched him step for step. At one point, he brought out a hand drill and used it against his guitar strings, sending the performance into that wonderful territory where you cannot decide whether to laugh, cheer, or duck. It was absurd in the exact way rock and roll should still be allowed to be absurd. Not ironic. Not sanitized. Not focus-grouped into harmlessness. Just loud, strange, and fully committed.

The peak of the night’s showmanship came when Steven climbed onto Alex’s shoulders and kept playing while Alex paraded him through the middle of the audience. No dropped note. No broken spell. Just a guitarist soloing from above while the singer carried him through the crowd like some deranged heavy-metal victory lap. It shattered the barrier between band and audience in the most literal way possible.

That moment alone should have been enough to make people talk about this show for weeks.

Anthems, Covers, and a Buzzsaw Original

For all the smoke and props, Caster Volor would not work if the songs did not have muscle. The spectacle is the hook, but the music has to hold the weight of it. Their original material pulls from the more theatrical side of hard rock and metal, with a taste for big riffs, chant-ready choruses, industrial menace, and a certain sleazy glam-metal grin flashing through the darkness.

Their 2025 EP Paracosm captures that blend well, especially in the way it balances satire, rage, defiance, and heart without pretending the whole thing needs to be polite. The standout original of the night was “Black Leather Middle Finger,” a track that ripped through the room like a buzzsaw with a bad attitude. It has the kind of title that tells you exactly what neighborhood it lives in. Raw, unapologetic, heavy, and built around a driving groove, it felt like the clearest thesis statement for the band’s entire identity.

Then came “Bodies.”

Their cover of Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” was easily one of the hardest-hitting moments of the night. The second it landed, the room changed. The energy spiked. The floor tightened. Heads started moving harder. The crowd turned into a small but frantic storm of moshing, headbanging, and release. It was not the biggest crowd, but in that moment, the room stopped acting its size.

That is the trick with a song like “Bodies.” Everyone knows where it is going. Everyone knows the pressure points. A lesser band can phone it in and still get a reaction. Caster Volor did not phone it in. They shoved it through their own theatrical grinder and made it fit the larger freak show.

The band also has a reputation for pulling covers from several decades and warping them through its own hard-hitting lens. Their orbit includes rock and metal staples from KISS, Billy Idol, Mötley Crüe, AC/DC, Rob Zombie, Rammstein, Marilyn Manson, Godsmack, Hollywood Undead, and Falling In Reverse, along with more unexpected detours from acts like LMFAO, t.A.T.u., and Enrique Iglesias. That range makes sense after seeing them live. They are not interested in simply copying a song. They want to drag it backstage, smear eyeliner on it, bolt steel to its spine, and send it back out under red lights.

The Cold Hard Truth

Here is where the night gets honest.

This was a ticketed show. It was my first booking at xBk Live. I went into it excited, hopeful, and probably carrying more wide-eyed optimism than was medically advisable. Caster Volor put everything into the performance. They did not scale it down because the room was not packed. They did not coast. They did not punish the people who showed up for the people who stayed home. They delivered the full show.

But it was a Thursday night, and Des Moines does not know them yet.

Bringing in local openers was the smart move. Parabola and Psycho X gave the bill local draw and scene connection, which helped. Still, we did not pack the house. My guess is there were around 50 people in attendance. Those 50 people got one heck of a show. Sadly, a lot of people missed out.

That is the hard part of booking shows like this. You can do the work. You can put the bill together. You can bring in a touring band with a real production, strong songs, and a stage show that deserves attention. You can pair them with local talent. You can put it in a venue that knows how to host a night properly. And still, sometimes the city is slow to catch on.

But I do not look at this night as a failure. I look at it as a first flare.

There are bands that need to be explained before they are seen, and then there are bands that explain themselves the second the lights drop. Caster Volor belongs to the second category. They are not subtle. They are not trying to be. They are loud, theatrical, strange, ambitious, and completely unafraid to look ridiculous in pursuit of making the room feel something.

That kind of band does not need pity. It needs witnesses.

Afterglow

By the end of the night, I was tired in the best way. My camera had been worked hard. My expectations had been flipped around a few times. I had spent the evening with colleagues, friends, new band members, local musicians, and a touring act that treated 50 people like 500.

That is the part I keep coming back to.

The house was not packed, but the show was full. Full of smoke. Full of noise. Full of weird props and harder riffs. Full of local pride and touring chaos. Full of those strange little moments that remind you why live music cannot be reduced to numbers on a door sheet.

Caster Volor came to Des Moines and gave xBk Live a full-throttle freak show. Parabola and Psycho X helped make it a night rooted in the local scene. And the people who showed up got the better end of the bargain.

Sometimes the room is smaller than the show.

Sometimes that is exactly why you remember it.

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Having only been to Vibrant Music Hall once before, I thought I had already seen it close to full.

I was wrong.

When I got to the show, the place was packed from one side to the other, with the balcony filling in quickly and the floor already compressed into one breathing mass of black shirts, crossed arms, raised horns, and people waiting to be flattened by sound. There is a particular kind of anticipation that only happens at a heavy show when the room knows what is coming. It is not polite excitement. It has teeth.

Signs of the Swarm

By the time I entered, Signs of the Swarm were already playing and had pulled the audience into a tightly knit group of fans. I had heard the name passed through circles and tour conversations for years, usually by people whose taste in heavy music I trusted enough to take seriously. They have been in the scene since 2014, and through a menagerie of lineup changes, they have sharpened themselves into something with a clear shape: brutal, technical, guttural, and carved deep into one of the heavier corners of deathcore and blackened extreme music.

This was not background noise for people still finding their places. Signs of the Swarm arrived like a weather system built out of double bass, guitar swells, and vocals that sounded less performed than summoned. Their music has that strange ability to make the body react before the brain finishes sorting out what is happening. The drums were structural and punishing, the guitars moved in thick waves, and David Simonich’s vocals cut through the room with a kind of animal precision. It was ugly in the way extreme music can be beautiful, all tension and pressure and release.

The lights helped turn it into something more physical. Endless strobe patterns hammered the room until it became easy to feel consumed by it, pulled into a natural and strange state of primal rage. During one song, which I have narrowed down to either “IWONTLETYOUDIE” or “Amongst the Low & Empty,” Simonich unleashed a high-pitched growl that seemed to match the strobe light in rhythm and intensity. For a few seconds, voice and light felt fused, both flickering at the same impossible speed.

Their name prepares you for heaviness, but the live version still had force behind it. Signs of the Swarm filled every second of their 7:00 to 7:30 set with brutality, but brutality was not the only thing they brought. There was craft in it. There was control. There was the feeling of a band that knows exactly where the trapdoors are in its own music and knows when to kick them open.

In my early years of listening to heavy music, back in the early 2000s, this probably would have been too much for me. Thankfully, my opinions have learned how to behave less like fences and more like doors. I am a fan now. Everyone who lives with me is too, although they did not exactly get a vote. It gets played at my house every day.

The Beauty of a Clean Changeover

After Signs of the Swarm finished, set change began immediately.

Having had a direct hand in set changes in past routes my life has taken, I always try to watch at least part of that process. It is easy for audiences to miss how much work happens between bands because, when it is done well, it almost disappears. Vibrant Music Hall and the touring stage teams made it look clean, quick, safe, and structured. After seeing it happen a few times there, I can honestly say I am a bit jealous of their workflow.

They know what they are doing, and they all do it well.

