There are some bands you expect to find in Sioux Falls. Codefendants is not necessarily one of them.

South Dakota does not often fall directly into the path of a band colliding punk, underground hip-hop, acoustic songwriting and sharp social commentary into something its members have called “Crime Wave.” Yet there they were at The Den, setting up in the same room where Sioux Falls regulars drink, talk over amplifiers and recognize half the people standing near the stage.

Nightshield opened the night before Aliens Do Exist swung the room toward the pop-punk side of the equation. The order created its own crooked little history lesson. Sioux Falls hip-hop came first. Familiar punk songs followed. Then Codefendants stepped into the overlap and began tearing down whatever boundaries remained.

Sioux Falls makes the introduction

Calling Nightshield a local opener would flatten the history standing at the microphone.

He has been part of South Dakota hip-hop since before streaming platforms made regional scenes searchable from anywhere. A three-time Native American Music Award winner, Nightshield has spent decades working inside Native hip-hop as a performer, promoter, collaborator and builder. His ninth album, “Handsome Devil”, arrived in 2025, extending a catalog that reaches back through several different eras of independent music distribution.

That history gave his place on the bill more weight than a routine opening slot. Codefendants came to Sioux Falls carrying a hybrid of punk and hip-hop, but the city did not need outsiders to introduce that collision. Nightshield had already spent years pushing South Dakota rap beyond whatever narrow expectations outsiders placed upon it. His appearance gave the show a hometown foundation.

Aliens Do Exist followed by moving the crowd toward a different strain of local memory. The Sioux Falls band has built its identity around Blink-182 and a wider collection of 1990s and early-2000s alternative rock, pop-punk and emo. Those songs arrive with their own luggage. Burned CDs. High-school parking lots. Questionable hair decisions. Relationships that probably survived three months longer than they should have because somebody put the right song on a mix.

The band’s usefulness goes beyond imitation. Aliens Do Exist can operate as a tribute act, a bar band, a live-karaoke engine or an opening act capable of loosening a room before a touring punk group takes over. Their set at The Den gave the audience something familiar to grab onto.

Ceschi Ramos had traveled from Germany before a member of Aliens Do Exist picked him up from the airport and brought him to the venue. An international arrival had been reduced to one of the oldest rituals in independent music. Somebody lands somewhere unfamiliar. A local musician receives the message. A ride appears.

While Aliens Do Exist was playing, Jamie led us through the noise to meet Ceschi. Calling it a conversation would be generous. The music was too loud for introductions to survive beyond a few words, so we exchanged soft smiles, handshakes and glances before everyone returned to their original locations.

Sometimes that is all a show allows. You meet someone without really meeting them, then hope the music fills in whatever the room swallowed.

A few minutes later, Codefendants would begin saying plenty.

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Everybody can eat

Codefendants repeatedly returned to an idea that has become difficult to discuss without people reaching for political labels before they have listened. There is enough for everyone to eat. The problem is not always scarcity. Sometimes the problem is the people hoarding the meal.

The band did not dress the point in academic language. They spoke about it plainly, with the understanding that most people in a small music venue already know what it is like to watch somebody else collect more than they could ever use while others are told to accept less.

Ceschi comes from a long history of underground hip-hop, experimental songwriting and do-it-yourself releases. He co-founded Fake Four Inc., an independent label created to release music that rarely fits comfortably into one section of a record store. King brings the torn-throat urgency of punk into the same space.

Clean vocals and gruff vocals are often treated as opposites, as though one provides beauty while the other supplies aggression. Ceschi and King make that separation seem useless. The clearer passages can carry the ugliest truths. The rougher voice can be the one offering reassurance.

“Lifers” refuses the easy version

The acoustic version of “Lifers” became one of the night’s defining moments. Slowing the song changed the way its words reached the room. Without a dense arrangement pushing everything forward, the verses had nowhere to hide. Each line arrived with more space around it, leaving the crowd to sit inside its implications.

The title works in more than one direction. A lifer can be somebody who has dedicated everything to a calling. It can also describe somebody serving a sentence with no expectation of release.

Codefendants leaves those meanings pressed together. Commitment and confinement become difficult to separate. You stay because this is who you are. You stay because you no longer know where else you could go.

The song looks at self-destruction without turning it into romantic decoration. It recognizes the habits people repeat even when they understand where those habits lead. It questions the systems profiting from illness, fear and dependence, then turns the accusation back inward.

During the acoustic arrangement, that refusal became harder to ignore. The slower pace made the song less of an attack and more of an admission. “We’re in this for life” could sound like a pledge one moment, then a diagnosis the next.

As the song continued, Ceschi’s guitar strap began refusing to remain attached. It slipped loose with the stubborn timing of an object determined to prove that punk rock should never become too orderly. He secured it, continued playing and eventually had to contend with it again.

Nothing about the performance depended on pretending the machinery was flawless. Codefendants allowed the loose strap, the room noise and the awkward pauses to remain part of the night. The song did not lose its meaning because the equipment misbehaved.

Brutal enough to be beautiful

“Brutiful” brought more movement from the crowd and one of the strongest examples of how well Ceschi and King’s voices fit together.

Beauty and brutality are not separate conditions in the song. They coexist in the same memories, relationships and people. Its lyrics reject the comfortable fiction that heroes remain pure simply because someone needs them to be.

King’s gruff delivery gave the words physical weight. Ceschi’s cleaner passages exposed their details. Together, they avoided the usual trap of turning pain into a competition over who could sound the most wounded.

That same chemistry made the banter feel so natural. The conversation between them did not stop when the songs started. It simply changed form. Melodies interrupted verses. Shouted phrases answered quieter ones. Even when their vocal textures pulled in opposite directions, they appeared to be arguing toward the same truth.

Afterglow

Near the end, “Coda-Fendants” returned the set to its simplest and most difficult idea.

“We are all we have.”

The line is not comforting in the usual way. It removes the fantasy that some distant force will eventually arrive to straighten everything out. Nobody is necessarily coming to rescue us from addiction, grief, inequality, loneliness or our own talent for repeating the worst parts of our history.

Codefendants in Sioux Falls had seemed unlikely when the night began. By the time the final words settled, the pairing no longer felt unlikely.

It felt like three different corners of the underground recognizing each other.

It felt overdue.

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A borrowed guitar and a tour that kept moving

Before The Crane Wives could make their South Dakota debut, Brye had her own story to tell, although it was one she probably would have preferred never happened.

Brye thanked The Crane Wives from the stage for allowing her to use one of their guitars. Days earlier, after an Aug. 8 show in Colorado Springs, the trailer carrying her touring equipment and merchandise had been stolen from a hotel parking lot. Inside were roughly $22,000 worth of gear and merchandise, including the guitar she had owned since childhood. The abandoned trailer was eventually recovered. Its contents were not.

For a touring musician, there is no romantic version of that story. Instruments are tools, inventory is income and the road keeps charging you whether your trailer gets stolen or not. Brye spent part of the aftermath hand-printing replacement shirts and tote bags in a hotel room, then kept playing shows using equipment loaned by others.

So when she thanked The Crane Wives for the guitar in Sioux Falls, it landed differently than the usual opener thanking the headliner for bringing them along.

She was literally holding evidence of one band helping another stay on the road.

It also made Brye an unexpectedly appropriate opener. Her own writing has often been direct where The Crane Wives lean metaphorical. Songs such as “Diet Culture” put body image, shame and self-acceptance directly on the table, while The Crane Wives are more likely to send the same kinds of difficult feelings through forests, moons, teeth, monsters and burning houses. Brye often names the wound. The Crane Wives sometimes build a mythology around it.

Different vocabulary, similar willingness to go somewhere uncomfortable.

And after the week Brye had just lived through, simply getting onto another stage with somebody else’s guitar carried its own meaning.

Transition time proved anticipation

The Crane Wives weren’t even onstage yet.

The lights had begun changing. The stage production was waking up piece by piece and whatever restlessness had accumulated during the changeover suddenly had somewhere to go. Then Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” came over the between-set soundtrack.

The crowd sang.

Not a few people recognizing the chorus. Not the scattered mumbling you sometimes get when the house playlist lands on something everybody remembers from 2004. The room took it. Loudly.

That was probably the first warning that Sioux Falls had been waiting for this one.

Two weeks earlier, in our interview with Emilee Petersmark and Dan Rickabus, we had spent a lot of time talking about audiences. The earliest version of The Crane Wives performed Friday nights in the Chinese buffet where Petersmark and Kate Pillsbury worked. The customers hated it. One coworker memorably told Petersmark, “When you play, it annoying.” Sixteen years later, we ended that story looking ahead to the band’s first Sioux Falls appearance with one prediction: the room would not resemble that Chinese buffet.

We underestimated it.

This crowd couldn’t even wait for the band.

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The prairie gets its rock and roll folklore

Then the lights changed again.

The first Crane Wives song grabbed the room.

The second demanded it.

There was a noticeable shift in the crowd, the kind you can actually watch happen. Conversation disappeared. Bodies stopped turning toward friends. Faces pointed forward. The District got quiet enough that attention itself seemed to become part of the production.

Then came the first notes of the third song.

The room erupted.

Whatever formal introduction South Dakota and The Crane Wives might have needed was over.

This was the band’s first performance in the state, according to Petersmark from the stage, and Sioux Falls did not treat it like an exploratory first date. The show was a strong size without losing the intimacy that lets an artist actually see who is singing back at them. More importantly, these were engaged fans. They knew where songs were going. They reacted to openings before lyrics arrived. They understood the little pieces of band lore tucked between them.

The current Crane Wives describe themselves as having moved beyond their beginnings in the 2010s folk boom and into a “rock and roll era,” with Ben Zito’s bass and Dan Rickabus’ percussion underneath the twin guitar work and vocals of Petersmark and Pillsbury. That description makes considerably more sense after watching the four of them occupy a stage together.

Zito and Rickabus hold down the rear of the stage with the kind of presence that does not need to compete for attention. They create the structure that allows Petersmark and Pillsbury to move through the bluesier, folkier and increasingly rock-oriented edges of the songs. Nobody feels like hired infrastructure. All four look invested in the same version of the band.

That was something Rickabus talked about during our interview. The Crane Wives is no longer just four musicians. Petersmark called it “the machine,” meaning the members, touring crew, business and people who keep the whole thing functioning after sixteen years of doing this professionally.

In Sioux Falls, the machine briefly needed a cable.

“We have to change out a cable on the snare drum.”

A crew member walked onto the stage.

Petersmark looked toward him.

“This is Steve.”

And because this was apparently the kind of audience we were dealing with, The District immediately began chanting:

“STEVE! STEVE! STEVE!”

A technical delay became another reason to participate.

It was funny, but it also said something about the distance between this band and its audience. There wasn’t much of one.

The production followed the same philosophy. The stage had enough visual character to prove care had gone into it without turning the show into a traveling warehouse of expensive objects. The lighting and scenery carried the band’s folk-adventure identity nicely, almost like they had hauled these rock-and-roll folktales across the prairie and unpacked them for the evening.

It built a world without suffocating the musicians inside it.

Moonlight, space songs and an anchor

Then came “The Moon Will Sing”.

I had been waiting for it.

There are songs you hope make the set because they are popular and songs you hope make the set because some part of you needs to hear how they behave outside your headphones. “The Moon Will Sing” falls into the second category for me.

The song arrived as part of a three-song stretch of space-themed material and immediately became one of the emotional peaks of the night.

There was already another layer attached to it for us. During the interview, Petersmark had explained that when their friend and tour manager Steve Leaf worked on an ambient guitar part for the recording, Pillsbury told him she wanted it to sound like moonlight reflecting on a lake.

“He did it,” Petersmark said.

Now the song was happening in front of us instead of being discussed through a Google Meet window.

After that run of songs, the band unexpectedly gave Intellectual Dissatisfaction and our interview a shout-out from the stage. They specifically acknowledged the thought that had gone into the questions instead of another round of predictable band-origin prompts.

Then they played “Never Love an Anchor”.

Of course they did.

That song had occupied some of the most personal territory in the interview. Petersmark talked with us about adoption, her experience as a Korean adoptee and the years of work required to find language for feelings she had carried since childhood. She described “Never Love an Anchor” as an earlier attempt to approach those ideas through separation and the fear that loving someone might eventually hurt them.

There was something strange and satisfying about watching journalism fold back into the live experience that way. We had asked about the song. She had opened up about it. Now, days later, the same music filled The District with hundreds of other interpretations attached to it.

Rickabus had said something else during the interview about listeners finding their own meanings inside Crane Wives songs.

“It’s yours now.”

Watching the audience proved the point.

Four friends inside the machine

For all the mythology built around The Crane Wives, one of the best things about watching them is how little mystery there is about why the band works musically.

They listen to each other.

Zito and Rickabus can sit deeper inside the songs while Petersmark and Pillsbury push at their edges. The rhythm section does not disappear, but it does not fight the front line either. Bass and drums make room for two guitars, intertwined vocals and the lyrical detail that brought many of these fans here in the first place.

Then Petersmark and Pillsbury get to play.

Really play.

Their guitars can converse, needle each other and occasionally square off. There is blues in the phrasing, folk in the bones and considerably more rock in the live sound than somebody discovering the band through its older acoustic reputation might expect. At points the two women seemed to be playfully challenging one another across the stage, a guitar battle without the bloated showmanship usually implied by that phrase.

It worked because neither appeared interested in winning.

That may be the simplest description of this lineup. Four people working toward the same song.

Near the back half of the performance, “Curses” somehow found another level of energy inside a crowd that had already spent most of the evening operating near full charge.

There is history buried in that reaction.

Petersmark told us that “Curses” had once felt almost like a B-side to her. Years after its release, a fan animation sent the track spreading through YouTube recommendations, fandom communities and younger audiences. The response eventually changed Petersmark’s own relationship with a song she had performed enough times to grow tired of.

Sioux Falls supplied the live version of that story.

A song can belong to a musician for years. Then an audience takes custody of it and hands it back different.

When those opening sounds arrived near the end of the night, nobody cared how old “Curses” was or where it sat in the catalog. The room reacted like the song had been written specifically for this night.

Nobody was ready for the door

The clearest measure of a concert sometimes comes after the supposed ending.

At plenty of shows, house lights flicker and the migration begins immediately. People start calculating parking ramps, babysitters, work tomorrow and whether they can beat the merch line before everybody else has the same idea.

Not here.

The crowd stayed put.

There was no meaningful movement toward the exits. They wanted an encore and there was very little ambiguity in the request.

The Crane Wives flew back out to answer it.

Only then did a few people make the tactical sprint toward the merch table, trying to secure something physical from the night without sacrificing too much of what remained. There is a specific kind of panic in that calculation. Buy the shirt now, but absolutely do not miss the song.

Onstage, Petersmark did not treat the encore like a cooldown. Vocally, she held nothing back. Pillsbury and Petersmark went back into that playful guitar exchange, each throwing musical ideas toward the other while Zito and Rickabus kept the machinery underneath them moving.

Then, at the end, Petersmark headed toward the ADA section with a setlist.

That small gesture said all I needed to know about The Crane Wives. They don’t just portray themselves a certain way, they actually live it.

Afterglow

In our interview, Petersmark talked about the responsibility The Crane Wives feel toward their audience because, for some younger fans, one of their shows may be the first concert they have ever attended. The band asks venues about accessibility and safety because they want the experience around the songs to live up to the community forming inside them.

Sioux Falls made that idea visible.

There were fans in the ADA section with obvious mobility limitations. Elsewhere, people wore sound-reducing headphones and other hearing protection. Different people had clearly arrived with different calculations about what attending a loud, crowded concert required from them.

They came anyway.

Not because those considerations disappeared for a night. They found ways to make the room work for them because missing The Crane Wives apparently was not the preferred option.

Then the band answered that commitment in the smallest ways. A setlist brought directly to the ADA section. A crew member getting his name chanted while replacing a cable. An opener able to continue her tour because the headliner had a guitar to spare. Four musicians playing with the looseness of friends who still appear to enjoy the strange dream they built together.

And a crowd that sang the filler music because waiting quietly had ceased to be an option.

I have not seen a cult following this strong since Watsky.

Maybe that sounds strange until you remember where this band’s story started.

Sixteen years ago, people wanted The Crane Wives to stop interrupting dinner.

On Aug. 14 in Sioux Falls, the band had not even walked onto the stage yet and the audience was already singing.

They found their people.

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“FLOWER POWER, BABY.”

Etta McKinley had the slogan. The weather, for once, had read the assignment.

Rain had moved through Sioux Falls earlier in the day, leaving behind the kind of August evening people spend the rest of winter lying about. The sun came back out. A breeze hung around and kept the temperature reasonable. By the time music started at Levitt at the Falls, the lawn already held a sizable crowd, unusually healthy for the beginning of an opening set rather than the late-arriving swell before a headliner. The Aug. 15 concert paired Sioux Falls’ Etta and the Vendetta with Los Angeles roots collective Dustbowl Revival as part of Levitt’s free summer concert series.

That crowd would spend the next couple of hours getting progressively less interested in sitting down.

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Flower power before sundown

Etta and the Vendetta did not need much runway.

Led by McKinley, the Sioux Falls funk, rock and soul group has only existed in its current form since 2023, when what was supposed to be a one-off Juneteenth Festival performance turned into something the musicians decided was worth keeping around. Levitt lists Sam Enderson on drums, Victor Faini on keys, Matt Sumner and Kiran Cordes on guitar and Adam Tjaden on bass behind McKinley.

On this night, they behaved less like an opening act asking permission and more like a band aware that the lawn was already theirs to work with.

There were originals in the set, but the covers provided an easy way into the room. Their run through the Beatles’ “Come Together” leaned into one of rock music’s great collections of lyrical nonsense, the walrus-gumboots and spinal-cracker business landing inside a set already comfortable with funk. “Come Together” has always had more rhythm in its bones than its reputation as classic-rock scripture sometimes allows, and Etta and the Vendetta found that part of it.

Then somebody brought out a double-neck guitar.

There are practical reasons for owning one, certainly. There are also moments when a double-neck guitar simply announces that restraint has left the premises. This was closer to the second category.

The important measure of the set was happening several feet below adult eye level anyway. My two-year-old was moving.

Small children are brutal music critics because they have not yet learned the social obligation to look interested. They do not care about pedigree, press photos or whether somebody has been described as “genre-defying” in a bio. They either move or they do not. Etta and the Vendetta had kids moving early, and the adults were not far behind.

McKinley and company closed with Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music”, a song so culturally overexposed that performing it can become either a surrender to wedding-reception autopilot or an excuse to squeeze every possible ounce of groove out of three familiar words.

They chose the latter.

The lawn had already loosened up. Feet were moving, conversations had shortened and that early crowd no longer looked like people waiting for the main event. Etta and the Vendetta had done exactly what a local opener on a night like this should do, except “opener” felt increasingly inaccurate. They had given Dustbowl Revival a crowd that was already warm.

And then seven people showed up prepared to make sitting down seem ridiculous.

Seven people, very little empty space

Dustbowl Revival arrived with guitars, bass, drums, trombone, trumpet and enough vocal firepower to make the stage feel crowded without making the arrangements feel clogged.

That abundance is built into the band’s DNA. Founder Zach Lupetin started the group in Southern California with a Craigslist post seeking musicians interested in the same unruly collision of American roots music that still defines them.

A hopeful Craigslist ad should not have resulted in all this.

Good thing nobody told them.

The opening stretch hit with funky grooves and an immediate invitation toward the stage. Kids started moving according to whatever personal choreography childhood had supplied them.

I was grooving too, right up until my bruised ribs reminded me they existed.

The bass was doing much of the damage. Horns burst through the top, guitars jabbed from the sides and voices stacked into harmonies, but those bass riffs kept pulling everything back toward the hips.

Trumpet and trombone were not decoration. They became characters inside the arrangements, answering guitars, reinforcing vocals and occasionally arguing with everyone at once.

At some point, Levitt staff joined the show, dancing through the crowd with donation buckets instead of solemnly collecting money like utility payments.

It was strangely perfect.

The band also knew when to pull back. Just before 9 p.m., the tempo eased and the lead vocal dropped into a deeper soul register. A group with this many available sounds could easily overpack every song.

Dustbowl knew when not to.

Then the instruments started talking again.

A guitar phrase drew an answer from the trumpet. Later, trombone and bass had their own exchange. These were less traditional solos than little arguments, jokes and interruptions passed across the stage.

By the time “Feels Good” arrived, the title had become annoyingly accurate.

Groovy AF.

The crowd eventually supplied the logical conclusion:

A conga line.

Not suggested. Not planned. Just people reaching that point where following strangers around a lawn suddenly seems sensible. Once a conga line starts, any remaining pretense of cool is finished.

Dustbowl Revival had gotten them there.

Afterglow

The phrase from the beginning kept hanging around.

“FLOWER POWER, BABY.”

It would have been easy for a night built from funk, soul, brass, Beatles lyrics, Wild Cherry and a band literally named Dustbowl Revival to slip into nostalgia. It never really did. The oldest sounds onstage were being used in the present tense.

That distinction showed up in small places.

A Sioux Falls band barely three years into its life putting originals beside songs everybody already knew. A double-neck guitar appearing because apparently one guitar neck did not adequately describe the mood. Levitt staff dancing with donation buckets. A brass section trading lines rather than simply filling them. Children making up dances without checking whether anybody approved.

My ribs filing an official complaint.

And somewhere in that crowd, a conga line turning a Saturday night into something a little less orderly than it had been when everyone arrived.

The rain had already done its work before the first note. The sun came out, the air cooled and the lawn filled early. By the end, the best evidence that the night worked was not applause or a clever description of the musicianship, though there was plenty to say about both.

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By the time church bells began ringing through Bigs Bar Live Thursday night, the stage had already eaten a kick, a guitar string and a good portion of Devils on Deck’s clean bass signal. The crowd had spent stretches of the evening standing nearly motionless. One guitarist had fought his instrument. Another band had watched the sound system fight theirs. Then Caster Volor walked out, turned their backs to the room and let the drummer speak first.

A nasty opening lick cracked through the hesitation.

Now we had a rock show.

The August 13 bill paired Minneapolis shock-rock road dogs Caster Volor with two South Dakota bands operating at opposite ends of the night’s personality: the heavier Rivorium and the lighter, harmony-minded Devils on Deck. The lineup was confirmed by Bigs, and Caster Volor’s Sioux Falls stop sat directly between Hayward, Wisconsin and a two-night South Dakota-to-Iowa run through Rapid City and Cedar Rapids.

That routing would make sense later. Caster Volor performs like a band that has learned there is no guarantee the next town gives a damn who you are. So you make them.

Rivorium understood another version of that lesson.

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Heavy without the blur

There is heavy music that simply keeps adding weight until every song starts resembling the previous one. Rivorium avoided that problem almost immediately.

Mariah Skye handled bass and lead vocals while Matt Rorge worked guitar and contributed screamed vocals, leaving drummer Dave Gacke behind the kit. Sioux Falls listings have described Rivorium as metal or metal/hardcore, but the labels only get you partway there.

Skye could push into the harsher parts of the material without sacrificing the clean vocal passages surrounding them. Rorge’s screams gave her another texture to work against rather than simply doubling the aggression. There were moments when the high, cutting metal phrasing brought Judas Priest to mind, only with a woman at the center of it. Not imitation. More the same taste for a vocal line capable of cutting straight through distorted guitar.

Behind them, Gacke was impossible to ignore.

Shirtless, sweating, bandanna around his head, long hair and beard moving as much as his arms, he looked exactly like a man who had been sitting behind a drum kit for most of his life. Later, Gacke told me he began playing at 12. He is 43 now and a Sioux Falls native. Thirty-one years with sticks in your hands tends to show.

Then he put the sticks down.

For the opening of “Frozen Fire,” Gacke went directly to the drums with his hands. The change in attack was immediate. Skin against drumhead gave the opening a more physical sound before the sticks returned and the song expanded around it. It was not a stunt inserted because somebody thought the set needed one. It changed the character of the song.

That kind of decision kept Rivorium from becoming a forty-minute blunt object.

Their material has been written across a long stretch of time, and the band said the members have been playing together since 2018. You could hear some of that accumulation in the set. The songs did not all seem interested in solving the same problem. Tempos shifted. Skye moved between clean singing and harsher delivery. Rorge stepped into the vocal picture when another voice was useful. Gacke could hammer away, then suddenly become the most subtle person onstage.

Together, the songs began to suggest sequence rather than inventory. One fed the next.

Rivorium has been working toward a full album, with the band hoping for an early 2027 release, possibly spring. That follows a recording break earlier this year before they returned to Sioux Falls stages.

On Thursday, they sounded ready for a record that lets the songs disagree with each other a little.

That is usually where the interesting stuff starts.

When the room fights back

Devils on Deck came out sounding almost cheerfully strange by comparison.

Their opening number had a scratchy, quirky rock feel that announced the tonal change without apology. The South Dakota band describes itself as working across classic rock, ’90s alternative and punk alongside original material, and that looseness fits. Christin’s lead vocals sat comfortably inside the lighter indie-rock side of the set, and she occasionally picked up a tambourine while the guitars filled out the edges.

Then the sound started going sideways.

Clipping began creeping into the mix. A persistent bass hum sat through roughly half of what should have been one of the band’s liveliest songs. Whatever was happening in the system, it flattened some of their attack and made the band sound smaller than the people playing.

There is a point where criticism has to know who it is criticizing. That song did not stumble because Devils on Deck suddenly forgot how to play it. The sound did them no favors.

The drummer lost a kick partway through. They kept going.

The next song was better.

That recovery also exposed what the set had been trying to show before the technical problems barged in. The bassist remained fairly stiff visually, but the lead guitarist played with his whole body, pushing into parts instead of standing over them. A later solo finally gave the guitar enough room to cut cleanly through the room, and it was one of the first moments when Bigs visibly seemed to wake up.

The real selling point, though, was the vocal harmony.

Christin did not need to overpower the band because the voices worked better stacked. When those harmonies were clear, Devils on Deck sounded much more distinctive than they did when everything depended on guitar volume. Their songs have an easygoing quality, but the vocal arrangements gave them something underneath the lightness.

Then came the song written by Christin’s husband.

Specifically, a song he wrote so his wife could sing about eating pussy.

There really is no tasteful euphemism that improves that sentence.

It fit the band’s sense of humor, and maybe the guitar gods appreciated the joke because shortly afterward his string broke in the middle of a song.

Apparently, this has happened before. During the 2025 South Dakota Battle of the Bands, where Devils on Deck were finalists, he broke a string, fixed it, came back and managed to break another one. Thursday’s failure therefore felt less like disaster and more like a recurring character in the band.

Some nights the equipment is just going to get its verse.

Devils on Deck never completely conquered a room that remained frustratingly still for much of the set, but the harmonies, humor and recovery after the technical mess showed more about the band than a perfectly behaved PA probably would have.

Then the lights shifted.

Church bells rang.

Welcome to the freak show

Voices followed the bells, choral and vaguely liturgical, singing in Latin while Caster Volor stood facing away from us.

For a band whose public identity is built around shock rock and theatrical hard rock, the entrance showed some welcome restraint. No immediate sprint to the front. No demand for applause. No speech telling us how dangerous this was all going to be.

They let anticipation do a little work first.

Then drummer Niko Aguilera opened it up.

The difference in presentation was immediate. Clean attack. Tight changes. Bodies moving with purpose. Alexsander “Caster” Volor out front, Steven “Pöllixx” Volor on guitar, Aguilera hammering from behind them. The current Caster Volor lineup also includes backing vocalist Kaitlin Rose.

If Rivorium occasionally suggested Judas Priest, Caster Volor practically invited the comparison inside and poured it a drink. Their own biography names Priest among the influences, alongside Mötley Crüe, W.A.S.P., Alice Cooper, Rob Zombie and Rammstein. More important, they understood the old heavy-metal bargain behind those bands. Big riffs are good. Big riffs attached to a visual somebody remembers tomorrow are better.

Caster began testing just how willing Sioux Falls was to play along.

“How do we feel about Russian lesbians?”

A beat.

“They’re an endangered species that need our support”

And into t.A.T.u.’s “All the Things She Said” they went.

The cover made perfect sense once it started. That melody was already built for melodrama. Caster Volor simply replaced the early-2000s electronic pulse with harder muscle and treated the chorus as something designed to be shouted back at a stage. The band openly lists t.A.T.u. among the less obvious artists it pulls into its cover repertoire.

Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” worked for the opposite reason. That one already belongs in this world. Caster Volor did not need to reinvent its sneer. They just had to push.

Soon the crowd was actually participating instead of observing.

There was a birthday to deal with too. Caster’s birthday was coming Saturday, so Sioux Falls got pulled into the celebration early. It was one more excuse for the barrier between performer and audience to get kicked around.

And then the guitarist climbed onto the vocalist’s shoulders.

Because apparently standing on the stage was no longer sufficient.

That physical showmanship is not incidental to Caster Volor. Their official material describes the band as a theatrical production as much as a musical one, with an industrial stage presentation and a deliberately oversized approach to hard rock. Bigs did not require all the hardware for the attitude to survive. The members themselves supplied enough movement.

Even their stupidest joke had commitment behind it.

At one point, the band began arguing about whether they were really going to finish playing the “piece of shit” pop song they had wandered into.

Yes, they were.

Caster Volor recorded its own version of LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” in 2020, and hearing hard-rock musicians behave as though they had accidentally discovered themselves inside “party rock is in the house tonight” is exactly as ridiculous as it should be. The trick is that the band plays the joke straight enough musically for it to work.

That distinction runs through their whole set.

Caster Volor can be sexually suggestive, deliberately offensive and proudly juvenile. They can throw middle fingers, say things designed to get somebody’s aunt angry and turn pop songs into punchlines. But the playing underneath it is disciplined. Without that, the act collapses into dudes wearing black leather saying naughty things.

“Black Leather Middle Finger” proved the point.

The song has been part of the Caster Volor catalog since the 2018 debut EP and returned on 2025’s Paracosm. On Thursday it came with a drum solo that briefly stripped away the comedy and left percussion to carry the room. Aguilera made good use of it, not merely playing louder but turning the solo into another piece of stage punctuation.

Then came Drowning Pool’s “Bodies”.

Subtle, it was not.

Nobody had asked for subtle.

By then Caster Volor had already shown why its cover choices work. The band does not treat the set like a jukebox. A pop hit, a metal staple and a t.A.T.u. song all get dragged into the same grubby theater until they belong to the same people.

The originals have to survive beside songs an audience already knows. “Black Leather Middle Finger” did. So did “Hard R,” which closed the night and opens the band’s 2025 Paracosm EP.

That was the smarter closing choice.

A cover can win a room. An original has to send it home.

Afterglow

A few hours earlier, Rivorium’s Dave Gacke had put his drumsticks down and opened “Frozen Fire” with his bare hands.

Later, a kick disappeared. A bass signal hummed where it was not invited. A guitar string snapped. Devils on Deck kept playing. The room resisted them for a while. They kept playing too.

Then Caster Volor arrived with church bells, Latin voices, middle fingers, shoulder-mounted guitarists and a catalog that somehow found room for t.A.T.u., Drowning Pool and LMFAO without making the originals feel like the bathroom break.

There was plenty Thursday night that was messy.

That is different from forgettable.

The cleanest moment might have been Caster Volor’s opening drum lick, but the night was more accurately represented by everything that had happened before it. Musicians adjusting. Hardware failing. Songs changing shape. A crowd taking longer than expected to come alive.

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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 22 doesn’t ask us to pretend suffering is painless. It teaches us to bring our pain honestly before God, then breathe deeply of the gospel that points us to Jesus.

Based on the sermon by Noel Heikkinen, Connection Church Sioux Falls, August 9, 2026.

The Psalm That Gives Suffering a Voice

This week, Connection Church welcomed a familiar voice back to the pulpit. Noel Heikkinen, Lead Pastor of Riverview Church in Lansing, Michigan, has preached at Connection before, and judging by this sermon, I hope it won’t be his last visit.