That matters more at a show like this than some people realize. These bands do not travel light. There are lighting cues, backline changes, risers, drums, cables, instruments, smoke, haze, and enough moving parts to turn a sloppy changeover into a delay or a hazard. Instead, the room kept its pulse. Nothing sagged. Nothing felt stranded. The night moved with purpose.

By the time Paleface Swiss were ready, the crowd had not deflated. It had thickened.

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Paleface Swiss Break the Room Open

Paleface Swiss came to the stage with a presence you could feel before the first full hit landed. The room was not silent. It was busy and noisy, full of conversations, movement, and the rustling impatience of people preparing themselves for impact. Then the band started playing, and the room changed immediately.

By the time they were into their second song, I believe they already had a circle pit moving. For anyone unfamiliar, a circle pit is a large mosh pit where everyone runs in the same direction, which sounds silly until you are close enough to feel the air pull as bodies start orbiting the floor. It can look chaotic from the outside, but inside the scene there is an odd structure to it, a rough code of movement, collision, and quick hands helping people back up.

Paleface Swiss brought a different kind of attitude than what often gets expected from the metal world. The band made its name playing bars in Switzerland and Germany, and they carry that history with them: hungry, physical, direct, and fully aware of the room. But there was also something else on that stage. Most of them wore mesh shirts. Their stage presence pushed against the stiff, hyper-masculine armor that heavy music can sometimes mistake for authenticity. They did not posture like men trying to prove they were dangerous. They performed like people confident enough to be strange, sensual, funny, aggressive, and entirely themselves in the same breath.

When learning more about the band, I found that this is not some accident of styling. Paleface Swiss are openly comfortable breaking against the boundaries of toxic masculinity that still get guarded too heavily in parts of the heavy metal community. They are not afraid to share a kiss on stage. During the show, vocalist Marc Zellweger sensuously grabbed the guitarist from behind around the neck mid-solo, turning what could have been standard metal staging into something more playful and more confrontational.

And they know exactly what they are doing.

There is humor in it. There is defiance in it. There is a clear sense that if someone leaves the show because the band expresses fluid sexuality on stage, Paleface Swiss will not be wounded by that reaction. They might actually find it funny. Personally, I find that very cool. Heavy music is supposed to make people confront something. Sometimes that thing is fear. Sometimes it is grief. Sometimes it is anger. Sometimes it is a man in a mesh shirt making fragile people uncomfortable by being freer than they are.

Musically, Paleface Swiss were punishing. Their sound pulls from deathcore, beatdown hardcore, and nu-metal pressure, with grooves that do not ask permission before stepping on your chest. The pit responded accordingly. The room bent itself around them, and the band kept pushing.

They played until 8:45, thanking the fans for coming out and thanking Lorna Shore for bringing them on tour. With the least bit of irony, they also thanked Slipknot and dedicated a song to them. In Iowa, that gesture landed differently. Slipknot are not just another influence here. They are part of the state’s heavy-music mythology, a band that turned Iowa into something louder and stranger in the global imagination. Considering Zellweger discovered Slipknot as a kid, it felt appropriate. Without that discovery, Paleface Swiss may not exist the way they do now.

That is one of the stranger chains in heavy music: a kid finds a band, builds a life around the feeling it gives him, crosses oceans with his own band years later, then thanks that same band in the state that birthed it. Metal has a memory, even when it is screaming.

Haze Before the Horse Breaks Loose

Lorna Shore started at 9:05, and saying the anticipation was radiant still feels too small.

Before they appeared, haze swallowed the stage. Floodlights lingered through it like travelers moving down a misted road at night. The room was no longer merely waiting. It was bracing. Lorna Shore have become one of those bands whose reputation arrives before they do, especially after the explosion of “To the Hellfire” and the way their music has pushed symphonic deathcore into larger rooms than some people once imagined possible. But knowing a band is powerful and standing in front of that power are two different things.

They took the stage as “Oblivion” began to unfold, and Will Ramos came out wearing the same sweater from the music video. He took the stage like it was a training pen and he was a wild horse.

From side to side, with unwavering force, Ramos took the night by storm. As a fan, I was overtaken by the sheer joy of witnessing this band live. I had never imagined this would be something I would get to do: stand there in front of a band I genuinely love, record the experience, photograph it, and then write about it afterward. I was trying my best to keep my composure from the front of the stage, between the crowd and the band, screaming along to the lyrics while still doing the job.

Then they played “Unbreakable,” my favorite song.

I nearly had tears in my eyes while taking in the full experience, singing along and shooting photos. There are songs that hit because they are heavy, and then there are songs that hit because the heaviness feels like it is carrying something upward instead of dragging everything down. Lorna Shore have that rare quality. Their songs often carry an essence of earth-shattering hope. The music is devastating, but it does not feel empty. It feels like something clawing toward light through a collapsed ceiling.

That hope rides on top of backing music heavy enough to crack pavement. Part of Lorna Shore’s rise can be traced through the moment “To the Hellfire” broke beyond the usual lanes, reaching No. 7 on Billboard’s Hot Hard Rock Songs chart and helping producer Josh Schroeder hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Hard Rock Producers chart in August 2021 through his work with the band. That kind of chart placement does not explain the band’s emotional force, but it does show how far the sound has traveled.

At Vibrant, it felt like the sound had traveled all the way into the bones of the building.

Human Waterfalls and Midwest Treasure

The set stretched across Lorna Shore’s recent era, reaching from the shadow and grandeur of 2022’s Pain Remains into newer material from I Feel the Everblack Festering Within Me. They played songs like “Cursed to Die” and “In Darkness,” the latter made even wilder when their photographer Nick Johnson came out for guest vocals. That moment gave the crowd another charge, the kind that ripples through a packed room before anyone has time to decide what to do with it.

Then came “Sun//Eater,” and the crowd surfing turned relentless. People came over the rail in such repetition that it started to look like a waterfall of humans, bodies spilling forward again and again to be caught, guided, and safely administered back into the crowd. Security had their hands full, but the flow stayed controlled enough to keep the moment from tipping into danger. It was one of those scenes where the crowd becomes part of the show’s machinery, not in a cheap participation way, but as a moving extension of the music’s force.

Lorna Shore treated Vibrant Music Hall like a Midwest treasure deserving the full experience. That is still the phrase that keeps circling my brain. We do not get nights like this every day in rooms like this. The show felt part awestruck, part enriching, thoroughly overwhelming. I keep trying to put the exact feeling into words, and the words keep looking too small for the shape of it.

When they finally played “Glenwood,” the room was already somewhere beyond normal concert exhaustion. Then, in one of the strangest and funniest turns of the night, Ramos found a pack of Pokémon cards that had been thrown onto the stage by a fan. He picked it up and showed the crowd before the lights dimmed and the band sauntered backstage.

Moments later, you could hear him exclaim that they got a Mega Charizard and that it deserved a pit.

So they played “Prison of Flesh,” with Signs of the Swarm’s David Simonich coming out for guest vocals. It was the kind of ridiculous, perfect live-show moment that cannot be planned into feeling real. A Pokémon card pull became a pit command. A Mega Charizard became a reason for more destruction. Somewhere, an eight-year-old collector and a deathcore vocalist briefly occupied the same spiritual dimension.

Pain Remains

The band left the stage, then returned for an encore with Ramos acknowledging the sadness of a final song. But it was okay, he said, because it was a trilogy.

Then Lorna Shore played the full Pain Remains sequence: “Dancing Like Flames,” “After All I’ve Done, I’ll Disappear,” and “In a Sea of Fire.”

There is a reason that trilogy has become sacred ground for the band’s fans. In a genre often misunderstood as pure abrasion, Pain Remains reaches for grief with both hands. It is enormous, theatrical, mournful, and punishing. Live, it became less like three songs and more like one long emotional collapse with blast beats underneath it. The crowd did not simply listen. It endured, celebrated, and carried it.

Then Ramos brought the Pokémon cards back into the story.

“Who the f--k said Pokémon cards aren’t valuable?” he joked. “That Mega Charizard is worth 10 dollars! You guys know what that means? We get to share a meal at Taco Bell after the show!”

It was funny because it broke the cathedral atmosphere without cheapening it. One moment, the room was drowning in the Pain Remains trilogy. The next, the frontman was turning a fan-thrown Pokémon card into a Taco Bell budget meeting. That balance is part of why Ramos connects the way he does. He can summon impossible vocals and still talk to the crowd like a human being who cannot believe his luck either.

Before sending everyone into the night, he thanked the crowd again, thanked Slipknot, and pointed out a few MVP crowd members. One was a little guy who could not have been older than eight and had been crowd surfing. Another was a girl he said had been to every Iowa show they had played and was tougher than any guy in the pit. He had the crowd surf the boy up once more, gave him the setlist, asked everyone to get home safely, and told the fans the band loved them.

Then the room emptied into the night.

Afterglow

After the show, I drove to the campground near Saylorville Lake, where my family and friends had set up camp. I got there and all but gloated about how great the night had been.

Some shows leave you tired. Some leave you bruised. Some leave your ears ringing in a way that makes ordinary silence feel suspicious. This one left me enriched. That is the word I keep returning to, even if it sounds strange for a night built from gutturals, pits, strobes, blast beats, and human waterfalls. I left with the kind of high that does not come from spectacle alone. It came from standing in the narrow space between fan and correspondent, between the crowd and the band, realizing I was inside a moment I never expected to hold.

Signs of the Swarm turned brutality into architecture. Paleface Swiss broke open the room with confidence, humor, and force. Lorna Shore made the whole building feel like it was rising and collapsing at the same time.

The experience of live music sits in a category of beauty by itself. Every soul should try it at least once. Not because every show will be this exact kind of overwhelming, but because sometimes the room fills, the haze rises, the lights hit, the first note lands, and something in you gets reminded that it is still alive.

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A Night That Felt Bigger Than the Room

There are local shows where the room simply fills.

Then there are shows where the local scene starts to feel like it is remembering its own voltage.

Long Rest’s album release show at Icon Lounge on May 22 carried that second kind of charge. Before the headliner stepped into the full glow of the night, the signs were already there. More than 200 presales for a smaller local venue told its own story. The door stayed busy deep into the evening, with people still filtering in as the night pushed toward Long Rest’s set. Even a white rabbit made an appearance, offered almost like a strange little omen from the crowd, the kind of surreal detail local music folklore tends to keep in its back pocket.

The bill had the right architecture. Zero Ritual opened with enough force to test the room. Ghost Cat followed with a wider, more textured sound that warmed the crowd into motion. Then Long Rest took the closing slot and treated the night less like a routine release show and more like a full-scale arrival.

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The Sound Was Already a Victory

One of the quiet victories of the night was the sound. Smaller local shows can live or die by balance, and this one had its footing early. The mix was cleaner than expected for a venue of its size, and between bands, there was not the usual swamp of long adjustments and fussy corrections.

Instead of pulling attention away from the performances, the production gave each set room to breathe. The guitars had weight without turning muddy. The vocals stayed present. The transitions moved with very little drag, letting the night feel like one connected arc instead of three separate shows stitched together at the seams.

Zero Ritual Opens With Teeth

Zero Ritual came out first, and for a band only playing its second show, they had the confidence of something already sharpening its teeth.

Hailing from Sioux City, Iowa, they brought a new-age local metal sound that blended heavier rap instincts with metal’s physical push. At moments, there were flashes of Beastie Boys-style swagger, then harder pivots into Rage Against the Machine territory, which became even more fitting when they leaned into an actual Rage song shortly after.

Their set moved through changing riffs, time shifts, popular meme sound clips, and a kind of online-age humor that hit the crowd’s nervous system in recognizable places. But the band also knew when to drop the mask.

One of the most memorable moments came when the lead stepped down toward the front of the crowd, offering handshakes and hugs in a gesture that felt unusually personal for a heavy set. It was not performative distance. It was contact.

That human thread carried into a later instrumental moment, where the band offered words of encouragement and reminded the crowd to be there for someone. They closed with a song about suicide, turning the end of their set into something heavier than volume.

It was a strong showing from a young band still carving its shape in real time.

Ghost Cat Brings Texture and Breath

Ghost Cat came next, bringing a full-band lineup and a very different kind of momentum. They are already a local favorite for many, helped in part by the presence of Josh Lee, but what continues to set them apart is how naturally their instrumentation breathes.

Any local band that brings saxophone and keys into the mix immediately earns attention, but Ghost Cat does not treat those sounds as decorative garnish. The saxophone finds its place song by song, weaving into the structure instead of elbowing its way to the front.

Their set leaned more chill and steady, with beats that settled into the room rather than trying to flatten it. There was a looseness to their groove, the kind that lets a crowd sink back while the vocals stay forward and the songs keep moving.

Electronic elements surfaced here and there, matching the band’s atmosphere without feeling pasted over the top. Ghost Cat gave the night its middle chapter, softening the room without cooling it down.

Long Rest Arrives in Lasers

By the time Long Rest stepped onstage, the crowd had shifted into expectation. The room moved differently. People were still coming in. The lights were already doing work.

Then the lasers hit.

For a local non-EDM show, lasers are not something people automatically expect, and that was part of the thrill. Long Rest leaned into spectacle without losing the basement-show heartbeat of the thing. Their set opened into a cosmic rush of themes, stories, lights, and movement, with the band encouraging the crowd to dance and meet the night halfway.

This was not a band treating its debut album show like a formality. Long Rest pulled out the stops. They made Icon Lounge feel like it had been chosen for something.

Long Rest’s Full Shape Comes Into View

Part of what made Long Rest’s set feel so complete was the lineup itself. The band’s current formation brings together Samuel Welch on guitar, Stephen Hightower on drums, Lukas Finch on vocals, Nicole McAloon on bass, and Chris Thode on guitar, giving the songs both muscle and movement.

That dual-guitar setup gave the set its width, while McAloon’s bass kept the low end locked in with Hightower’s drums. Finch worked the front of the room with the kind of presence a debut album night demands, less like someone simply singing through a tracklist and more like someone guiding the crowd through the band’s newly built world.

The night also carried a deeper thread for longtime followers, with Rachel Purps, Long Rest’s OG bassist, featured during the set. It gave the release show a sense of continuity. This was not just a debut album celebration. It was a glimpse at where Long Rest is now, with a nod to the people who helped shape where the band began.

A Band Thinking Beyond the Usual Local Playbook

The debut album itself already showed signs of a band thinking beyond the standard local playbook. Their merch table included the new album in flash drive format, a clever modern alternative to CDs, which many fans no longer have a way to play.

Small decisions like that can reveal the shape of a band’s ambition. Long Rest is not only writing songs. They are paying attention to how people actually encounter music now.