As part of our Summer in the Psalms series, Noel took us into Psalm 22 with a sermon titled “Exhaling Pain, Inhaling Grace.”

It was an appropriate title for a Psalm that refuses to hide the reality of suffering.

Before getting into the passage, Noel shared a Psalm reading plan I had never encountered. Read five Psalms each day by taking the day of the month and adding 30 to it. On the first day, that means Psalms 1, 31, 61, 91, and 121. On the second day, Psalms 2, 32, 62, 92, and 122.

By the end of the month, you’ll have worked through all 150 Psalms. The beauty of the plan isn’t simply that you finish the Psalms. It’s that somewhere along the way, a Psalm will meet you.

That’s one of the remarkable things about the Psalms. They give language to experiences we sometimes can’t articulate ourselves. Joy, fear, anger, gratitude, confusion, confidence, grief and hope all find a place within them.

The Psalms speak for us.

And sometimes they say the thing we desperately need to hear.

The World Behind the Text

Psalm 22 begins in anguish.

David asks why God seems distant and why his cries appear unanswered. Psalm 22:1, ESV

This shows us that Biblical faith doesn’t ask us to hide, minimize, or clean up our suffering.

There’s a temptation, especially among Christians, to believe that expressing pain is somehow evidence of weak faith. We can feel pressure to skip immediately to the happy ending. We know God is sovereign. We know Jesus saves. We know resurrection is coming.

All of that is true.

But Psalm 22 reminds us that knowing those truths doesn’t mean we stop hurting. David doesn’t hide his suffering from God. He brings it directly to God.

And then something even more significant happens when we read Psalm 22 through the lens of the gospel.

The New Testament repeatedly connects the language of Psalm 22 with the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus Himself cries out the opening words of the Psalm from the cross in Matthew 27:46.

The Psalm begins with abandonment and anguish, but it doesn’t end there. It eventually moves toward confidence, praise and proclamation among the nations.

The Christian doesn’t look at suffering and say, “This is fine.”

The Christian looks at suffering and says, “This is not the end.”

Walking the Passage

Psalm 22 is intense from the opening line.

David feels forgotten. He describes enemies surrounding him. He feels mocked, physically broken and utterly overwhelmed. The language is visceral because suffering is visceral.

Then we reach verses 16 through 18.

The imagery becomes strikingly specific. The Psalm describes enemies surrounding the sufferer, physical affliction, and the dividing of garments by casting lots. Those details find a remarkable correspondence in the crucifixion narrative. Matthew 27 describes Jesus being mocked, crucified and having His garments divided by casting lots.

This is where the gospel changes how we read Psalm 22.

Without the gospel, the imagery can feel strange and disconnected. With the gospel, we see the suffering servant of the Psalm pointing us toward the suffering Savior.

But there’s an important distinction here.

Psalm 22 was written as a Davidic Psalm of suffering. We shouldn’t flatten David’s original experience and pretend he was simply writing a detailed screenplay of the crucifixion. The Psalm speaks honestly about David’s suffering in its own historical setting.

At the same time, the New Testament teaches us to see Christ in the Scriptures. Jesus is the greater Davidic King, and the crucifixion brings the Psalm’s suffering imagery into breathtaking focus.

That’s not proof texting. It’s reading Scripture the way the New Testament teaches us to read it.

Jesus didn’t merely experience suffering in some generic sense.

He entered into it.

He was mocked. He was rejected. He was crucified.

And He did it for us.

A Fair Counter-Reading

There’s a danger in reading every difficult Old Testament passage as though its only meaning is a prediction of Jesus. Psalm 22 should first be respected as a real prayer from a real sufferer.

David’s pain wasn’t imaginary. His enemies weren’t theoretical. His anguish wasn’t merely an illustration.

That should shape how we approach our own suffering. We don’t have to pretend that pain is less painful because we know how the story ends.

But neither should we stop at David.

The New Testament explicitly places Psalm 22 alongside Jesus’ crucifixion. Matthew’s account gives us the mocking, the crucifixion and the division of Jesus’ garments.

The result isn’t that David’s suffering becomes irrelevant.

It’s that Christ enters the story as the One who suffers perfectly and ultimately.

The Turn

This is where Noel’s image of breathing becomes so helpful.

We need to exhale the emotional garbage that weighs us down. Not because our emotions are garbage. The garbage is what suffering can cause us to carry when we refuse to bring it to God. Bitterness. Fear. Anger. Shame. Resentment. Despair. The endless mental replay of everything that went wrong.

Psalm 22 gives us permission to exhale.

Tell God you’re hurting. Tell Him you’re confused.

Tell Him you’re angry. Tell Him you feel forgotten.

Then inhale gospel truth.

God hasn’t abandoned His people. Jesus knows suffering firsthand.

The cross wasn’t an accident.

The resurrection means suffering doesn’t get the final word.

Even Jesus’ cry of abandonment in Matthew 27 is connected directly to Psalm 22. Matthew 27:46, ESV

The gospel doesn’t tell us that everything will immediately feel okay. It tells us that Jesus is enough even when everything around us isn’t.

Noel ended with a statement that I don’t think I will forget. Jesus makes everything okay, but our definition of okay is broken.

Maybe that’s the deeper lesson. We often define “okay” as comfort.

God defines it through Christ.

We want the pain removed.

God gives us a Savior who entered the pain.

We want circumstances fixed.

God gives us Himself.

We want answers.

God gives us Jesus.

And perhaps that’s why the Psalm eventually turns outward toward praise and proclamation. The sufferer who has encountered God’s faithfulness doesn’t keep it to himself.

The gospel changes what comes out of us because it changes what we breathe in.

Carry It Into the Week

If Psalm 22 teaches us anything, it’s that suffering should move us toward God, not away from Him.

So this week, pay attention to what you’re carrying.

What are you holding inside because you’re afraid to say it out loud?

What pain have you decided you simply need to “get over”?

What fear keeps replaying in your mind?

Exhale it.

Bring it to God. Then replace the noise with gospel truth.

Remind yourself who Jesus is.

Remind yourself what He accomplished.

Remind yourself that the cross was not defeat.

Remind yourself that resurrection is real.

And then let that truth move outward.

Because when the gospel becomes real to us, we can’t help but talk about it.

There’s sometimes a fear that we will become annoying Christians if we talk about Jesus too much. We worry about what people will think. We worry about being rejected. We worry about making someone uncomfortable.

But our calling isn’t to make everyone comfortable.

Our calling is to faithfully declare the truth.

That includes something as ordinary as Sunday morning worship.

When we sing, we’re not simply creating a personal emotional experience. We’re glorifying God together. We’re proclaiming truth. We’re showing the people around us what we believe about the God who saved us.

Connection Church describes its Sunday gatherings as a place where the church family worships Jesus, sings praise, hears God’s Word and is transformed by the gospel.

So sing.

Even when you don’t feel like it.

Sing when life is good.

Sing when life hurts.

Sing because God is worthy.

Sing because someone beside you may need to hear the truth you’re proclaiming.

And when suffering comes, remember how to breathe.

Exhale the pain.

Inhale the gospel.

Look to Jesus.

Song of the Week: My Everything - Lecrae

I’m not the biggest hip hop fan anymore, but artists like Lecrae keep drawing me back to the genre and give me a reason to dip my toe back into it. “My Everything,” released just this year, is one of those songs. We could spend days talking about the lyrical content found in the two verses, but for me, the heart of the song is found in the hook, “Lord of the highest, I can’t deny it, you are everything, everything to me.”

I continuously pray that those words would become more than just lyrics I sing along to. I want them to become truth in my heart. I want to genuinely be able to say that Jesus is everything to me, not simply when life is going well, but when things are difficult, uncertain, frustrating, or painful. Jesus gave everything for me. He willingly went to the cross, took the punishment I deserved, and conquered death so that I could have new life in Him. If He was willing to give everything for me, then my desire should be to make Him everything in my life.

And yet, I know how often I fall short of that. Time and time again, the world snakes its way back into my thoughts, my desires, and my actions. Things that I know cannot satisfy me still manage to grab my attention. Comfort, entertainment, success, recognition, and countless other distractions can slowly take the place that belongs to Christ. Sometimes I don’t even notice it happening until I realize that my attention has drifted away from the One I claim is everything to me.

That’s where the gospel changes everything. My failures don’t get the final word. My past doesn’t define my future. Because of Christ, there’s forgiveness when I repent and turn back to Him. The sins I’ve committed aren’t something I have to carry forever as though I’m permanently disqualified. Christ has already paid the price.

And the future isn’t something I have to fear either. As Paul reminds us, because of Christ, our labor is not in vain, and because of His resurrection, death itself does not get the final victory. My hope isn’t found in becoming perfect on my own. My hope is found in becoming more like Christ as I continue to surrender my life to Him.

So that chorus becomes more than a catchy hook to me. It becomes a prayer, “Lord, make Yourself everything to me. Take the places where I am still holding on to the world and help me let go. Take my thoughts, my desires, my work, my relationships, my successes, my failures, and my future. Let You be at the center of all of it.”

I may stumble. I may fall. I may find myself distracted by the things of this world again and again. But the gospel reminds me that my story doesn’t end with my failures. My past can be redeemed, my present can be surrendered, and my future is secure in Christ. Jesus gave everything for me. My prayer is that, more and more each day, I would be able to honestly say that He is everything to me.

Week in Reflection

The week started off with some news regarding our Shovel or Shuttle project at Connection Church. Jonathan advised that, while getting bids for the parking lot, our initial goal of $375,000 has now turned into $425,000. That’s quite a jump, and honestly, it can be easy to look at a number like that and wonder how we’re going to get there. But at the same time, I think it’s important to step back and look at what God has already done.

In less than a year, our church family has raised $270,000 toward this project. That’s an incredible amount of money, especially when you consider that this isn’t simply a construction project. We aren’t raising money just to have a bigger or nicer parking lot. We’re trying to create more space for people to come through our doors and, ultimately, hear about Jesus. A parking lot may seem like a mundane thing when compared to the eternal significance of the Gospel, but even something as simple as providing a place for someone to park can be part of removing barriers that keep people from entering a church.

It’s been amazing to watch our congregation rally around this vision. We still have a long way to go, but I don’t want to lose sight of how far God has already brought us. I pray that we will continue to be generous, not because we’re trying to hit some financial goal, but because we recognize that everything we have ultimately belongs to God anyway. I also pray that God continues to bless Connection Church and uses this project for His purposes. This church has become a home for me, and I’m thankful for the people, the leadership, and the opportunity to serve alongside others who want to see the name of Jesus proclaimed.

That desire to see Jesus proclaimed has also been something the Spirit has been pressing on my own heart this week. I’ve really felt convicted to be more bold when it comes to talking about Jesus. Not just writing about Him or talking about Him with other Christians, but actually taking opportunities to share my faith with people who may not know Him.

One of those opportunities came during a travel gig for my photography business. I stopped for breakfast and had a waitress serving me, and while I didn’t outright start a conversation with her about Jesus, I did something that, for me, felt like a significant step. When I signed the receipt, I wrote, “Jesus Loves You.”

Was that a huge evangelistic conversation? No. Did I explain the Gospel? No. Did I even know how she would respond when she saw it? No.

But it felt good to take that step.

Sometimes I think we can become so focused on doing something big for God that we overlook the little opportunities He puts directly in front of us. Maybe that message on a receipt will mean nothing to her. Maybe she’ll throw it away without giving it another thought. But maybe she needed that reminder that day. Maybe she’s been struggling. Maybe she’s been questioning whether God sees her. I don’t know what God might choose to do with something as simple as those three words, but I do know that I want to become more willing to take those opportunities when they come.

And perhaps that’s what God is teaching me right now. Boldness doesn’t always begin with standing in front of a crowd and preaching. Sometimes it begins with simply being willing to say something.

At the same time, this week has also reminded me that spiritual growth doesn’t mean I suddenly stop struggling with sin. In fact, it can almost feel frustrating to experience such closeness to God, to feel so encouraged in my faith, and then turn around and fail again in the same areas.

I know what I need to do. I need to flee.

The problem is that “flee” is much easier to say than it is to actually do when temptation arrives. In the moment, sin can still feel appealing, even when I know exactly where it leads. I know that whatever satisfaction it promises is temporary. I know it will never fulfill me. And yet, I still find myself falling into the same traps.

That doesn’t make the failure any less painful, but it does remind me that I can’t fight sin by simply relying on my own strength. I need Christ. I need His Word. I need prayer. I need to recognize the escape routes He provides instead of convincing myself that temptation is too strong to resist.

I’m thankful that God doesn’t abandon me when I fail. His grace doesn’t give me permission to continue in sin, but it gives me the ability to repent and get back up when I do. I pray that my repentance would be genuine and that my heart would continue to grow in its desire for Him. I pray that when temptation comes, I would recognize the ways He provides for me to flee instead of ignoring them.

This week has been a mixture of encouragement and conviction. I’ve seen God moving through my church, watched people give generously toward a vision bigger than themselves, felt the Spirit pushing me toward greater boldness, and yet I’ve also been reminded of just how much I still need Jesus.

Maybe that’s the point.

The goal isn’t for me to become good enough that I no longer need Him. The goal is to become more aware of just how much I need Him every single day. I want to be more generous, more bold, more obedient, and more willing to flee from sin. But above all, I want those things to flow from a heart that is becoming more in love with Jesus.

So I’ll keep taking the small steps. I’ll keep looking for the opportunities God puts in front of me. I’ll keep repenting when I fail. And I’ll keep trusting that the God who has already brought me this far will continue to lead me where He wants me to go.

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

What do Bigfoot, a blue canoe, a five-time championship dessert and a Monkee have in common? One packed Thursday night on the Cathead Stage.

Most of my week is spent around the house. Then Thursday arrives, and somewhere between Thursday and Saturday the routine changes. That is music time — time to get out, support the scene, make connections and capture what is happening while it is still happening.

The route north was familiar on July 30. The destination was different. The purpose was not.

This time, I was headed to the Blue Canoe in Tupelo for Sasquatch Training Ground. Same trip north, different landing. There was no water anywhere in sight, but when the venue has a name like Blue Canoe and the band waiting inside is named Sasquatch Training Ground, you accept that normal directions have already failed.

So, let’s get the canoe.

No water required

Blue Canoe has been part of Tupelo’s live-music life since 2011, the kind of room where young artists can test themselves in front of people close enough to notice every choice. The Cathead Stage has hosted names that later grew far beyond it. Tyler Childers, Sturgill Simpson, Lukas Nelson and the Red Clay Strays are among the acts tied to its history. Christone “Kingfish” Ingram has played there too, before his schedule carried him onto some of the biggest blues stages in the world.

That kind of list can make a small venue sound like a waiting room for future fame. It is better than that. A room earns its place in a scene by giving musicians somewhere meaningful to play before the rest of the world decides to pay attention. Blue Canoe has done that long enough for the evidence to be hard to ignore. Even Garden & Gun spotlighted the venue, describing it as a classic Mississippi juke joint.

The kitchen has its own headliner. Connie’s Blueberry Doughnut Bread Pudding, made with blueberry doughnuts from Tupelo institution Connie’s, has won Mississippi Magazine’s Best Dessert title five times. There is the championship dessert from the opening question. Around here, apparently even the bread pudding has a résumé.

One of my favorite examples of what the room can mean came on May 1, 2025, when Buffalo, New York jam band Organ Fairchild recorded a live set at Blue Canoe. They had performed in New Orleans during Jazz Fest and picked up the Tupelo date on the way home. I was there. They were a great bunch of guys, and I walked out a fan. Sometimes a stop added to finish the drive becomes the part somebody remembers.

Blue Canoe’s past is impressive, but old booking calendars do not fill a room on a Thursday. The band playing tonight still has to do that.

Sasquatch Training Ground did.

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The training ground fills up

Northeast Mississippi had already put together a strong week for live music. Five nights earlier, Creed’s Summer of ’99 Tour had hit the newly renamed Huntington Bank Arena, playing what friends who attended described as a sold-out show. Reports from the smaller rooms had been just as encouraging. By Thursday, that momentum had moved from the arena to North Gloster Street.