Musically, Long Rest occupies a lane the local scene does not have in abundance. There is a cleaner Transplants-adjacent energy in their sound, mixed with a grungier Box Car Racer-type edge, all filtered through their own sense of movement and melody. It hits with enough grit to feel grounded, but enough polish to suggest a band building toward a larger stage.

Gunslinger, I Love You Always Forever, and the Crowd’s Breaking Point

Their second song, “Gunslinger,” landed as one of the strongest early moments of the set, a track that already feels like a fan favorite in waiting. It carried the kind of immediate identity that makes a room perk up.

But later in the night, when Long Rest played “I Love You Always Forever,” the crowd erupted.

It was one of those moments where a room’s volume stops being about the band alone and becomes a shared reflex. Everyone suddenly seemed to understand the same thing at the same time. The show had crossed from performance into memory.

Local Music Did Not Feel Small

Long Rest never treated the night like a standard release show. They built an event around it.

The order of the lineup made sense. The production felt intentional. The crowd stayed engaged. The songs translated. The merch showed growth. For a few hours, the room stopped feeling local in the limiting sense and started feeling local in the sacred one.

A debut album show can sometimes feel like a checkpoint, a band saying, “Here is what we made.”

Long Rest made theirs feel more like a door opening.

And for one night at Icon Lounge, with the presale numbers, the busy door, the saxophone, the hugs, the lasers, the flash drives, the white rabbit, and a crowd going wild at exactly the right moment, local music did not feel small at all.

It felt alive.

Afterglow

What lingered after Long Rest’s set was not just the volume or the lights. It was the feeling that everyone in the room had watched a local band stretch beyond the usual expectations placed on local bands.

The night had its share of memorable details, from Zero Ritual’s crowd-level connection to Ghost Cat’s saxophone textures to Long Rest’s laser-cut finale, but the real afterglow came from how carefully the whole show had been built. Nothing felt accidental. The lineup climbed with purpose. The production gave the songs shape. The crowd kept feeding the room back to itself.

Long Rest’s current lineup sounded fully locked in, while Rachel Purps’ appearance as the band’s OG bassist added a nice pulse of history to the night. It made the set feel less like a band introducing itself from scratch and more like a chapter turning in public.

That is the part a good local show can still do better than almost anything else. It can turn a familiar venue into somewhere slightly unrecognizable for a night. It can make the people standing beside you feel less like an audience and more like witnesses.

Long Rest did not leave Icon Lounge with only a debut album behind them. They left with proof of concept. The songs worked. The room responded. The scene showed up.

For a band still carving out its future, that kind of night is not just a celebration. It is a signal.

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There is a particular kind of Star Wars story that works best when it stops trying to explain the Force, stops rearranging royal bloodlines, and simply drops a tired gunslinger into a rotten corner of the galaxy with a job that smells worse the closer he gets to it.

The Mandalorian and Grogu understands that instinct.

At its best, Jon Favreau’s film is not a thunderous new scripture for the franchise. It is a grimy adventure serial with a child-sized mystic, a chrome-plated foster father, and enough underworld weirdness to remind viewers that Star Wars was never supposed to feel clean.

This is not the Star Wars of marble destinies. This is Star Wars with grease under its fingernails.

The film arrives carrying more baggage than a Jawa sandcrawler. It is the first theatrical Star Wars movie in years, spun out of a Disney+ series that became both a cultural phenomenon and, eventually, a victim of its own interconnected sprawl. Jon Favreau, who directs and co-writes with Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor, has the unenviable job of making Din Djarin and his tiny green apprentice feel large enough for cinemas without turning them into theme-park mascots doing a victory lap.

The result is alive in all the right ways. It has the scuffed charm of the original show’s strongest episodes, the occasional bloat of modern franchise filmmaking, and a voice cast so unexpectedly strange that it almost feels smuggled in from a better, weirder timeline.

The Outer Rim Gets Its Groove Back

The strongest version of The Mandalorian has always lived in the dusty margins of the galaxy. Not the glowing command rooms. Not the grand Jedi temples. Not the endless committees of people explaining why nobody can do anything useful until the second act.

The magic is in the border towns, the crooked informants, the bounty pucks, the crime dens, the leftover Imperial machinery still twitching in the weeds.

The Mandalorian and Grogu returns to that territory with confidence. Din Djarin, played by Pedro Pascal, is once again less a chosen one than a working-class knight, a man who survives by reading rooms quickly, shooting faster, and saying very little unless absolutely necessary. He is not Luke Skywalker. He is not Obi-Wan Kenobi. He is a contractor with a creed, a weaponized single father who keeps stumbling into galactic significance because everyone else is either dead, corrupt, or holding a committee meeting.

Pedro Pascal’s performance remains an exercise in restraint. With Din sealed behind the helmet, the character lives through voice, posture, and silence. It is a strange acting challenge, but Pascal has long understood that Din’s emotional vocabulary is built from small shifts. A pause. A turn of the helmet. A line delivered with just enough gravel to suggest that the man underneath is carrying more than weapons.

Din is less mysterious now than he was in the show’s early seasons. That was inevitable. The more a masked character speaks, bonds, loses, heals, and explains himself, the less mythic he becomes. The film compensates by leaning into the most durable part of his story, which is not the armor. It is the bond.

Grogu Is More Than a Merchandising Moon

Grogu is still adorable, of course. Disney would sooner throw Mickey Mouse into the Sarlacc pit than abandon that particular revenue stream.

But The Mandalorian and Grogu gives him more to do than coo, blink, snack, and move merchandise from shelves to nurseries across the galaxy. He is learning. He is choosing. He is becoming something neither Jedi tradition nor Mandalorian doctrine can fully define.

Grogu stands between two belief systems. The Jedi fear attachment. The Mandalorians ritualize belonging. Grogu carries both worlds in his tiny body, a foundling with Force sensitivity, clan loyalty, and a snack economy that would bankrupt a lesser household.

His relationship with Din is still the emotional engine of the story. The film does not overcomplicate it, which is wise. Their bond is not cute decoration. It is the story’s moral compass. In a franchise that has often treated love like a doorway to catastrophe, Grogu and Din offer a different possibility. Love can be discipline. Love can be duty. Love can be the thing that keeps a warrior from becoming only a weapon.

The movie lets that feeling breathe, and that is where its emotional strength comes from. The spectacle works because the relationship underneath it has weight. Din and Grogu are not merely traveling through danger together. They are teaching each other how to survive without becoming hollow.

Jeremy Allen White as Rotta the Hutt Is the Film’s Strangest Smart Choice

The most fascinating casting choice in The Mandalorian and Grogu is Jeremy Allen White as Rotta the Hutt.

On paper, casting Lip Gallagher from Shameless as Jabba’s son sounds like something invented after three blue milks and a bad night on Tatooine. In practice, it becomes one of the film’s smartest swings.

White brings a wounded, streetwise rasp to Rotta. He avoids the obvious trap of turning the character into “Jabba Jr.” Instead, his performance gives Rotta the texture of a legacy kid raised under the shadow of a monster, someone whose body belongs to a crime dynasty but whose voice suggests exhaustion, resentment, and the desire to be more than a slug-shaped inheritance dispute.

Rotta the Hutt could have been cheap nostalgia bait, another deep-cut callback dragged from The Clone Wars and polished for applause. Instead, the film gives him enough interior contradiction to make him useful.

He is Hutt royalty, yes, but also a gladiatorial survivor, a bruised son of a dead empire of appetite.

White’s voice turns him into something oddly tragic. You hear Lip in there, not because it breaks the illusion, but because that vocal history carries useful dramatic charge. Lip Gallagher was always the smartest guy in the room and the dumbest man in his own life. That energy fits Rotta beautifully.

A Hutt who understands the machinery of power but cannot fully crawl out from under it has more dramatic voltage than another sneering crime boss. White makes Rotta sound trapped inside a name bigger than himself, and that turns what could have been a novelty role into one of the movie’s more compelling surprises.

Martin Scorsese as Hugo Is Bizarre in the Best Possible Way

Then there is Martin Scorsese as Hugo, which is the sort of casting decision that sounds fake until the credits roll.

Scorsese voices a four-armed Ardennian food vendor who feeds Grogu and gives Din information with the nervous velocity of a man who has seen too many people vanish after talking too much. The character’s name also links him to Rio Durant from Solo: A Star Wars Story, the Ardennian voiced by Favreau himself, creating one of those tiny connective threads Star Wars loves to hide in the machinery.

Scorsese’s cameo could have been a distracting stunt, especially given his long-standing public skepticism toward modern franchise cinema. Instead, it lands as one of the film’s sharpest little jokes. Not a wink so large it pokes you in the eye, but a sly bit of cinematic irony hiding behind alien arms and street-cart steam.

Hugo talks like a guy who has survived by knowing when to shut up, which makes Scorsese’s voice perfect in a sideways way. He brings a New York pulse to the Outer Rim, all clipped warnings and moral weather. For a few minutes, Star Wars becomes Mean Streets with a baby wizard and a helmeted bounty hunter at the counter.

That scene also reveals what this film does best.

It works when it remembers that Star Wars is not just lightsabers and bloodlines. It is diners, alleys, dock workers, smugglers, gamblers, war leftovers, bad information, and people selling hot food under governments too weak to protect them.

The galaxy feels enormous when the camera pauses long enough to notice the small lives caught between regimes. Hugo may only be a cameo, but he gives the film a whiff of civic rot. In a franchise obsessed with emperors and chosen ones, a frightened fry cook can tell you more about the state of the galaxy than a Senate chamber ever could.

Sigourney Weaver Gives the New Republic a Spine

Sigourney Weaver’s Colonel Ward brings a sturdier New Republic presence than this era of Star Wars usually allows.

The New Republic has often been portrayed as naïve, slow, bureaucratic, or fatally allergic to obvious danger. That can become frustrating when the audience already knows the First Order is waiting down the historical hallway like a bad sequel-shaped omen.

Weaver gives Ward some spine.

She plays the role with clipped authority, less “space bureaucrat” and more “old soldier trying to build a government out of scrap metal and survivor’s guilt.” Her presence helps the film avoid turning the New Republic into a punchline, even if the script still uses institutional weakness as one of its central engines.

The best thing about Ward is that she feels like someone who knows victory is not the same thing as stability. The Empire is gone, technically. Its shadows are not. Its habits are not. Its officers, weapons, money, and loyalists are still drifting through the galaxy like poison in the water.

Weaver gives that reality weight. Her performance helps the political backdrop feel less like franchise homework and more like a galaxy-wide hangover after decades of authoritarian violence.

The Villain Problem

The villain side of The Mandalorian and Grogu is the one area where the film could have pushed harder.

The Imperial remnant material continues the Mandoverse’s long march toward explaining how the galaxy slides from Return of the Jedi into the sequel trilogy’s political failure. There is value in that connective tissue, but it also risks making every story feel like it is filing paperwork for The Force Awakens.

Lord Janu works as a threat, but he never becomes the kind of villain who crawls under the skin. He is functional, menacing, and appropriately Imperial, but not unforgettable.

Star Wars villains need at least one of four ingredients. Operatic grandeur. Spiritual menace. Grotesque charisma. Political horror.

Janu has fragments of those traits, but the film does not forge them into something iconic. He serves the story well enough. He does not haunt it.

That leaves the film relying more heavily on atmosphere, action, and character dynamics than villainous force. Fortunately, Din and Grogu can carry a lot of weight. A sharper antagonist would have pushed the film even closer to classic status, but the central adventure has enough momentum and heart to keep the weaker villain material from dragging the whole ship into the asteroid field.

The Action Works Best When It Stays Western

The action is muscular and cleanly staged, especially when Favreau lets physical geography guide the chaos.

The film remembers the western DNA of The Mandalorian. Ambushes. Standoffs. Traps. Beasts. Hideouts. Uneasy alliances. Deals made with one hand resting near a blaster.

When Din moves through a fight, there is still pleasure in the economy of it. He is not flashy. He is blunt force with a code. Grogu’s interventions add punctuation, sometimes comic, sometimes startling. The best sequences feel like old pulp illustrations kicked into motion.

This is where the film feels most confident. Not when it is trying to become a galactic epic, but when it lets Din do what he does best. Walk into a bad room. Read the danger. Protect the kid. Finish the job.

Star Wars does not always need to be about destiny. Sometimes it only needs a door that should not be opened, a bounty hunter dumb enough to open it, and a creature behind it large enough to make everyone regret their career choices.

Favreau understands that Din’s action scenes are not built around elegance. They are built around impact. The armor gets hit. The floor shakes. The blaster work feels practical. The danger feels local. That is where this movie finds its pulse.

The Movie Still Carries Some Television DNA

Visually, The Mandalorian and Grogu has moments of real theatrical sweep, but it cannot completely escape its television ancestry.

Some scenes have that Disney+ sheen, where the image is expensive without always feeling vast. The creatures, costumes, and environments are often delightful, yet the film sometimes feels assembled rather than discovered. Star Wars should have dust in the lens and danger in the corners. This movie gets there often enough to satisfy, though a few stretches still feel like prestige streaming scaled up for a bigger screen.

The structure also exposes the challenge of moving a streaming series to theaters.

The Mandalorian was built around episodic rhythm. A planet. A job. A monster. A moral choice. A quiet moment between Din and Grogu. Repeat with variations. That structure works beautifully on television because it allows the galaxy to feel wide and strange.

A movie needs a different kind of propulsion. It needs escalation, compression, and consequence. The Mandalorian and Grogu mostly finds that rhythm, but there are moments where its television roots show through the seams.

The important thing is that those seams do not break the experience. The film is entertaining, strange, emotionally grounded, and far more confident than many franchise continuations that arrive buried under their own expectations. It may carry some TV DNA, but it also understands why people fell in love with this corner of Star Wars in the first place.

The Cameos Mostly Work, But the Continuity Is Heavy

The screenplay tries to be accessible to casual viewers while rewarding fans who know Zeb, Rotta, Ardennians, Hutt politics, New Republic weakness, Imperial remnants, and half the back alleys of animated canon.

That is a difficult balance.

A cameo is seasoning. Too many cameos become trail mix.

To the film’s credit, most of its references are woven into the adventure rather than presented under glass with a museum plaque. Rotta has dramatic purpose. Hugo has atmosphere. Zeb Orrelios gives the wider New Republic effort some familiar muscle. These appearances do not completely derail the story.

Still, there are moments when the film feels like it is walking through a museum of its own continuity, gesturing at artifacts without always making them essential.

Modern Star Wars has a lore problem. Not because lore is bad. Lore is part of the fun. The problem comes when the story starts to feel afraid of empty space. Every corner gets labeled. Every stranger gets a backstory. Every surname becomes a thread. Every thread becomes a wiki page.