When I walked into Blue Canoe, the room was already packed. Very few seats remained, and Sasquatch Training Ground had not played a note yet. That detail says more than a dozen promotional adjectives could. People had made plans to be there.

The Tupelo-based Sasquatch Training Ground lineup is Jeff Houin on bass and vocals, Jeff Spencer on guitar, Todd Hunt on drums and Rex Harsin on guitar and vocals. Rock, blues and funk form the center of what they do, but the set on this night reached into reggae, heartland rock, country, British hard rock, rockabilly and funk without stopping to explain the changes. Four players, two guitars and enough familiar songs to turn a crowded room into a training session where everybody already knew part of the lesson.

I counted somewhere between 17 and 20 songs. Yes, I lost track. I got caught up in the room, and I spent part of the night talking with new connections in the crowd. A perfect set-list count would have required behaving like an accountant. Nobody came to the Cathead Stage to audit Sasquatch.

The sheriff goes down and Elvis comes home

The opening lesson was “I Shot the Sheriff”, the Bob Marley song that has spent decades passing between reggae and rock audiences. It was a useful declaration of intent. Sasquatch Training Ground was not going to stay inside a single genre, and the band did not need a long runway before testing how quickly the room would follow.

A run of Tom Petty material came next, including “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”. Petty’s catalog works in a bar because the songs leave room for both kinds of listener — the person paying attention to every guitar turn and the person who only realizes halfway through the chorus that the words never left. On a night built around recognition, it was an easy fit without feeling like filler.

The first set closed with “That’s All Right”, Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s song forever connected to Elvis Presley’s first Sun single. In another town, it would have been a foundational rock ’n’ roll cover. In Tupelo, the song carries a hometown address. The band did not need to build an elaborate tribute around it. Playing it on the Cathead Stage was enough — a nod to the King in the city where his story began, then the first lesson was over.

There is a difference between playing old songs and knowing where to place them. Ending that set with Elvis in Tupelo showed the band understood it.

Honky-tonk women, werewolves and one long jam

The next lesson began with “Honky Tonk Women”, one of my favorite Rolling Stones songs. The crowd’s response made it clear I had company. Some riffs announce themselves so quickly that people react before they have time to decide whether they are going to react. This was one of those moments.

Then came Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London”, a song that becomes more fun as the number of people hearing it increases. Zevon wrote a dark joke with a piano hook, but crowds have spent decades turning it into a communal cue. In a room already gathered for Sasquatch, the werewolf did not have far to travel.

Free’s “Wishing Well” gave the band more open space. Sasquatch Training Ground treated it as a beginning-to-end jam, turning a familiar hard-rock frame into one of the night’s real musical stretches. The pleasure was not simply hearing a song people knew. It was hearing the band stay inside it long enough for the tune to loosen its grip and the players to take over.

That is where a cover band can reveal whether it is merely collecting recognizable titles or actually listening to one another. “Wishing Well” did not feel checked off. It felt explored.

The country singalong arrived with “You Never Even Called Me by My Name”. Its authorship is a little messier than barroom memory tends to allow. Steve Goodman holds the official credit, John Prine helped write it and David Allan Coe made it famous. None of that history had to be announced from the stage. The crowd knew its assignment. People rocked, swayed and joined the singing, exactly the response the song has been built to draw from crowded rooms for half a century.

The band was not playing at the audience. For a few minutes, the audience became part of the arrangement.

A Monkee joins the hunt

The answer to the final part of the opening question was already in the room. Matt Nolan of the Spunk Monkees was in attendance, and he joined Jeff, Jeff, Todd and Rex for the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me”.

One minute Nolan was part of the crowd. The next, he was inside one of rock music’s most instantly recognizable riffs. That guest spot worked because it did not feel imported for spectacle. It came from the same local network already standing around the stage. A musician showed up for another local band, then stepped in and played. No grand speech was necessary.

The song itself leaves nowhere to hide. Its central figure is blunt, distorted and immediate, and the whole performance either locks around it or does not. With Nolan added to the lineup, the moment carried the loose pleasure of friends making use of an opportunity while the crowd got the payoff.

Sasquatch Training Ground turned toward funk for the final lesson. Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” kept bodies moving, and “Superstition” followed with one of popular music’s most durable rhythmic hooks. My notes list another song as “Get Hott” [title verification needed] before the band closed with Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode”.

Very few people had left.

That closing run made sense of the whole night. Marley, Petty, Elvis, the Stones, Zevon, Free, country, the Kinks, Wild Cherry, Stevie Wonder and Chuck Berry all landed in the same set without Sasquatch Training Ground pretending they came from the same place. The common element was usefulness. These were songs the band could play with, songs the crowd could enter and songs sturdy enough to survive another night in another room.

“Johnny B. Goode” brought the class to an end with rock ’n’ roll reduced to its essential equipment — a guitar, a beat and the belief that somebody playing in a small room might one day have a name glowing above a much larger one. At Blue Canoe, with its long list of artists who passed across the Cathead Stage before bigger rooms came calling, that old story did not sound so far-fetched.

Afterglow

I said my farewells and caught up with Jeff Spencer before heading home. The ride back is usually wind-down time, when the volume is gone and one or two moments keep replaying anyway. Often it is a song that pulls an involuntary “yeah” from somebody because they have not heard it in years. Sasquatch Training Ground built an entire night around the possibility of that reaction.

This was not my first visit to Blue Canoe, and it will not be my last. I had missed several Sasquatch Training Ground shows because other events or obligations got in the way, so finally catching the band also meant catching up with an old friend. Jeff and I go back so far there is no date attached to it. Way back. That is the official historical record.

There are arena nights when the production announces every important moment from fifty feet high. Then there are nights when the room is nearly out of chairs before the band begins, an old friend is onstage, another musician walks out of the crowd to join him and a song you had forgotten you missed suddenly returns. Northeast Mississippi needs both kinds of nights. This week, it got both.

Thanks to Sasquatch Training Ground for the music and to Blue Canoe for giving the local scene another packed Thursday on the Cathead Stage. The venue stays in the rotation. So does the band.

Another show was waiting the next night.

Until next time, get on trak with Iron Trakks Media.

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Redneck Riviera

I’m married to a drummer who plays this establishment quite often and, as a working music photographer, I find myself here sometimes more than my husband. I can truthfully say there is nothing quite like the last great American roadhouse, the Flora-Bama Lounge & Package.

The famous honky tonk sits right on the Orange Beach, Alabama and Perdido Key, Florida line. The Bama, as I call it, is quite possibly the best bar-side spectating you’ll ever have while having multiple eargasms from the synchronized basslines and pure auditory euphoria of the Redneck Riviera.

Locals and sunburnt tourists. Bachelorette parties, birthday bashes, divorce shindigs and the oldies but the goodies slinging down Bushwackers. Bikinis and board shorts. Crop tops and pantyhose. The sounds of the salty sea and frosty drinks. Music spilling out across the stages. Overhead lines inside the Dome filled with bras that have been thrown as a rite of passage, or maybe just good party antics. Graffitied walls carry messages of love, longing and remembrance that somebody was there. Band stickers cover doors, walls and soundboards, little pieces of evidence immortalizing performances at one of the most recognizable live music establishments on the Gulf Coast.

You could probably clean the place up and ruin half of what makes it worth visiting.

The vibe is like no other.

There are venues where everybody seems to arrive for the same reason. The Flora-Bama has never really been one of them. Someone came specifically for the band. Someone else wandered over because they heard a guitar through a doorway. Somebody is celebrating. Somebody is recovering from whatever they celebrated yesterday. A stranger will talk to you like you went to high school together and five minutes later disappear into another room.

Then another song starts somewhere.

That was the Bama waiting on Jackson Chase.

If the Walls Could Talk

Cluttered corners and walkways of the Tent Stage were filled with gear carts, guitar cases, drum equipment, water bottles and empty beer cans. Band members were gear checking and cutting up. Nothing looked staged for effect because none of it needed to be. This was working-musician clutter, the kind that gathers around a stage when one band is tearing down, another is getting ready and nobody has much room to do either.

The thick, hot summer air and late night at the Bama were setting up for a true Bama night. The atmosphere was definitely buzzin’ and the late-night debauchery was a-brewin’.

Austin Bohannon Band was playing under the bra line in the Dome. The legendary Alabama Big Earl was upstairs in the Main Room. Dalton Bush Band could be heard somewhere in the distance, reduced from the Tent Stage to a muffled thud and rolling crowd noise coming through the walls.

At the Flora-Bama, silence never really gets a turn.

Every doorway seemed to carry another song. Every hallway had somebody moving gear, holding a drink, looking for their people or heading toward whichever stage sounded best at that particular second. The Tent Stage had its own little world forming inside all of it, cables underfoot, musicians making last-minute adjustments and the crowd beginning to gather closer.

Then came the stage swap.

Gear moved. Levels were checked. Vocal feedback squealed through the room and disappeared just as quickly. The usual little problems of getting a live band ready were handled one by one while the rest of the Bama kept roaring around them.

There is something about watching those few minutes before a set starts. Nobody in the crowd is thinking about monitor levels or cables or whether a microphone is behaving. They are just waiting for the music.

Once everything settled into place, Jackson Chase and his band were ready to give it to them.

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Southern Soul

Jackson Chase is a native of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He has been singing since he was 3 years old, and he definitely has a flair for it. Jackson Chase’s dad, Matthew, said these guys are kinda like The Eagles meet the Black Crowes.

That’s a combo I’ve never heard before, ha!

Once the stage swap finished and the soundcheck worked out all the kinks and vocal feedback, it was on.

Chase performed a wide variety of cover songs that were reinvented enough to fit naturally into his own sound. “Santeria,” “Billie Jean,” “This Love” and “Purple Rain” were the notables. Four songs that come from very different corners of music somehow made sense together once Chase and the band got ahold of them.

It placed the crowd in the palm of Chase’s hand.

A sea of shifting faces turned toward the stage while voices came back at him word for word. You could watch people recognize a song, lean in and then stay there once the band began putting its own shape around it. The collective energy of the crowd wasn’t just something you could feel. You could see exactly where it was coming from.

Then Chase started sprinkling in several of his originals, including “Ain’t No Money,” “Purdy,” “Money Broke” and “Break It Fast.”

That should have been the point where a room full of people waiting on familiar songs wandered toward the bar.

They didn’t.

The crowd moved and vibed as if they’d listened to these songs all their lives.

That reaction said more about Chase than another cover ever could. Familiar songs may have pulled people toward the stage, but his own material kept them there. The grit in his voice, the rhythmic guitars and the Southern soul running underneath the band gave the originals enough personality that they never felt like interruptions between the songs everyone already knew.

One of those originals deserved a closer listen.

Break It Fast

Chase is planning to release his new single “Break It Fast” in September.

It is a fast-paced banger about falling for someone who might not feel the same, but the song works better when Chase doesn’t make heartbreak precious. There’s anxiety in it. Impatience too. If something is going to end badly, there is almost a plea to skip the slow torture and get on with the damage.

Chase’s lyrics describe a woman’s beauty as being “smooth as lighting”, contrasted with his heart shattering “like broken glass swept off a front porch.”

The second image is the one that stuck.

Broken glass swept off a front porch isn’t romantic. It’s ordinary and slightly ugly. Somebody still has to come along afterward with a broom and deal with the pieces. That plainspoken image suits Chase much better than some polished declaration about a broken heart. His songs feel strongest when they sound close enough to everyday Southern speech that somebody could have said the line before realizing it belonged in a song.

The lyrics were paired with an explosive backline, rhythmic guitars and Chase’s soulful, gritty tone. The arrangement kept the song moving quickly enough that its narrator didn’t have much time to sit around feeling sorry for himself. That tension between the subject and the playing gives “Break It Fast” its personality. The heart may be headed for the floor, but the rhythm section isn’t slowing down to watch it happen.

So honey, if you’re gonna break his heart, you better break it and break it fast.

The song also helped clarify what the rest of the set had been suggesting. Chase’s strongest lane isn’t pristine country and it isn’t straightforward Southern rock. There is soul in his phrasing, bite in the guitars and enough rhythmic movement underneath the songs to keep them from getting stuck in one genre.

That explains why “Billie Jean” could survive beside “Santeria,” why “Purple Rain” could show up without feeling completely absurd and why Chase’s originals didn’t shrink when they followed songs everybody already knew.

He wasn’t trying to prove he could sing anything.

He was showing what happened when everything came through him.

Afterglow

It’s always fun going back to the Bama. It’s a home away from home for me, even if it means leaving late at night, having to be at work in six hours and maybe getting four hours of sleep.

That math never looks good the next morning.

Still, the crowd is always wanting to be a part of what you are doing and what is happening onstage. It keeps things in perspective.

There is a certain point late at night when the Flora-Bama stops feeling like a collection of individual rooms. The music bleeding through the walls, the drinks moving across the bars, conversations getting louder and strangers leaning toward the stage all become one big, strange organism running on humidity, music and questionable sleep decisions.

What makes you forget about life for a while when you are under the stars on the Redneck Riviera?

Maybe it’s the bartenders pouring and serving up those feel-good drinks. Maybe it’s the sound technicians giving the bands the production they need while most of the room never thinks about how much work is happening behind those boards. Maybe it’s a band landing on the right song and bringing strangers together long enough to sing the same hook, groove, vibe and let loose.

Then some of those strangers wake up the next day, find the band’s page and buy the merch.

There is something wonderfully uncomplicated about that transaction.

The crowd was hot and Jackson Chase brought a high-energy performance built on Southern soul, authentic groove, raw edges and driving rhythms. Those words only mean something because the set showed where they came from. The grit was in his vocal tone. The groove was underneath songs that moved from Sublime to Michael Jackson without losing the identity of the band playing them. The crowd responded just as strongly when Chase stopped leaning on songs they already knew.

They mirrored him.

There is a line in Chase’s own artist bio describing his music as sounding like “a NASCAR race being held on a track covered in duck fat.”

After watching this set, there may not be a more ridiculous description that somehow makes complete sense.

It swerved. It moved fast. It got a little greasy.

Chase’s voice and songs are more soulful than they are polished, and that is exactly where they should stay. Sanding off those rough edges would remove some of the personality that made the Tent Stage work in the first place. With new music on the horizon, if you have a chance to see him, do it.

If you have a chance to experience the Bama, do it.

There is nothing quite like the good times, good vibes and doing it right on the line. A few hours earlier, those graffitied walls, stickers, bras and battered corners were just part of the scenery again. By closing time, another band had added its noise to all the noise that came before it.

Then everybody eventually has to leave.

And when you do, always remember to push the button and look both ways before you get ready to cross the line.

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By now, the drive to The Armory barely requires discussion. We know the turns. We know the routine at the door. We know the building well enough that the whole process, from leaving home to getting cameras through security, has started to feel strangely ordinary for a place capable of making several thousand people feel their internal organs move.

Saturday was as seamless as these trips get. Staff knew what was happening. Photo pit access was easy. Moving in and out never became an ordeal. Even before the music really had a chance to announce itself, the crowd did. People noticed cameras coming up and ducked out of sightlines without being asked. Someone sprouted us, clipping one of those tiny rave plants onto us as a little stranger-to-stranger hello. Sparkles moved past fanny packs, kandi, lights, elaborate costumes, layers stacked on layers and people wearing approximately enough fabric to make one sock.

PLUR was already in the building.

The official billing for SLANDER’s second Voyager night listed NGHTMRE, Prosecute, VCTRE and arman. beneath the headliner, with doors at 8 p.m. and music starting at 8:20. Once we stepped into the stage area, though, the giant screen gave us an addition the advance billing had not. ARMAN. sat above REDLINE in enormous letters, both performers sharing the opening set beneath a flood of red.

Red before the room was full

Arman and Redline caught us while we were still settling into the night. Drum-and-bass rhythms kept the floor moving while familiar pieces of pop songs appeared in forms that sounded dug out of corners we did not know existed. The appeal was less about recognizing every source than hearing something recognizable bent far enough that your brain needed a second to place it.

The opening set understood pressure, too. When the momentum started to flatten, they did not simply add more noise. They let it slacken. A phrase would stretch, the room would loosen, then the beat would pull everyone back before attention had enough time to wander.