The Mandalorian and Grogu is strongest when it lets the galaxy breathe without explaining every oxygen molecule.

Thankfully, the film’s best cameos do more than nudge the audience. Rotta expands the emotional and criminal underworld stakes. Hugo gives the Outer Rim texture. Zeb makes the New Republic feel connected to the animated side of the franchise without hijacking the movie. The continuity is heavy, but rarely dead weight.

The Voice Cast Gives the Film Its Weirdest Spark

The voice casting deserves real attention because it gives the movie a tonal electricity it might not otherwise have.

Jeremy Allen White as Rotta and Martin Scorsese as Hugo are not just “famous person in Star Wars” novelties. They bend the texture of the film.

White brings bruised humanity to a Hutt, which is not an easy sentence to type with a straight face. Scorsese brings urban paranoia and comic danger to a small underworld scene. Steve Blum’s Zeb adds veteran animated-universe muscle, while Sigourney Weaver lends the New Republic a much-needed air of adult competence.

The casting suggests Favreau is not merely chasing recognizable names. He is playing with contrast, pulling voices from different cinematic and television traditions and letting them ricochet through the Star Wars soundscape.

That is exactly the kind of weirdness this franchise needs more often.

Star Wars should be strange. It should have monks and mobsters, frog ladies and war criminals, opera-house politicians and cantina philosophers, tiny cowards and giant saints. It should feel like a place where an Oscar-winning filmmaker can become a nervous alien food vendor and the guy from Shameless can make you care about Jabba the Hutt’s son.

The Film Works Best When It Stops Trying to Be Important

Despite the theatrical release, Din and Grogu do not need to save all existence.

Their magic is local.

Protect the kid. Finish the job. Help the person in front of you. Survive the trap. Do not trust the warlord. Feed the baby.

In a franchise often crushed under prophecy, that modesty feels almost rebellious. The Mandalorian and Grogu is at its most compelling when it accepts its smaller scale. Its best scenes do not scream for mythology. They find meaning in survival, loyalty, and the battered ethics of people living in a galaxy that keeps replacing one form of violence with another.

This is Star Wars as a battered lunchbox myth. Dented, warm, practical, passed from hand to hand across a dangerous galaxy.

Din Djarin and Grogu may not be enough to single-handedly restore Star Wars to box-office invincibility, but they remain one of the franchise’s cleanest emotional signals.

A father. A foundling. A job gone sideways. A galaxy full of predators. A tiny hand reaching through the dark.

Why This Movie Feels Like the Right Star Wars Reset

The Mandalorian and Grogu succeeds because it does not try to out-saga the saga.

It is not obsessed with being bigger than everything before it. It does not need to bend the Force into another philosophical knot. It does not need to turn every emotional beat into a prophecy. It finds its strength in character, texture, and momentum.

For years, theatrical Star Wars has wrestled with the burden of expectation. Every film has been asked to define the future of the franchise, redeem the past, please every generation of fan, launch new mythology, honor old mythology, sell toys, inspire debate, avoid controversy, and somehow still function as a movie.

That is an impossible cargo load.

The Mandalorian and Grogu works because its ambitions are cleaner. It wants to give Din and Grogu a cinematic adventure worthy of their bond. It wants to make the Outer Rim dangerous and funny and strange again. It wants to show a galaxy still bruised after the Empire, still full of predators, still worth protecting.

Final Verdict

The Mandalorian and Grogu is not flawless, but it is exactly the kind of Star Wars film the franchise needed: strange, heartfelt, tactile, funny, and confident enough to let the Outer Rim feel dangerous again.

It is too comfortable with continuity in a few places, and some of its villain material could have used sharper teeth. But those flaws do not sink the ship. They are scuffs on the armor, not cracks in the creed. The film’s emotional center holds beautifully, the action has that dusty western snap The Mandalorian does best, and the casting choices give the movie a weird, wonderful pulse.

Jeremy Allen White’s Rotta gives the film unexpected pathos. Martin Scorsese’s Hugo is a bizarre little gift from the cinema gods. Sigourney Weaver brings steel to the New Republic, and Din and Grogu still carry enough heart to make the galaxy feel personal, even when the stakes widen.

The Mandalorian and Grogu is a sturdy, scrappy, deeply enjoyable big-screen chapter that works because it remembers Star Wars does not always need to chase prophecy. Sometimes it only needs a wounded father figure, a mysterious child, a dirty job, and a galaxy full of trouble.

Final rating
7/10

Outside WAMU Theater, Seattle looked like somebody had ripped open a pack of black eyeliner and spilled it across the sidewalk.

The line wrapped around the venue in layers of fishnets, leather jackets, smeared makeup, dyed hair, cigarettes, platform boots, and handmade signs held like scripture by people who clearly needed this night for reasons bigger than entertainment. You could feel it before anybody made it through security. This was not just another stop on a tour schedule. This was a gathering of the loud, lonely, beautifully overdramatic, and emotionally caffeinated.

Then there were the Christian protesters. Something we don’t often run into when we do our Midwest show coverage!

Megaphones. Signs. Warnings about sin and damnation aimed directly at kids wearing chains and YUNGBLUD merch. Honestly, it only made the atmosphere feel more correct. If somebody is already condemning the concert before doors open, chances are the night is about to become legendary.

Getting inside took around thirty minutes, which honestly was not terrible considering the sheer size of the crowd and the ticket-scanning chaos happening near the entrance. Compared to the maze surrounding MCR at T-Mobile Park, WAMU felt refreshingly straightforward. Once inside, though, the venue felt smaller than expected. Not tiny, but intimate in a way that worked in the show’s favor. Less arena spectacle. More pressure cooker.

And the room was already buzzing before the first band even touched the stage.

The Warning Played Through the Dark

I had only recently heard about The Warning, the hard-rock trio made up of three sisters from Mexico, so walking into the set felt like stepping into something new without expectations attached.

Then they came out swinging.

No easing into things. No cautious opener energy. They hit the stage loud, confident, and sharp enough to immediately win over a crowd that had mainly come for somebody else. That is not always easy in a room this size, especially one already vibrating with anticipation for the headliner.

For a huge portion of the set, the stage was dark enough to feel accidental and strangely cinematic at the same time. The massive screen behind them did most of the heavy lifting while a stagehand literally held a flashlight toward the lead singer like somebody trying to document a ghost sighting in real time. A brief sound issue hit the lead vocalist and guitarist too, because apparently the tech gods decided this set needed extra adversity.

The wild thing was how little it mattered.

If anything, the darkness gave the performance more grit. The Warning powered through the glitches without losing momentum, turning technical failure into atmosphere. It stopped feeling broken and started feeling raw in the best possible way.

They even treated the crowd to unreleased material, including a new track titled “Ritual,” which felt appropriately named considering the entire set already felt like some smoky basement summoning ceremony fueled by distortion pedals and stubborn determination.

By the end of their set, I had already added new music to my playlist, which honestly is one of the best compliments you can give an opener.

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The Room Got Weird Before Dom Even Appeared

Before the main act even touched the stage, a kid got hit in the pit and somebody threw up directly in front of me.

All before YUNGBLUD.

Kind of impressive, honestly.

The room already felt overheated in every sense of the word. Excitement, adrenaline, humidity, hormones, cheap beer, cigarettes lingering from outside, bodies packed shoulder-to-shoulder under blue light. It felt less like a venue and more like the inside of a shaken soda can waiting for somebody to crack it open.