Behind them, everything stayed red. Their names hovered over the booth while early arrivals filled the open space in front of it, creating one of those rare opening-set moments where a room still has enough oxygen to notice the people inside. EDM crowds can resemble little moving galleries of private invention. Outside of metal shows, there are few places where personal presentation gets this gloriously specific. Sparkles. Light-up accessories. Character costumes. Tiny sunglasses. Giant pants. No pants. Fanny packs worn with grave seriousness.

Nobody seemed particularly interested in asking permission to look strange.

By the time VCTRE appeared, red disappeared with him.

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VCTRE’s blue light and moving parts

VCTRE’s entrance sounded like Bumblebee’s radio had picked up a hostile station.

The screen shifted toward chrome, electric blue and black while his logo stayed visible almost continuously, changing shape and treatment as the set moved. It sounds like a minor production choice until you spend enough nights photographing opening acts and realize how often artists forget to tell the room who they are. VCTRE did the opposite. His name became part of the visual design, mutating alongside the music.

That suited him. VCTRE’s own description of his work places him between dubstep, bass music and glitch-influenced electronic production, with aggressive low end sharing space with intricate rhythm and layered synth textures. Live, the harder edges were there, but his set had more breathing room than what was coming later.

A Kendrick Lamar vocal surfaced inside the mix. Wubs stretched until they stopped feeling like punctuation and became the pulse itself. Little zips, electrical cracks and scraps of audio flickered through transitions, sometimes functioning as percussion and sometimes just adding another texture for the brain to catch before it vanished.

There was something graceful about the pacing. VCTRE could whomp when necessary, but the set did not spend its entire runtime trying to prove how hard it could hit. Here, each artist seemed to be nudging the room toward what would come next.

VCTRE finally took the microphone, thanked Minneapolis and told everyone they looked great.

Then he got out of the way.

The pit gets teeth

Prosecute arrived with demands.

He wanted a mosh pit in front of him for the next hour.

A quick microphone check followed and then the womps came directly at us. No delicate introduction. No polite little ramp upward. The screen turned into the red, black and white visual vocabulary that tends to accompany the nastier end of bass music, eventually producing that enormous red eye staring over the booth while Prosecute worked underneath it.

By roughly 10:30, The Armory had filled in both definitions of the phrase. More bodies were on the floor, but there was also that particular pre-headliner buzz where everybody has decided what kind of night they are going to have. Some came dressed to be seen. Some came to unload whatever the week had done to them. Some wanted to disappear into volume. Some were clearly there because their friends had dragged them along.

There seemed to be room for all of them.

Prosecute fed that room metal vocals, blunt breakdowns and sounds that carried traces of a grimier 1990s club vocabulary before getting chewed up by modern dubstep. He requested a circle pit. Shortly afterward came one of his collaborations with Kai Wachi, an artist connection that already carries memories for us from a dinosaur-themed festival and, somehow, North Dakota of all places. Prosecute and Kai Wachi have released more than one track together, including “CLINCH” and “Uncaged.”

The most useful thing I did in the photo pit during all of this had nothing to do with a camera.

A girl near the front needed earplugs. Security had some, so we helped get a pair to her while the stage was busy trying to rearrange everyone’s skeleton.

For his ending, Prosecute reached somewhere completely different, closing with his official remix of Mike Posner’s “I Took a Pill in Ibiza”. A song built around regret and aftermath got dragged through Prosecute’s heavier vocabulary before he surrendered the stage.

NGHTMRE was waiting.

MINDFULL, then completely unhinged

NGHTMRE did not begin by trying to out-muscle Prosecute.

He began with a short film and affirmations.

The language fit his current MINDFULL era, which expanded with a deluxe edition in 2026. The whole thing briefly asked thousands of people in a bass show to focus themselves collectively, to be present, to decide what kind of night this would become.

Then the affirmation ended with: “and I’m going to turn the fuck up tonight.”

There it was.

Lasers opened above the crowd. Cityscapes rushed across the screen. Industrial machinery, video-game imagery, enormous faces and mechanical structures kept replacing one another while white vapor cannons blasted around the stage. NGHTMRE’s visuals seemed almost unwilling to remain in the same world for more than a few minutes.

The music behaved similarly.

Hip-hop kept cutting through the heavier material, giving the set another layer of recognition. GRiZ slipped into the mix. The familiar opening of Vengaboys’ “We Like to Party!” appeared before Lil Wayne’s “A Milli” took over. One recognizable “good feeling” vocal cue barely had time to register before “Tokyo Drift” sent the room somewhere else.

By then, reporting from inside the crowd had acquired its own strange split-screen quality. On one side, someone was having what appeared to be the best night of their life. A few feet away, someone else was throwing up into a garbage can.

Both were committed to the evening.

NGHTMRE told the audience he had become something of a frequent flyer at The Armory and that its crowds never disappointed. From where we were standing, he had a case. The floor remained packed without becoming impossible to navigate and people continued making small adjustments for each other even as the show grew louder and more visually aggressive.

Then came one of my favorite turns. Flume’s “Never Be Like You” appeared, a song whose refusal to become someone else already carries its own little streak of defiance. NGHTMRE followed the familiar with his own shared history, including “FEELING GUD”, his collaboration with SLANDER and Matthew Santos.

That was where the set’s use of old material started feeling less like cheap nostalgia and more like crowdcraft.

Aerosmith’s “Dream On” cut into bass and womps. “Gangsta’s Paradise” surfaced. Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown’s “No Air” was the happy surprise I did not know I needed, especially during a recent personal relapse into early-2000s music.

DJs write with other people’s memories as much as their own records. NGHTMRE understood that. Put the right lyric on a giant screen and suddenly thousands of people become an extremely loud, questionably tuned karaoke choir.

He kept giving them reasons to sing.

Voyager at full scale

When NGHTMRE finished, SLANDER did not immediately appear.

Instead, the room sat inside a deliberately uncomfortable holding pattern. A darker little beat played between sets, something like Jeopardy music after Jeopardy had made several poor life choices. Every so often SLANDER’s name flashed across the screen for an instant, almost like a camera firing in the dark.

It worked.

Every flash reminded the room exactly what it was waiting for.

Then SLANDER arrived beneath enormous red mechanical imagery, Derek Andersen and Scott Land reduced to silhouettes in front of a screen large enough to make two human beings seem incidental. Their Voyager Night 2 production finally showed what The Armory’s lighting system had been holding back.

No laser seemed to have the evening off.

The floor vibrated hard enough that listening stopped being an activity performed exclusively by the ears. Bass moved through legs, chest and teeth. Red mechanical figures gave way to purple silhouettes, white sparks, fire columns and laser grids. The venue’s scale became part of the instrument.

SLANDER knew when not to use all of it, too.

One of the night’s most emotional sequences put footage of a vocalist across the screen while the crowd supplied the feeling underneath it. The room softened, people sang, and couples leaned into each other. Hands that had been throwing horns a few minutes earlier simply stayed raised.

Then Kendrick Lamar’s “HUMBLE.” arrived and tenderness got evicted.

Bass snapped back underneath it. The buildup kept adding weight, lasers spreading across the floor until the production suddenly pulled itself inward again. The stillness after the impact echoed NGHTMRE’s opening emphasis on being present. Whether that symmetry was deliberate or simply good sequencing, it gave the top two sets an unexpected relationship.

“First Time”, SLANDER’s collaboration with Seven Lions, Dabin and Dylan Matthew, carried another of those rises and releases. It let the room feel something without stranding it there.

Then came “Gud Vibrations”.

That one has history. NGHTMRE and SLANDER released the track together a decade ago, long before Saturday’s Voyager production was throwing fire across The Armory. Hearing it after NGHTMRE’s set made the top of the bill feel less like headliner and special guest taking turns and more like two careers that have kept crossing back into one another.

And just when everything had become enormous, serious and emotionally loaded, SLANDER gave us “Space Jam.”

Everybody smiled.

The smartest part of their set was how quickly they moved in and out of those memories. Nothing was allowed to sit around long enough to become novelty. A sentimental vocal could be replaced by a drop that gave half the floor the same bass face. A heavy run could collapse into stillness. Sweetness was usually temporary.

So was brutality.

That push and pull is where SLANDER made the scale useful. Fire is impressive. Lasers are impressive. A screen the size of a building’s interior is impressive. None of those things mean much if every song receives the same treatment. Voyager kept changing the size of its own emotions.

By the time columns of fire were climbing in front of the duo, the production looked gigantic.

By the time green lasers stretched over the audience later, the people underneath them seemed more interesting.

Afterglow

Earlier in the evening, familiarity had been the story. The familiar drive. The familiar door. The Armory staff who knew how to move people through a show without turning every interaction into an ordeal.

Hours later, after the room had been red, blue, black, purple, white, green and occasionally on fire, the things I kept thinking about were still small.

People ducked when cameras came up. Someone sprouted us. Security handed forward earplugs when a girl needed them. The crowd moved around each other instead of through each other. People picked up after themselves. At the rail, strangers screamed the same songs while dressed like they had arrived from entirely different planets.

The bass was huge. The room worked because people knew when to make space.

We say it often because we keep seeing the evidence: The Armory usually brings the right kind of crowd.

On Night 2 of Voyager, the lasers just made them easier to see.

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A welcome road trip to Rochester

It’s been a minute since I had to travel for a gig. While I’m thankful for the local work that continues to come my way, there’s something oddly calming about a multi hour drive to unwind, clear my head, and get to see some of the countryside along the way. At least during the summer, when I don’t have to spend the entire drive praying for no snow.

This particular assignment took me to Rochester, Minnesota, and the Mayo Civic Center for the second stop of the Dead/Seven Tour. Not only was this my first time visiting the venue, but it was also the first time I had even heard of the Mayo Civic Center. Thankfully, it didn’t take long for me to realize that this is a venue I would happily return to. It was a great setting for a show of this size, and the overall experience ended up being a memorable one.

That doesn’t mean everything went perfectly, though.

A little media access snafu

Getting my media pass and ticket was easy enough. Figuring out where I was supposed to put my gear during the portion of the night when I was restricted from having it was another story.

To put it lightly, it was a mess.

Thankfully, the Mayo Civic Center staff came in clutch. Levi and Bill were especially helpful, figuring things out on the fly and making some executive decisions about where my gear could go. They were incredibly kind throughout the entire process, even while trying to navigate a situation that clearly wasn’t as straightforward as it should have been.

Then there was the pit.

Usually, when I’m told pit access has been granted, that means I’ll be standing in front of the barricade with the other photographers, getting those unobstructed shots from directly in front of the stage. At this venue, however, “pit” meant the actual pit, right in the middle of the crowd.

And honestly, I loved it.

Sure, standing in front of the barricade is fantastic for photography. You can get clean shots of the musicians without having to worry about heads, phones, or the occasional person who decides they need to hold their arm directly in front of your lens. But there is something completely different about standing amongst the crowd and feeling the energy firsthand.

A good through-the-crowd shot is also hard to beat and one of my favorites to get.

Another staff member who saved the night was Emma. When I first arrived, I was given a ticket for an actual seat. That meant once I finished my time in the pit taking photos, I would have to make my way back to my seat to watch the rest of the show.

Emma noticed the in and out nature of my stay and made another executive decision, whether she technically had the authority to do so or not. She gave me a wristband that allowed me to return to the pit after my allotted photography time.

That small decision made the rest of the night much more enjoyable for me personally.

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Return to Dust starts the night

Eventually, the lights faded.

The crowd immediately erupted, because everyone knew what that meant. The show was finally starting.

First to grace the stage was Return to Dust, a band I initially didn’t think I knew. As their set progressed, however, I quickly realized that I was much more familiar with them than I thought.

Return to Dust is made up of four guys from Los Angeles who came together in 2022. Despite only being around for a few years, they have already started making a significant splash in the industry, and after watching them live, it isn’t hard to understand why.

Their sound has a nostalgic 90s grunge feel while still sounding fresh enough to fit comfortably into today’s rock scene. It feels familiar without simply being a copy of what came before it.

And their live show really helps sell that sound.

One of the biggest moments early in the set came when the band launched into Outkast’s iconic hit “Hey Ya!” The cover was a fantastic way to get the crowd moving and showed that the band wasn’t afraid to have a little fun with its set.

During the performance, the band also talked about their relatively young status in the industry, reminiscing about Sevendust bringing them along on their first ever tour in 2024.

Think about that for a second.

A band that formed only a few years ago was already out on tour with an established rock act like Sevendust just two years later.

That’s a pretty impressive start.

Octane introduced me to Return to Dust

The final two songs of their set were when everything clicked for me as I immediately recognized them. Why you ask? Because one of my favorite SiriusXM stations, Octane, plays both “Bored” and “Belly Up” regularly.

Octane has been responsible for introducing me to several bands that I still listen to today, and Return to Dust may very well be the next band to join that list.

There’s something really cool about hearing a song on the radio, recognizing it in a live setting, and suddenly realizing that the band you’ve been hearing is standing right in front of you.

If this performance is any indication of what Return to Dust is capable of, I can absolutely see myself keeping an eye on where these guys go next.

They are young, hungry, energetic, and clearly having fun doing what they’re doing. That’s a dangerous combination for a band trying to make its mark.

Sevendust turns the energy up to eleven

Having covered Sevendust just four months earlier when they played a solo show at Grand Falls Casino, I was excited to see how this performance would compare.

Would the setlist be different? Would I be able to get photos as good as the ones I captured in April?

I’ll let you be the judge of the second question.

Unfortunately, the lighting made the first three songs significantly more stressful to photograph than the previous show. The stage was much darker, which meant those first three songs became an anxiety filled game of chasing whatever light I could find.

For a concert photographer, darkness during a three song limit is not exactly ideal. But outside of my lighting frustrations, Sevendust did what Sevendust does.

They absolutely destroyed the stage.

After Return to Dust got the crowd jumping, Sevendust took that energy and cranked it up to eleven. The energy became more aggressive, and much heavier. At one point, the crowd even erupted into a circle pit at the command of front man Lajon.

That’s the kind of thing you want to see at a rock show.

A different Sevendust set

The setlist was considerably different from the band’s solo show in April, but that was to be expected.

When you have an hour and a half to perform, you have a lot more room to work with. When that gets cut down to an hour, difficult decisions have to be made.

What songs do you play for the longtime fans? What songs does the band enjoy performing? What songs need to be included because they’re fan favorites or to promote a new album?

You only have so much time to make everyone happy.

On this night, Sevendust decided to throw a bone to some of their old-school fans with “Terminator,” a deep cut from their debut self titled album.

And as someone who appreciates bands digging into their back catalog, I was happy to see it.

The stage antics were also different from their April performance.

One of the funniest moments came during a song transition when Morgan Rose, the band’s iconic drummer, somehow managed to sprawl out horizontally across his drum kit to, relax I guess? It was one of those completely random moments that made the crowd laugh and reminded everyone that these guys aren’t afraid to have fun on stage.

Then came the end of the set.

As Sevendust left the stage, Clint Lowery grabbed a setlist, folded it into a paper airplane, and tossed it into the crowd.

And somehow, that thing actually flew.

It traveled far enough that someone farther back in the pit was able to snag the souvenir. That’s a pretty creative way to get a setlist into the hands of a fan.

Overall, Sevendust was a powerhouse as always. My only real complaint was the lighting. And that’s a complaint that mostly exists because I wanted to take more pictures.

A long-awaited reunion

Then came the headliners. Theory of a Deadman. A band I hadn’t seen live in 15 years.

That’s right.

The last time I saw Theory of a Deadman in person was on my birthday in 2011. So to say I was excited to see them again would be an understatement.

The set opened with “Barricade,” one of the songs from their upcoming EP scheduled to release September 4.

And my immediate thought was, “The lighting is night and day from just minutes before.” Pun absolutely intended.

The difference was uncanny.

Theory brought significantly more lighting into the production and used smoke machines liberally throughout the set. And yes, that included the first three songs during which I was restricted to photographing.

It may sound selfish, but whenever a band uses special effects during those first three songs, a little part of me assumes they’re doing it specifically to give the photographers something fun to work with.

And I love it every single time.

The lighting during “Ambulance” was particularly wild.

The stage was filled with flashing blue and red lights designed to resemble the emergency lights of the vehicle the song is named after.

I wish I could have captured it behind the lens as it would have been amazing to show. But from the perspective of my eyes, it was almost like watching a 3D movie without wearing the required glasses.

It was trippy. But in the best possible way.

The production throughout the Theory set made a huge difference, especially after struggling through Sevendust’s darker lighting. Suddenly there was light everywhere, smoke filling the stage, and plenty of visual elements to chase with my camera.

It was exactly what I wanted.

Polaroids, nostalgia, and a trip back in time

One of the coolest moments of the entire night came when front man Tyler Connolly started taking actual Polaroid photos of the crowd while singing.

Then he threw them into the audience. What an incredibly unique souvenir to those lucky enough to snag one. Usually, when you think about concert souvenirs, you think of guitar picks, drumsticks, setlists, or maybe a towel thrown from the stage.

A Polaroid taken by the lead singer while you’re actually in the audience?

That’s different.

And that’s the kind of little production element that makes a concert memorable. But the biggest moments of the night for me were the ones that transported me backward in time.

I grew up listening to Theory of a Deadman.

Their albums Gasoline and Scars & Souvenirs were huge parts of my musical upbringing during high school. Those albums are tied to a specific time in my life, and music has this incredible ability to unlock memories that you didn’t even realize were still sitting there.

So when Theory played “Santa Monica” and “Not Meant to Be” back to back, I was transported. Suddenly I wasn’t standing in the Mayo Civic Center anymore.

I was back in my room in high school, sitting on my bed with my five disc stereo loaded up with those albums.

That’s the magic of live music. It isn’t simply hearing songs performed in front of you. Sometimes it’s getting to experience a piece of your own history all over again.

And then, it was over

And then, almost as quickly as it started, the night was over.

The 90-minute set had come to an end. The house lights came on. And that was it.

No encore. No fake walk-off followed by the band returning to the stage.

Just straight to the end.

While I appreciate the efficiency, I have to admit that this was one part of the night I wasn’t a huge fan of.

I wanted more.

Maybe that’s because it had been 15 years since I had last seen Theory live. Maybe it’s because the set was so much fun. Or maybe it’s simply because when you’re having a great time, 90 minutes never feels like enough.

Whatever the reason, I walked away wanting another opportunity to see them. And honestly, that’s probably a pretty good sign.

Back to the hotel, behind the computer

Eventually, it was time to leave the venue.

I tracked down as many of the staff members who had helped me earlier in the night as I could and thanked them for making everything work as smoothly as it could.

Then I huffed it back to my hotel, which was a mere seven minute walk from the venue.

Once I got there, I started uploading my photos.

There’s something about getting back to your computer after a show and seeing the images you captured that brings you right back into the moment.

You remember the lights.

You remember the movement.

You remember the sound.

You remember standing in that pit with a crowd of people around you while trying to freeze a single moment in time.

And suddenly, the exhaustion doesn’t matter quite as much.

I wouldn’t trade this job for the world.

There are certainly difficult parts. The long drives. The late nights. The gear. The media logistics. The three song anxiety. The editing afterward when your body is screaming at you to go to sleep.

But then you look at the photos.

And you remember why you do it.

I’m incredibly blessed to have the opportunity to photograph these shows and experience these artists up close. Getting to share those moments with people who weren’t there is an even bigger privilege.

Hopefully, you enjoy not only seeing the photos, but also reading about the experiences behind them.

Because every photo has a story.

Afterglow

With this show being one of the first of the Dead/Seven Tour, and after experiencing it firsthand, I highly encourage anyone who has the opportunity to see this tour to do so.

Return to Dust brings the youthful energy and grunge inspired sound.

Sevendust brings the heaviness and decades of experience.

Theory of a Deadman brings the nostalgia, production, and songs that have been part of the soundtrack for many people’s lives.

That’s a pretty solid combination.

So if the Dead/Seven Tour is coming through your neck of the woods, don’t hesitate.

Go see these bands live.

Trust me.

You won’t be sorry.

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Tate Moore, George McConnell, Max Williams, “Kudzu” Dave Woolworth, Robert Chaffe and Chuck Sigler walked onto the stage and the crowd rose to meet them. It happened before the evening had time to manufacture suspense. Every corner was occupied. The people in the room knew who had come down the road from Oxford, knew the songs waiting somewhere in that catalog and knew a Kudzu Kings headlining show was likely to run longer than one set.

The first night had sold out. Demand pushed the venue to add a second show for Saturday, which sold out too. For a band whose members no longer spend most of the year living out of vans and hotel rooms, the response felt less like casual weekend business than a reunion with people who had been keeping their place.

Anticipation is a word that gets abused in concert reviews. Here it had physical proof. There was nowhere for the room’s attention to wander. When six familiar figures appeared, people were already on their feet.

Thirty-two years of funktry

The Kudzu Kings formed in Oxford in 1994, when a college town full of bars could make a young group compete for every stage and then teach it how to hold one. The band called its sound “funktry,” a useful little word for music that refuses to choose among country writing, bluegrass momentum, syncopation and the looseness of a rock improvisation.

From 1994 through 2003, the Kings toured across the United States and into Canada. The University of Mississippi’s digital Kudzu Kings collection traces a run that included shows with Widespread Panic, Bob Weir, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Junior Brown and Aquarium Rescue Unit. Around Oxford, they worked the Harrison Street circuit at Proud Larry’s, The Gin and Ireland’s, then carried that music into rooms such as Tipitina’s in New Orleans, the Gothic Theatre in Denver and Red Rocks as an opener for Widespread Panic.

That history was standing onstage in Tupelo, though it did not arrive as a lecture. Moore handled vocals and acoustic guitar. Woolworth brought bass and vocals, Chaffe played keyboards and Sigler sat behind the drums. Williams and McConnell supplied the electric and acoustic guitar work, with McConnell carrying his own history in Beanland and Widespread Panic. The reunited six-piece lineup has enough shared language that the songs can remain recognizable without feeling sealed beneath glass.

In 2020, the University of Mississippi Blues Archive honored the band with an exhibit and living digital archive. That kind of institutional recognition can make a group sound finished, preserved for research after the noise has stopped. Friday’s sellout made the opposite case. These songs still have a working life. They reside in records and archives, yes, but also in the quick change that came over the room when the players took their places.

The dates are rarer now. Family life and age have a vote. Nobody needs to apologize for that. A band does not spend more than three decades together by pretending time has no authority. Scarcity has changed what a Kudzu Kings appearance means in Mississippi. A show is no longer one more stop in an aggressive touring year. It is an appointment, and Tupelo treated it like one.

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The room already knew

The two-set format gave the catalog space, and the first set did not waste much time testing whether the crowd remembered it. “Bound for Zion”, “Old Last Name” and “Street Walking” turned standing attention into a moving floor. The reaction did not depend on a costume change, a screen or some oversized production cue. Recognition did the work. The band reached into its own history and the response arrived without hesitation.

That is where “funktry” becomes more useful than a neat genre label. The Kudzu Kings can begin with the bones of Southern songcraft, allow the rhythm section to put a different lean on it and leave the guitars and keys enough room to breathe. Country is present, but it is not standing still. The jam-band instinct is there too, though it serves songs sturdy enough to exist without a long improvisation strapped to them.

The first set kept drawing from that balance. “Bar-B-Q Blues” and “Mississippi Mud” carried their home state in their names without reducing it to decoration. They belong to the band’s long habit of writing about Southern life from inside it, with affection sharpened by humor and enough rhythmic mischief to keep the material from turning into a heritage display. “Truly” and “Dream” widened the set’s emotional range while the crowd stayed with the band.

That sentence sounds simple, but it says more than another paragraph of inflated praise. A set built around familiar material can coast on memory. This one did not during the portion I witnessed. The audience remained engaged and the band used the depth of its catalog instead of treating the night like a fixed greatest-hits recital. It felt lived in rather than rehearsed for display, the sort of comfort musicians earn only after learning where everyone else is likely to turn.

The honest edge of the night

I left at intermission.

There is no dramatic story behind that decision. I had what I needed for this article, I have gotten used to earlier nights and the prospect of a two-hour drive after midnight has lost whatever outlaw glamour it once possessed. Age changes concertgoing in small negotiations. You begin calculating the road home while everyone else is preparing for another set.

The honest boundary of this review is the first set. I can report that Backline remained packed at the break and showed no sign of surrendering its mood. I cannot tell you what happened after I walked out, which song cracked open the second half or how the final note landed. A review should not borrow certainty from a performance its writer did not see.

The same line applies to Saturday. Ticket sales establish that Tupelo wanted another night. The added date selling out says plenty about demand, but it does not give me memories of a show I did not attend. Kudzu Kings are known for changing their sets, so anyone who bought both nights had reason to expect a different selection. Expectation is where my claim ends.

There was still something revealing in leaving while the building remained awake. Most concert stories chase the encore because an ending supplies a convenient conclusion. Friday offered another image instead — a full room at intermission, a band with another set ahead and no evidence that anybody else was considering an early drive home.

The room Tupelo still needs

Across two Tupelo venues that week, I saw two packed houses. It was encouraging, but one healthy stretch does not erase the local scene’s cruel arithmetic. A venue can hit capacity on Friday and struggle to break even on the next available night. Musicians know it. Promoters know it. The people counting the drawer after close certainly know it.

Supporting local music is easy to discuss as a transaction between a band and its audience. The real machinery is larger. A night depends on the venue taking a risk, the front-of-house crew making six musicians intelligible in a crowded room, bartenders working through the rush and staff handling all the unglamorous details that disappear when they are done correctly. Nearby businesses feel the traffic. Photographers, writers and independent outlets give the event a life beyond the people who could fit through the door. Remove enough pieces and the stage goes dark no matter how talented the players are.

The two Kudzu Kings sellouts keep alive a question Tupelo has not fully answered. Is Northeast Mississippi ready for a dependable 600-to-1,200-capacity music venue?

My answer is that such a room is the next sensible step, though “build it and they will come” is not a business plan. Two sold-out nights in a smaller hall do not guarantee four figures of paid attendance every weekend. They do show an appetite that the current mix of venues cannot always accommodate. A hall in that middle range could give regional artists somewhere to grow and give touring acts a reason to leave the interstate instead of treating Tupelo as scenery between dates.

That room would need consistent support, professional production and booking patient enough to develop an audience rather than demand instant proof. It would also need nights like this one. Infrastructure begins with people deciding to go out, buy a ticket and remain present for musicians they already love as well as ones they have not met yet.

So the thanks belong everywhere. To the crowd that filled Backline. To the workers behind the scenes. To the venues willing to gamble on live music in a market where a good night does not protect the next one.

For years, I was a heavy-metal and hard-rock listener who allowed only a few 1970s classics across the border. Other forms of music were somebody else’s concern. Smaller local shows have been correcting that stubbornness one evening at a time. They have stripped away the lazy idea that scale and seriousness are the same thing. A major production can overwhelm the senses. A small room can let you see how six people listen to one another and how a familiar song moves through the people who helped keep it alive.

Some of the strongest performances I have seen did not require an arena, a barricade or a long line of trucks outside. They required songs with enough mileage to survive changing fashions and musicians willing to keep meeting them honestly. The local circuit is where artists learn how to hold attention without hiding behind size. It is also where listeners can discover how much music they dismissed while waiting for a famous name to tell them what was worth hearing.

Afterglow

Backline was still full when I left. That is the last honest image I own from the night — the short settling of intermission, people holding their places and the Kudzu Kings somewhere behind the stage preparing to return.

The road home won. It often does these days.

Yet the moment that stayed with me happened much earlier. Six musicians walked onto a small Tupelo stage and an entire room stood before they played. No history lesson was required, though the band carried 32 years of it. No argument for local support had to be made, though the evidence surrounded us.

For one set, at least, Oxford’s “funktry” kings were not a reunion act or an archive entry. They were the reason every corner of Backline Music Hall was occupied.

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The crowd was behind me, the edge of the stage was in front of me and Rob Halford stood only a few feet away.

The lights had dropped. The curtain went up. Then—BAM. The Metal God.

There are moments when a concert photographer has to split himself in two. One half is a fan whose brain has just stopped working. The other is counting seconds, watching the light and trying to keep a famous face sharp inside a viewfinder. I had to contain myself long enough to do the job. Halford did not pause so I could collect my thoughts. The crowd did not care whether I had found the right settings. The first three songs were already burning away.

That rush is real. I will never pretend otherwise. I have chased it into big cities, arenas and rooms whose names look good beneath a photograph. My files hold Blackie Lawless at the Ryman, K.K. Downing in Nashville, Zakk Sabbath under the same famous roof and Halford commanding a stage as if fifty years of heavy metal had merely loosened him up.

For a long time, I thought getting closer to the biggest stars meant I was getting closer to where I belonged.

I had the direction backward.

The big-city chase

Home sits in a useful spot. I can point the car in nearly any direction and find live music within 30 to 60 minutes. Tupelo, Amory, Ripley, Florence, Clarksdale and Meridian each carry their own version of the night. On most weekends, somebody is loading a drum kit through a back door while somebody else argues with a cable that worked perfectly at rehearsal.

Still, once I began photographing shows and writing reviews, the big names pulled hardest. The goal seemed obvious. Apply for the credential. Wait. Refresh the inbox more times than any reasonable adult should. Drive to the city if the approval came through. Find the media entrance. Get the shots. Do it again.

Then January arrived and my main source of income disappeared.

Losing a job does not feel poetic while it is happening. It changes the math in a house. It makes every trip, every tank of gas and every unpaid hour behind an editing screen harder to dismiss as part of some grand plan. Yet my family and I had been praying over that part of my life. When the job ended, I called it a blessing before I fully understood what the blessing might be.

At the same time, approvals for the larger shows became less frequent. I applied less often too. The machine did what machines do. It kept moving without me.

So I looked closer to home.

What I found was not a consolation prize or a smaller version of the work I had wanted. Northeast Mississippi was busy. Young musicians were rehearsing, established regional bands were filling rooms and new venues were trying to give all of them somewhere to play. The artists did not arrive with layers of publicists between us. Often, they were carrying their own gear.

They remembered who showed up.

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The work close to home

Leather Rose, an original Southern rock band from Amory, became a large part of that turn. Working with Silas Sloan, Carson Loden, Blake Summerford and Mason Hanlon gave me something an arena credential rarely could—repetition with a purpose. I photographed them, traveled with them and learned how a band behaves when the stage is not yet ready, the room is unfamiliar or a good idea appears five minutes before it is time to play.

The work continued after the shutter stopped. I practiced editing without polishing the life out of a frame. I learned how to communicate before a show instead of assuming everyone knew what I needed. They learned whether I would deliver what I promised. I learned how different venues treated musicians, how a band adjusted to a room and how much trust could be earned by simply being reliable.

There was a front-yard session. There was Mason behind the kit at the Boiler Room in Florence. There was Leather Rose at Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale. None of those settings offered the neat sameness of an arena pit. The light changed. The distance changed. The access changed. I had to change with it.

Traveling with the band also let me see the parts of a local scene that disappear in a standard three-song photo pass. Sometimes a guitarist lands on an unplanned lick and everybody looks up. Sometimes the rhythm of a song refuses to cooperate, so the musicians stop, laugh, count it off and try again. A lighting angle that looked useless from one side becomes the photograph from three steps over. A camera setting fails. Then a different one teaches you something.

Those are small moments until you spend enough nights around them. Then they become the work.

The large artists I had chased were already surrounded by promotion. They had tour photographers, label teams, press representatives and fan accounts moving their names across the internet every hour. My photograph could still be good. The experience could still leave my hands shaking. Yet Rob Halford did not need me to introduce him to the world.

A young band sitting in a studio for the first time might.

That difference changed what I wanted from the camera. I still wanted the striking frame—the bent knee, the raised guitar, the split second when a face crossed through the best light in the room. I also wanted the photograph to be useful. I wanted it to help an artist announce the next show, make a venue look alive and give someone who stayed home a reason not to miss the next one.