Then Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” started rolling through the speakers.

And the place lost its mind.

“War Pigs” Opened the Sermon

As “War Pigs” thundered through WAMU, the screens followed Dom backstage weaving through corridors toward the stage while the crowd screamed themselves hoarse before he had even appeared.

It felt like the opening hymn at a very unholy church service.

Then he launched into “Hello Heaven, Hello”, and suddenly the entire building changed shape.

YUNGBLUD does not really “walk onstage.” He detonates into the room.

Everything about him moves constantly. Hands, shoulders, voice, expressions, pacing. He performs like stillness would physically injure him. The second he appeared, the energy inside WAMU snapped upward so hard it almost felt visible.

And somehow, despite all the chaos, it never felt fake.

That is the trick with Dom. Plenty of artists can imitate punk aesthetics. Plenty can scream, swear, climb barricades, or wear fishnets under stage lights. Very few can make thousands of strangers feel personally seen while doing it.

That is where YUNGBLUD separates himself.

The entire show carried this cinematic pulse underneath it. Cameras floated around the stage feeding massive screens with dramatic angles and close-ups that made the performance feel larger than life without losing intimacy. Instead of distancing the audience, the visuals somehow pulled everyone deeper inside the experience.

Seattle was not just watching the concert.

Seattle was inside it.

“Fleabag” Turned the Crowd Into a Stage

During “Fleabag”, Dom brought a fan onstage to play with him, turning the performance into something loose, chaotic, and weirdly sweet all at once.

Later, he climbed onto the crowd. Not exactly crowd surfing. More like allowing the audience to temporarily crown him king of the beautifully unstable for a few minutes while hundreds of hands kept him balanced above them.

It was reckless in the classic rock-and-roll sense, but there was also trust buried inside it. Nobody underneath him wanted to let him fall.

At one point he joked about not wanting to leave Seattle for Portland later that night, asking the audience if anyone wanted to kidnap him.

I volunteer.

Purely for journalistic purposes, obviously.

“Changes” Hit Like a Farewell Letter

The emotional center of the night arrived with “Changes”, performed in honor of Ozzy Osbourne.

Earlier this year, Dom’s performance of the song during the Birmingham tribute concert earned him the Grammy for Best Rock Performance. Hearing it live made that win make perfect sense.

For a few minutes, the chaos stopped dressing itself up as chaos.

The lights softened. The crowd sang differently. Not louder. Just heavier.

And standing there under the glow of thousands of phone lights and stage beams, Dom looked genuinely overwhelmed by the amount of love coming back at him from the room. Several times throughout the night he kept muttering “holy shit” while staring out at the crowd, like the reality of all these people connecting to his music still catches him off guard in real time.

During “Changes,” it almost looked like he was trying not to break apart in front of everyone.

Not because he was weak.

Because he cared.

That vulnerability is exactly why his audience connects so fiercely to him. He creates space for people who often feel too loud, too emotional, too strange, too messy for the world around them. For one night, all of that becomes strength instead of burden.

WAMU stopped feeling like a concert venue during that song.

It felt like a sanctuary for misfits.

“Fire” Brought the Camera Down From the Ceiling

Then came “Fire”.

Dom started the song laid out across the stage while a camera lowered directly above him from the ceiling, feeding this massive overhead shot to the screens behind him. The visual looked incredible. Sweaty, theatrical, dramatic, and unapologetically seductive in exactly the way glam rock has always thrived on.

It could have felt corny in somebody else’s hands.

Instead, it felt dangerous.

The entire production balanced modern cinematic staging with old-school rockstar energy. Not nostalgia. Not cosplay. Actual rockstar energy. The kind that makes an entire room feel like it is leaning toward the stage at the same time.

“Zombie” Sent Everyone Back Into the Night Softer Than They Arrived

By the time “Zombie” closed the night, the room felt emotionally exhausted in the best possible way.

The recorded version already hits hard, but hearing thousands of voices carry it together inside WAMU made it land differently. Softer. Sadder. More human.

I might have teared up a little.

Just a little bit.

The set balanced newer material with older fan favorites well enough to keep both longtime fans and newer listeners fully locked in. But more importantly, the show never lost its emotional center underneath all the spectacle.

That is what makes YUNGBLUD work.

The cameras, the lights, the cigarettes, the screaming, the chaos, the eyeliner, the climbing into crowds, the sex appeal, the punk theatrics, all of it matters because there is still an actual human being underneath it trying desperately to connect with people.

And judging by the look on the faces leaving WAMU Theater, he succeeded.

Afterglow

Outside the venue after the show, Seattle felt quieter somehow.

Not physically quieter. There were still crowds everywhere, still traffic, still kids screaming lyrics while walking back toward parking garages and train stations. But emotionally quieter. Like everybody had collectively emptied something out during those two hours inside WAMU.

That is the strange magic YUNGBLUD seems to create.

He can turn a sold-out room into a giant chaotic family reunion for people who have probably spent most of their lives feeling out of place.

No one can honestly say he is not passionate about what he does. The energy, the showmanship, the emotional honesty, the way he pulls complete strangers together under one roof and makes them feel like they belong there, it all feels real.

YUNGBLUD is absolutely the definition of a rockstar.

But somehow, he still carries himself like a guy who cannot believe any of this is happening to him.

Ozzy would be proud.

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Every year, people try to explain Electric Forest using lineups.

And every year, that explanation falls apart almost immediately.

Yes, the music matters. Deeply. Forest consistently books one of the most eclectic and emotionally charged rosters in festival culture. You can spend an afternoon bouncing between bass music, jam bands, indie acts, house music, funk, experimental electronic artists, and surprise performances without ever feeling like the festival loses its identity.

But Electric Forest has never been just about who is playing.

It is about wandering into moments you never planned for.

It is about turning down a random glowing pathway at 2AM and discovering a hidden piano performance in the woods. It is about strangers handing you tiny handmade gifts. It is about accidentally finding a secret bar hidden behind what looked like an art installation thirty seconds earlier.

For first-time attendees, Forest can honestly feel overwhelming at first.

For returning attendees, that chaos is part of the magic.

So before Electric Forest 2026 officially takes over Rothbury from June 25–28, here are some of the artists, experiences, traditions, and hidden corners of the Forest that deserve your attention this year.

The hidden bars are worth the effort

If there is one thing every first-time Forest attendee should experience at least once, it is the hidden speakeasy culture scattered throughout the festival.

Some require scavenger hunts.

Some require passwords.

Some require interacting with performers or solving strange little puzzles hidden around the grounds.

And honestly? That effort makes the payoff even better.

Finding your way into one of these hidden spaces feels less like entering a bar and more like accidentally unlocking a side quest inside another dimension.

Inside, the atmosphere changes completely. The music shifts. The crowds shrink. Conversations get quieter and stranger in the best possible way.

You may even run into one of the artists performing that year if your timing is right.

One year, while cooling off inside one of the hidden bars tucked away in the Forest, one of the weekend’s performers casually walked in with their crew after finishing a set earlier that night. No giant celebrity entrance. No chaos. Just someone genuinely trying to enjoy the atmosphere like everybody else.

That’s part of what makes the hidden spaces at Electric Forest feel special. Once you step inside, the normal separation between artist and attendee starts to disappear a little.

Camp life becomes its own adventure

People underestimate how much of Electric Forest happens outside the actual venue.

The campgrounds are alive almost 24 hours a day.