The hundred-person room

I first paid serious attention to Backline Music Hall after seeing that B.J. Barham had announced a solo show there. I had noticed posts about the venue before then without studying the details. Life was complicated and I was not doing much. Then Barham’s name stopped the scroll.

His March 31 appearance sold out. The more important moment for me came when I opened Backline’s door.

The venue sits in a strip-mall-style location on Cliff Gookin Boulevard in Tupelo. Inside, the lighting is already thinking about the performance. Padded chairs and sofas give the place the feel of a listening lounge rather than a bar that happened to clear a corner for a microphone. The floor is small. That limitation becomes part of the appeal. Backline lists its capacity at 100, which means intimacy is not a slogan somebody wrote after the fact. It is the physical condition of the room.

There is no great distance between the performer and the last row. A singer can see who is listening. A photographer cannot disappear into a cavern and hope a longer lens will solve every problem. When the room is full, the crowd becomes part of every wide shot.

The bar line moves. Bleu Collar Toasties runs the kitchen on event nights and “The Soprano” is the best grilled-cheese sandwich I have personally had. I realize this is a serious claim. I stand by it.

Then there is the calendar. B.J. Barham, The Weeks, Kudzu Kings, Drivin N Cryin, Will Stewart, Thelma and the Sleaze and The Bright Light Social Hour have all appeared on a schedule that keeps reaching beyond what anyone might expect from a hundred-person room in a shopping center. Sold-out nights have arrived often enough that the red label on an event page no longer feels surprising.

The room has also made space for musicians who are still learning what a stage asks of them. At Backline’s first Summer Youth Concert Series, Reese Burks, Celie Duffie and Davis White stepped into the same room that has held seasoned touring acts. Later came Pocket Change and John Clayton White. That pairing of regional names and young local performers explains Backline better than a capacity number can. The venue is not waiting for an artist to become important somewhere else.

Photographing those nights brought the larger lesson into focus. A sold-out Kudzu Kings show looks impressive in a portfolio. So does The Bright Light Social Hour caught in a hard slice of stage color. Yet a photograph of three young performers at the beginning of their public lives may carry a different kind of weight. Years from now, they may look at that frame and remember the first time a room took them seriously.

Cid, Christina, Meredith, Brian and Brent have built the kind of place where those memories can happen. I am grateful to them for opening the door, then giving musicians and the rest of us a reason to keep walking through it.

When the photographs started talking back

Around the same period, I asked a man on Facebook if he knew the media contact for a Zakk Wylde show. His name was Devin Jay Hoffie. That exchange became my introduction to Intellectual Dissatisfaction’s Lyrical Limelight.

Independent photographers are always looking for a publication willing to trust their eye. The good ones also need editors who will ask what the image is doing there, whether the caption is right and whether the story underneath the gallery deserves more than “the band rocked.” I found a team that let me create while expecting me to keep growing.

Then they unlocked a part of me I had not expected.

I started writing reviews.

A camera can preserve an expression, but it cannot explain why the moment landed when it did. Writing forced me to stay with the show after I finished the edit. I had to think about the sequence of songs, the way a performer used the room and the point when an audience stopped behaving like separate groups of people. I began to understand that the photographs and the words were not competing for attention. One caught the instant. The other could give it consequence.

That work also sharpened the purpose behind Iron Trakks Media. What began as Mid-South Music Mag grew into a wider project built around photography, reviews, interviews and support for artists at different stages of their careers. The name changed. The instinct did not. Get close enough to see the work clearly, then help more people see it too.

I am grateful to Devin and Hope Hoffie, Jeremy Todd Mercier, Igor Dimitrienko, Alyce Nall, Ben Glanzer, Caleb Hauser, Molly and the rest of the people I am still getting to know. Music media can become territorial in a hurry. This team has made it collaborative. Somebody is always covering a room I could not reach, catching a frame I would have missed or asking a question that pushes the story somewhere more honest.

We stay busy. We also make each other better.

Going forward

The next part of this work will be closer to home. That does not mean the radius of my curiosity has shrunk. It means I have learned where my time, photographs and words can do the most good.

I want to keep showing up for artists in Tupelo, Amory, Ripley and the towns between them. I want to support venues that have survived for decades as well as rooms still learning which night of the week their audience will come. I want to photograph musicians while they are building the songs, the confidence and the crowd they hope will carry them farther.

There is room to think bigger too. I keep returning to the idea that the Tupelo area could use a venue in the 600-to-1,200-capacity range—a room large enough to bring in acts that sit above the club circuit, yet small enough to create opportunities for local support bands. It could give the region another rung between listening rooms and arenas while keeping more ticket, restaurant and hotel spending close to home. I am a photographer, not a developer. Consider that my loud hint to anyone who is.

Things look brighter from here. More peaceful too. I get to practice my art, learn in public and share what I make. If a photograph helps a band sell a ticket, if a review persuades somebody to walk into a local venue or if a young musician sees proof that the room was paying attention, the work has done more than fill a portfolio.

The lights will go down again. A curtain may rise. My hands will still find the camera before my brain catches up.

The room might be smaller this time.

The work will feel larger.

Until next time, get on the right trakks.

Iron Trakks Media.

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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 100 does more than tell us to sing. It calls us to remember who stands at the center of our worship, why our praise is possible, and how that praise should ripple outward into the lives of those around us.

Based on the sermon by James Kliewer, Connection Church Sioux Falls, August 2, 2026.

Full-Throated and Whole-Hearted

There’s something special about welcoming an old friend home. This week at Connection Church, we were blessed to have James Kliewer return to preach. James was once a member of our church before being sent out to plant a church in Hartford, SD. His return gave the morning a sense of familiarity, but the passage he brought us was anything but ordinary.

James walked us through Psalm 100, a short psalm with a surprisingly large reach.

His illustration for the morning was simple. Imagine dropping a rock in a pond. The rock hits the water, and immediately the surface begins to move. One ripple becomes another, which becomes another. The impact travels outward from the place where the rock first landed.

The question James pressed us toward was this, “What is at the center of our ripples?”

For the Christian, the answer can’t ultimately be ourselves. It must be Jesus.

Psalm 100 begins with an invitation to the whole earth to make a joyful noise to the Lord. It calls God’s people to serve Him with gladness, come into His presence with singing, give thanks, and bless His name.

The movement’s outward, but the source is fixed.

The Rock is at the center.

The World Behind the Text

James began the sermon by stepping back from Psalm 100 and explaining the Psalms themselves. He described them as communal, teaching God’s people how to pray, and given by God.

There’s an important nuance here. The Psalms certainly give voice to the gathered people of God, and Psalm 100 itself is unmistakably communal. Its commands are directed toward “all the earth,” and its language repeatedly speaks in the plural. Yet the Psalter also contains deeply personal prayers, laments, confessions, and songs of thanksgiving. The better conclusion is not that the Psalms are never individual, but that even personal prayer belongs within the larger life of God’s people.

Christianity was never intended to be merely a private relationship between us and Jesus. We are saved into a people.

Psalm 100 makes that explicit. We’re reminded that the Lord made us, that we belong to Him, and that we are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Worship therefore doesn’t terminate at the individual. What God does in us is meant to become part of what God is doing among us.

That fits naturally with the gospel, community, and mission framework of Connection Church. The church describes its desire as glorifying God by multiplying disciples of Jesus Christ through gospel, community, and mission.

The gospel gives us something worth proclaiming. Community gives us people with whom to proclaim and live it. Mission sends that proclamation beyond the walls of the church.

The ripples keep moving.

Walking the Passage

Psalm 100 is only five verses long, but it’s packed with reasons to worship.

First, we’re told to worship because the Lord is God. The psalm doesn’t begin with our emotional state. It begins with reality.

“Know that the LORD, he is God!” Psalm 100:3.

That’s the Rock.

Our worship doesn’t begin because we happen to feel particularly spiritual on Sunday morning. It begins because God is who He says He is.

James connected that truth to Jesus’ identity. In Matthew 16:13-18, Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and Jesus speaks about the rock upon which He will build his church.

There’s an important distinction here. Matthew 16:18 has been interpreted in different ways regarding the referent of “this rock.” The passage itself doesn’t simply say, “Jesus is the rock” in that verse. Yet the broader New Testament explicitly identifies Christ as the Rock, while the Old Testament repeatedly uses rock imagery for God. Paul makes the connection especially clearly in 1 Corinthians 10:4, writing that “the Rock was Christ.”

So James’s image gives us something worth holding onto.

The Rock isn’t us. The Rock is Christ.

And if Christ is the Rock, then our praise isn’t built upon shifting sand. It rests upon someone who doesn’t move.

Psalm 100 then gives us another reason to praise as we belong to Him. We aren’t self made people wandering through the world trying to determine our own ultimate identity. We’re God’s people.

That should change the way we understand worship.

Worship’s not primarily about what we get out of singing. It’s about recognizing who God is and responding to what is true about Him.

The psalm closes by giving us three reasons to praise God: He’s good, His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness extends to all generations.

That sounds remarkably different from praising a tyrant.

God’s authority isn’t arbitrary domination. The King we worship is both just and loving. His goodness isn’t separated from His sovereignty, and His authority is not opposed to His steadfast love.

This is why confessing Jesus as Lord isn’t merely checking a theological box.

Romans 10:9 connects confession with belief and salvation, declaring that those who confess Jesus as Lord and believe in His resurrection will be saved.

The confession matters because the reality matters.

Jesus is Lord.

A Fair Counter-Reading

There’s a danger in turning the ripple illustration into a formula.

We could hear it and conclude that if our Christian lives aren’t producing obvious results, then something must be wrong with us. That can quickly become exhausting, especially for someone already carrying shame, grief, trauma, or the weight of feeling like they never do enough.

But the gospel doesn’t teach us that God’s power depends on the quality of our performance.

The Rock doesn’t become unstable because the water around us is still.

Our faithfulness matters. Our obedience matters. Our witness matters. But the effectiveness of the gospel ultimately belongs to God.

Jesus remains Lord whether the ripple is immediately visible or not. We are called to faithful obedience, not control over outcomes.

The Turn

Here’s where Psalm 100 becomes uncomfortably personal.

If Jesus is truly Lord, then he can’t simply be an accessory to our lives.

We can’t place Him at the edge of the pond and then live as though we are the rock at the center.

Lordship means submission.

That doesn’t mean Jesus is a tyrant demanding obedience because He enjoys control. It means that the One who created us, redeemed us, and loves us has the rightful authority to direct our lives.

The question isn’t whether Jesus gets a place in our lives.

The question is whether He gets the center.

This’s where James’s call to be “full-throated and whole-hearted” becomes so powerful. Our confession shouldn’t merely exist on our lips while our lives tell another story.

Hebrews 13:15 describes praise as a sacrifice offered to God through Christ, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.

But the Christian life doesn’t stop at singing.

The praise that comes from our lips should increasingly become visible in our lives.

That’s where the ripples begin.

We worship, and someone else sees what we value.

We serve, and someone else encounters the character of Christ.

We confess Jesus as Lord, and someone else hears the gospel.

We forgive, love, sacrifice, welcome, and tell the truth because Jesus is Lord.

The ripple moves.

Carry It Into the Week

So what does Psalm 100 look like on a weekday afternoon?

It looks like remembering.

When life is frustrating, remember who is Lord.

When temptation promises satisfaction, remember who is Lord.

When success tempts you toward pride, remember who is Lord.

When suffering makes you question whether God is good, remember what Psalm 100 says about his steadfast love and faithfulness.

When you gather with other believers, don’t treat worship as a private experience. Sing knowing that someone beside you may need the reminder you are singing.

And when you leave the church building, don’t assume the worship service has ended.

The ripples continue.

Psalm 96 gives the same outward movement, calling God’s people to sing, bless God’s name, and declare his glory among the nations.

That’s gospel, community, and mission working together.

We know who Jesus is. We gather around Him. Then we go tell others.

The goal isn’t to manufacture impressive ripples so that we can congratulate ourselves on how influential we’ve become.

The goal is to keep pointing back to the Rock.

Because when people notice the ripples, they should eventually ask where they came from.

And our answer should always be Jesus.

Not us.

Jesus.

The Rock at the center.

Song of the Week: Meet Me In The Valley - Tasha Layton

This week’s song by Tasha Layton is pure encouragement wrapped in beautiful lyrics. It’s a reminder that no matter where life finds us, whether we are celebrating on the mountaintop or struggling to take another step through the valley, Jesus never abandons His people. He’s present in our greatest joys just as much as He’s in our deepest sorrows. He doesn’t wait for us to have everything figured out before drawing near. He meets us exactly where we are. Better yet, He was already there before we arrived.

The heart of this song centers on those valley seasons. Those moments when the weight of life feels overwhelming, prayers seem to linger without answers, and hope can feel just out of reach. It’s in those moments that we often need the reminder that God has not forgotten us. He walks with us through every trial, every disappointment, every moment of grief, and every battle we face. The valley may feel lonely, but for those who belong to Christ, it’s never walked alone.

At the same time, we shouldn’t overlook the mountaintops. It’s easy to cry out for God when life hurts, but we should be just as eager to praise Him when life is full of blessing. Every good gift comes from Him, and our worship shouldn’t depend on our circumstances. Whether we find ourselves rejoicing or weeping, He’s equally worthy of our praise.

As I listened to this song, I found myself hoping it becomes more than just another track on a playlist but that it becomes a prayer. A simple, heartfelt cry to the Lord that says, “Jesus, meet me in this valley. Be my strength when I am weak. Be my shield in the battle that surrounds me. Remind me that You are near, even when I can’t see what You’re doing. I know You’re faithful, so help me trust You one step at a time.”

If you’re walking through a difficult season today, I hope Tasha Layton’s words point you beyond the music and toward the One who never leaves nor forsakes His children. And when those inevitable valleys come, may this song remind you to lift your eyes to Christ, confidently asking Him to meet you there, knowing He already has.

Week in Reflection

This week was filled with both incredible highs and painful lows. In many ways, it was a picture of the Christian life. There were moments of joy that reminded me of God’s goodness and moments of failure that reminded me just how much I need His grace.

The lowest point of my week was falling into the same sin yet again. It’s frustrating because I know exactly where that road leads. I know it will never truly satisfy, yet my flesh still wages war against my spirit, and sometimes I give in.

The shame that follows is real, but so is God’s grace. When I confess my sin and genuinely repent, God is faithful to forgive because of what Christ accomplished on the cross. As 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” My standing before God isn’t based on how well I performed this week but on the finished work of Jesus.

Even in the middle of my shortcomings, God continued to pour out blessings I certainly don’t deserve.

One of the biggest highlights of my week was photographing one of my favorite Christian bands, Skillet, at the Sioux Empire Fair. This was a dream opportunity ever since I started concert photography. They were everything I hoped they would be from behind the lens, but what made the experience even more meaningful was covering artists whose music boldly points people to Christ. It reminded me how thankful I am that God has allowed me to combine my love for photography with opportunities to serve through writing.

The second blessing came through my church family. This week I was asked to step into a leadership role within our Gospel Community. I’ll be serving alongside our current leaders as we work toward multiplying our group in 2027.

If I’m honest, that responsibility is intimidating. Leadership exposes your weaknesses, but it also reminds you that the work is God’s, not yours. I’m humbled that my church leaders trust me enough to serve in this capacity, and I know that whatever lies ahead, God will provide the wisdom and strength I need.

Looking back on this week, I see the beauty of the gospel. I see a sinner who still stumbles, a Savior who continues to forgive, and a Father who continues to bless His children despite what they deserve.

Paul reminds us in Romans 5:8, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

My prayer is that we would never allow our failures to push us away from God. Instead, may they drive us to repentance, deeper dependence on Christ, and continued growth in holiness. Sanctification isn’t about becoming perfect overnight. It’s about faithfully following Jesus a day at a time, trusting that He who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it for His glory.

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

A Fair Tradition Nearly Nine Decades in the Making

The Sioux Empire Fair has been a staple of the Sioux Falls community for an astounding 88 years, with the very first fair taking place in 1938. What began as a local agricultural gathering has grown into one of the largest annual events in South Dakota. Throughout the decades, additional land donations and continued expansion have allowed the fairgrounds to evolve into a destination that offers far more than its original vision.