Neighbors become friends incredibly fast. Entire campsite rows start sharing food, drinks, fans, chargers, sunscreen, and survival advice by the second day. Some camps turn into full community hubs with decorations, games, lights, couches, and open invitations for exhausted wanderers looking for a place to sit for a while.

Even the struggle becomes part of the story.

By the end of the weekend, everyone looks slightly sleep deprived, slightly dusty, and somehow happier because of it.

And honestly, there’s something weirdly beautiful about watching thousands of people collectively agree to live a little differently for four days.

The Dream Emporium and immersive spaces deserve real time

One of the easiest traps at Electric Forest is treating immersive experiences like quick photo opportunities.

Don’t.

Take your time inside spaces like the Dream Emporium and the countless interactive art installations spread throughout the grounds.

Open doors.

Talk to performers.

Read strange signs.

Participate in things that make absolutely no sense initially.

Forest rewards people who lean into the weirdness instead of rushing past it.

There are entire hidden narratives, mini-games, performances, and experiences buried inside the environment that many attendees never even realize exist.

Hydration and pacing are survival tools, not suggestions

This sounds boring until it becomes important.

Michigan heat during Electric Forest can hit hard, especially combined with constant walking, late nights, crowds, and exhaustion.

Drink water constantly.

Find shade during peak heat.

Take breaks.

Eat real food occasionally instead of surviving entirely on iced coffee and vibes.

Veteran Forest attendees understand this already. The people trying to sprint through all four days at full speed usually learn the lesson the hard way by Saturday afternoon.

Electric Forest is a marathon disguised as a party.

Treat it accordingly.

Thursday sets that could define the weekend

Thursday at Electric Forest always feels unique because the energy is still fresh. Everybody is arriving, exploring, reconnecting, and trying to figure out where the weekend is about to take them.

And this year’s opening night lineup is stacked harder than most festivals’ main days.

Excision will almost certainly deliver one of the heaviest sets of the weekend, turning the Forest into a full-scale bass apocalypse before many attendees have even fully unpacked camp. If you want massive production, earth-shaking drops, and crowds moving like tidal waves, this will be one of Thursday’s biggest moments.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Disco Lines feels tailor-made for Forest energy. His sets tend to carry that loose, euphoric, late-night dance atmosphere that thrives inside Sherwood.

Ganja White Night should also be a major draw Thursday night. Their visual-heavy style and wobbling bass feel almost engineered specifically for Electric Forest crowds.

And honestly, don’t sleep on Midnight Generation. Forest thrives on funky, groove-heavy discoveries, and this feels like one of those sets people will stumble into accidentally before suddenly refusing to leave.

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Friday belongs to GRiZ — but the undercard is dangerous

Friday may quietly end up being one of the strongest full days of the festival.

Obviously, GRiZ returning to Electric Forest is one of the biggest stories of the weekend. His relationship with Forest feels deeper than a normal artist booking at this point. Expect emotional energy, packed crowds, and one of the most anticipated sets of the entire festival.

But Friday gets dangerous once you start digging deeper into the lineup.

Passion Pit feels like the kind of sunset Forest set people will be talking about for years afterward if the timing lines up correctly. There’s something about hearing those massive indie-pop choruses echo through the trees that feels built for this environment. I once saw Hoodie Allen open for them at a small Minnesota stadium over a decade ago.

Ivy Lab should absolutely be on bass fans’ radar. Their production style leans darker and more experimental than many of the festival’s heavier acts, which makes them perfect for late-night wandering.

Meanwhile, Daily Bread feels almost guaranteed to soundtrack one of those hazy Forest moments where you completely lose track of time.

And if you want pure dancefloor momentum, Purple Disco Machine may quietly host one of the happiest crowds of the entire weekend.

Saturday looks completely unhinged in the best way

Saturday is where Electric Forest usually fully descends into beautiful chaos.

This year looks no different.

Madeon returning to Forest feels huge. His live performances balance emotion and spectacle in a way that fits Electric Forest perfectly, especially once the lights fully take over Sherwood at night.

Then there’s the absolute fever dream of DJ Diesel B2B T-Pain.

There is genuinely no predicting what that set is going to become.

It could be hilarious. It could be chaotic. It could somehow become legendary. Most likely, it will be all three simultaneously.

Chris Lake should also pull one of the biggest dance crowds of the weekend. Forest crowds tend to fully lock into groove-heavy house music after dark, and Chris Lake thrives in exactly that environment.

For bass fans, ISOxo and Kai Wachi both feel primed for explosive sets.

And then there’s The String Cheese Incident.

You cannot talk about Electric Forest history without talking about String Cheese. Their Saturday performances are basically part concert, part ceremony, part shared hallucination at this point. Even attendees who don’t normally listen to jam bands should experience at least part of a Cheese set while at Forest.

It’s tradition.

Sunday feels emotional every single year

By Sunday, Electric Forest changes emotionally.

People are exhausted. Dusty. Sleep deprived. Somehow emotional about leaving a temporary world that only existed for four days.

And Sunday’s lineup this year feels perfectly built for that bittersweet atmosphere.

Illenium is almost guaranteed to deliver one of the biggest emotionally-charged sets of the weekend. His music naturally leans cinematic already, but inside Electric Forest, those moments tend to hit differently.

Then there’s Kaskade, who feels like the perfect soundtrack for that final-night feeling Forest creates. Melodic house music drifting through Sherwood on Sunday night feels almost unfair emotionally.

Bob Moses also feels tailor-made for Forest’s atmosphere, especially if they land in a nighttime slot surrounded by glowing trees and haze.

And then there’s GRiZ returning again Sunday for “Chasing the Golden Hour.”

Honestly? That may end up becoming one of the defining sets of the entire weekend.

Golden Hour sets already carry a deeply emotional atmosphere on their own. Pair that with Forest’s environment and the final day energy of Sunday night, and it has all the ingredients to become something unforgettable.

Sherwood Forest changes after dark

During the daytime, Sherwood Forest already feels impressive.

At night, it transforms completely.

The moment the sun disappears, the entire environment starts glowing. Trees pulse with color. Art installations suddenly come alive. Hidden pathways begin pulling crowds deeper into the woods while lasers cut through the haze overhead.

There are very few festival environments in America that feel this immersive after midnight.

You are not just walking between stages anymore. You are wandering through a living art installation.

And that atmosphere changes people.

You see strangers dancing together under lights without caring who is watching. You see giant groups sitting on the ground sharing food and stories at impossible hours of the night. You see people slowing down enough to actually absorb where they are.

That’s part of what makes Forest feel different from faster-paced festivals built around nonstop movement and overstimulation.

Electric Forest understands pacing.

It gives people room to breathe.

Afterglow

Years from now, most attendees probably won’t remember every exact setlist.

They’ll remember moments.

The random conversation with strangers at sunrise.

The hidden path they almost didn’t walk down.

The artist they accidentally discovered.

The laughter back at camp at 4AM.

The silence standing beneath glowing trees after the music finally stopped for the night.

That’s the real magic of Electric Forest.

Not just the production.

Not just the lineup.

The feeling that for a few days, the world becomes softer, stranger, more creative, and more connected than normal life usually allows.

And every year near the end of June, thousands of people return to Rothbury searching for that feeling again.

Most of them find it.

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In my first-ever podcast appearance, I discussed “the death of DEI” with the panel featured on this week’s episode of the Conversation 2B Had podcast, hosted by Chalo and Rashon.