Today, fairgoers can spend an entire day exploring everything the grounds have to offer. Thrill seekers can enjoy a wide variety of carnival rides ranging from family friendly to adrenaline pumping attractions. Food lovers have no shortage of options either, with vendors serving everything from classic corn dogs and funnel cakes to unique fair creations that seem to get bigger and more creative every year. Walking through the exhibition buildings reveals local businesses, agricultural displays, competitions, arts and crafts, livestock, and countless activities for visitors of every age.

While all of that makes the Sioux Empire Fair one of the highlights of every summer, there is another attraction that continues to draw thousands of people through the gates each year. The nightly Grandstand concerts.

Skillet Returns to Sioux Falls

On this particular evening, the spotlight belonged to Skillet.

Admission to the concert was included with the purchase of a fair ticket, making it one of the best entertainment values of the summer. For those wanting an even closer experience, upgraded Pit tickets were available. Judging by the crowd gathered in front of the stage long before showtime, those tickets were well worth the investment because the Pit completely sold out.

The excitement was understandable.

Skillet has been one of Christian rock’s biggest names since forming in 1996, and their return to Sioux Falls was long overdue after last headlining the LifeLight Festival in 2023. For many fans, including myself, this wasn’t simply another concert. It was another opportunity to experience one of the most consistently entertaining live bands in rock music.

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A Masterclass in High Energy Performance

Trying to describe a Skillet concert with words almost feels impossible.

From the moment the band got on stage, the energy level never slowed. Lead vocalist and bassist John Cooper spent much of the night running across every inch of the stage, constantly engaging with the audience and feeding off their enthusiasm. Korey Cooper seamlessly switched between keyboard and guitar while somehow finding the energy to jump around throughout the performance. Seth Morrison continued to prove why he has become such an important part of the band’s live sound, delivering blistering guitar solos with precision while matching the intensity of everyone else on stage.

Then there’s Jen Ledger.

As always, Jen was one of the highlights of the evening for myself. Her powerful drumming anchors every song while her supporting vocals add another dynamic layer to Skillet’s sound. Watching her effortlessly transition between pounding rhythms and soaring harmonies is something that never gets old. She remains one of my favorite drummers to watch perform live.

What makes Skillet stand apart from many bands is the chemistry between its members. Years of performing together, and the marriage of John and Korey, have created a level of cohesion that cannot be manufactured. Every movement, every musical transition, and every interaction feels natural. Before you realize it, ninety minutes have passed, and you find yourself wishing the show had just started.

Bold Faith in Front of Thousands

One of the reasons I have continued listening to Skillet for so many years has very little to do with the music itself.

Throughout the concert, John Cooper made it abundantly clear why the band continues touring after nearly three decades.

Jesus.

Between songs, John openly shared Scripture and encouraged the audience in their faith. There was no hesitation or attempt to hide their beliefs. One of the most impactful moments came when he introduced “Hero” by explaining that, while many people interpret the song differently, for the band it is ultimately about Jesus Christ and dedicated the performance of the song that night to their Savior.

That kind of boldness is becoming increasingly rare, and it’s refreshing to see a band with such a large platform remain unapologetic about their faith.

As someone whose walk with Christ has grown significantly over the last several years, that authenticity only deepens my appreciation for Skillet. Their music has always delivered heavy guitars, memorable hooks, and explosive performances, but pairing all of that with biblical truth gives their songs a much greater purpose.

With their newest single, “Scream,” releasing on July 10, 2026, it also feels like the band is entering another exciting chapter. If this song is any indication of what’s coming next, I can’t wait to hear the rest of the new material.

A Production That Matched the Music

If the band’s energy was operating at one hundred percent, the lighting production somehow managed to surpass it.

The entire show was packed with synchronized lighting effects, massive beams sweeping across the crowd, bursts of color, and an almost constant barrage of strobe lighting. It looked incredible from a visual standpoint, but it was also intense enough that the friend I attended with had to occasionally turn away because of the flashing lights.

Even so, the lighting never felt disconnected from the performance. Instead, it became another instrument that elevated every song.

One of the biggest visual moments came when John Cooper brought out his now famous handheld smoke cannons. It has become something of a Skillet tradition, and seeing him march across the stage surrounded by clouds of smoke made him look like a character in a Marvel movie.

As if that wasn’t enough, Korey Cooper and Seth Morrison later rose above the stage on elevated platforms while continuing to shred on their guitars, creating another memorable image that had the crowd cheering.

Every element of the production worked together to create a concert experience that was as visually exciting as it was musically powerful.

A Shorter Show Than Expected

My only real disappointment had nothing to do with Skillet’s performance.

According to the Sioux Empire Fair schedule, the concert was advertised as running from 8:00 p.m. until 10:30 p.m. Instead, the band wrapped up around 9:30 p.m., roughly an hour earlier than many attendees likely expected.

To be fair, a ninety minute headlining set is still a respectable amount of time, especially for a county fair style performance. Even so, there was a lingering sense of disappointment knowing the advertised runtime suggested we would have significantly more music.

The ending itself also felt a little different than the typical rock show.

Like many rock bands, Skillet performed the familiar fake farewell before returning for an encore. However, instead of several encore songs, the band returned for just one final performance of “The Resistance.” It was an explosive way to close the evening, but it also made the concert seem to end almost as quickly as it had begun.

Afterglow

Despite the shorter than expected runtime, Skillet once again proved why they remain one of the best live acts in Christian rock.

Their combination of high energy musicianship, authentic faith, crowd interaction, and world class production creates an experience that is difficult to match. Few bands can seamlessly blend worship, hard rock, and arena level spectacle while remaining true to who they are.

If you have never had the opportunity to see Skillet perform live, I cannot recommend it enough. Whether they are playing at a county fair, a festival, or a full arena show, they consistently deliver an unforgettable performance.

Personally, I would even say they are worth traveling a few hours to see. After nearly thirty years together, Skillet continues to show no signs of slowing down, and if this concert was any indication, they are still operating at the top of their game.

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Avenged Sevenfold and Good Charlotte’s North American run continues through August, with dates still ahead in cities including Belmont Park, Mansfield, Camden, Charlotte, Tampa, Dallas, Denver, Salt Lake City and Phoenix. Anyone still debating whether to go should stop treating the decision like an encore that might never arrive. The remaining shows are already on sale, and tickets are available here.

Concert journalism has taught me one rule above all others: nothing is official until the email lands.

Coverage requests can sit unanswered for months before an approval appears hours before doors. Sometimes it never arrives. Eventually, you learn not to become emotionally invested in an assignment until your name is attached to an actual credential.

Except this was not just another assignment.

Avenged Sevenfold has been my band for as long as I can remember. Not one of my favorites. The favorite. Their music has followed me through long drives, bad days, victories and nearly every chapter that mattered. Covering them had remained untouched at the top of my professional bucket list, one of those dreams too important to mention casually because admitting how badly you want something gives disappointment sharper teeth.

By noon on July 30, I had accepted defeat.

The math refused to cooperate. Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre sat roughly 350 miles from our base in Des Moines. Doors were scheduled for 6 p.m., and credentialed media needed to arrive before the public. Without approval in hand, making the drive would have meant gambling nearly six hours of interstate travel on hope.

At 12:19 p.m., my phone buzzed. A Live Nation email. Approved. I had entirely given up already considering they had denied us for our closer to home show already a few days before in Minnesota. For some reason with Live Nation we get approved more for farther away shows which is inconvenient for our stronger MN, SD, IA, NE readership.

Not just for me, either. Igor had received his photo pass.

Everything changed in an instant.

We dropped whatever plans the day originally held. I climbed behind the wheel while Igor balanced his laptop in the passenger seat, determined to finish the work he had been in the middle of before the approval arrived. Somewhere between adrenaline and disbelief, Interstate 80 became a blur of construction zones, lane changes and increasingly questionable estimates from the GPS.

Red Bull probably deserves partial writing credit for this story.

With a 350-mile gap separating us from the venue, failure no longer felt like a reasonable option. My foot stayed hard on the gas while Igor worked beside me, occasionally looking up from his screen to check our progress. Five and a half hours later, after enough traffic to test anyone’s patience, we rolled into Tinley Park only to discover that surviving the drive had merely been the opening act.

Parking attendants bounced us between lots that were already full. Nobody seemed entirely certain where credentialed media were supposed to go, and every wrong turn burned another minute. We eventually found a space, grabbed our equipment and started running. The pressure faded once the amphitheater came into view. The photo pit was waiting, and somehow, against some fairly hostile logistics, we had made it.

The amphitheater fills

Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre is built for scale. The sprawling outdoor venue holds thousands beneath its pavilion roof, with the lawn rising behind the reserved seats until the audience becomes a dense field of bodies, blankets and raised phones.

People moved toward the entrances wearing shirts from nearly every era of Avenged Sevenfold’s career. City of Evil. Nightmare. The Stage. Several longtime fans wore fading Waking the Fallen designs that had clearly survived years of concerts and washing machines. Younger fans stood beside parents who had discovered the band decades earlier. Groups compared setlist predictions while others examined the merchandise lines, trying to determine how financially irresponsible they were willing to become.

The crowd carried the particular restlessness that forms when a band has been part of people’s lives for long enough that attending the show feels personal. This was not simply another summer date on the amphitheater calendar. For many of the people filling the pavilion and lawn, it was a reunion with music that had grown up beside them.

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Statica stays behind the curtain

The evening’s first surprise had arrived one week earlier when Avenged Sevenfold released the four-song experimental EP Statica with little warning.

Built around heavy synthesizers, robotic vocals and electronic rhythms, the project swerved away from the harmonized guitars, aggressive percussion and sharp melodic turns that first carved the band into my memory. I had already listened to the EP before the show, and I will admit something that may not be a music journalist’s finest confession: I was confused.

Not offended. Not angry. Just unsure what to do with it.

Avenged Sevenfold has earned the right to experiment, and one of the band’s most compelling qualities has always been its refusal to keep making the same record. Still, the separation between Statica and the hard, guitar-driven sound rooted in my heart was enormous. I arrived open-minded, thinking the material might reveal itself differently in a live setting.

Instead, the presentation pushed the distance even further.

The stage remained empty. House lights stayed low. No musicians walked into view. For the entire opening slot, the audience stared at a vacant setup while live cameras showed M. Shadows, Synyster Gates, Zacky Vengeance, Johnny Christ and Brooks Wackerman performing from somewhere backstage.

The camera direction committed fully to the project’s mechanical atmosphere. Tight close-ups caught hands moving across synthesizers and faces half-hidden in darkness. The video feed favored shadows, narrow frames and subdued lighting rather than the broad gestures of a conventional rock performance. It was not presented as Avenged Sevenfold casually playing electronic songs. It felt like a separate entity occupying the screens while refusing to enter the room.

The concept was deliberate, and I respect the nerve required to open a major tour with music this far removed from what much of the audience expected. Around me, however, the response remained noticeably restrained. Fans watched with curiosity, but the applause lacked the urgency that would arrive later in the night.

Seeing Statica performed did not convert me. I appreciate M. Shadows, Synyster Gates, Brooks Wackerman, Zacky Vengeance and Johnny Christ walking into unfamiliar territory, especially at a stage in their career when repeating proven formulas would be much easier. I simply do not hold true love in my heart for the result.

Good Charlotte opens the memory vault

Good Charlotte walked into an entirely different atmosphere.

The opening notes of “The Anthem” sent a nostalgic jolt across the amphitheater. People who had spent the previous set quietly studying the screens were suddenly shouting lyrics they had memorized during the pop-punk explosion of the early 2000s. Friends threw arms around one another. Couples pointed across the aisle when a familiar line landed. Even several people who had clearly arrived wearing Avenged Sevenfold allegiance from head to toe gave in before the first chorus.

Good Charlotte sounded solid, with the Maddens guiding the songs through the same clean hooks and defiant choruses that made them unavoidable during their commercial peak. The performance did not carry the reckless physicality associated with the band’s younger years, and their stage presence occasionally settled into a comfortable middle gear. Still, the songs did much of the necessary work. When a crowd knows every word, a band does not need to sprint across the stage to keep people engaged.

The production remained fairly safe until a carefully timed eruption of pyro flashed across the stage. The sudden burst widened eyes throughout the pavilion and kept the audience alert without overwhelming the songs. Much of the set’s appeal came from recognition rather than spectacle. Hearing thousands of voices collide during “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous” provided its own production value.

The highlight arrived when M. Shadows joined Good Charlotte for “The River”, the 2007 collaboration that also features Synyster Gates on the original recording. The audience recognized what was happening before Shadows reached the microphone, and the volume rose accordingly. Plenty of tour cameos feel contractual. This one carried history, and the crowd treated it as something worth celebrating

Thousands of screens, one pulse

Avenged Sevenfold had another experiment waiting before the first note of its proper set.

As the crew prepared the stage in the dimming light, a massive QR code appeared across the video screen. I pulled out my phone and scanned it, partly from curiosity and partly because the band had already made it clear that ignoring its technological detours might mean missing part of the show.

Within seconds, my phone became part of the production.

Across the pavilion and lawn, thousands of screens began flashing and pulsing in synchronization. The effect spread section by section until the entire amphitheater appeared to breathe with the same programmed rhythm. Instead of asking fans to put their phones away, Avenged Sevenfold absorbed them into the design and turned a familiar concert distraction into a coordinated visual element.

It was clever without becoming a novelty act. Before the band had stepped onto the stage, the audience had already been recruited into the performance.

“Nightmare” and the missing drummer

There was no slow build or drawn-out introduction. The venue dropped into darkness before “Nightmare” tore through the amphitheater, immediately pushing the audience into full voice.

Opening with one of the band’s largest songs carried the confidence of a group with enough material to spend a major hit before everyone had settled into place. M. Shadows came out sounding controlled and forceful, navigating the song’s demanding vocal lines without allowing the chorus to disappear beneath the production. Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance locked together with the precision that has defined Avenged Sevenfold’s live attack for years, while Johnny Christ moved through his usual territory with purple hair glowing beneath the stage lights.

I have watched Avenged Sevenfold live more than twenty times, so the familiar pieces clicked into place quickly. The band sounded tight. The guitars cut cleanly. The low end hit with enough force to vibrate through the pavilion floor.

One detail kept pulling my attention away.

Brooks Wackerman was hidden behind a heavy metal structure surrounding his drum riser. His playing thundered through the venue, but actually watching one of modern metal’s finest drummers perform became needlessly difficult. During “Nightmare,” my ears were locked into his fills while my brain kept returning to the same irritated question: Why can’t we see Brooks?

Drumming is not background decoration in Avenged Sevenfold. The physical movement matters, especially with a player whose control and power are such central pieces of the band’s current sound. Concealing him behind a rigid structure may have served the stage design, but it blocked one of the most compelling parts of the live performance.

Once the initial rush settled, smaller details began to emerge. Johnny’s bright purple hair popped against the darker production. Zacky had decided shirts were unnecessary. Synyster wore fringe pants with the ease of someone fully aware that nobody else onstage could make the same decision without inviting questions.

M. Shadows remained committed to his familiar uniform: dark shirt, jeans and black sneakers. While the rest of the band offered varying degrees of rock-show flamboyance, Shadows looked ready to walk directly from the stage into an ordinary restaurant without changing clothes. The contrast suited them.

The cage rises

Just when the caged setup began to feel like an ongoing visual tease, Avenged Sevenfold revealed the plan behind it.

As the set shifted into a more theatrical stretch, complete with onstage magic tricks, Synyster Gates stepped forward holding a striking purple headless guitar. Then the entire shape of the stage changed. The heavy structure surrounding Brooks Wackerman began to rise, slowly clearing the sightline that had frustrated me during “Nightmare.”

There he was, elevated high above the rest of the band on a towering platform.

Suddenly, the staging made sense. What had looked like an unnecessary obstruction became part of an elaborate reveal, placing Brooks on a literal pedestal above the venue. Once I could finally watch him attack the kit from that height, the earlier frustration disappeared. The visual payoff was sharp, theatrical and perfectly timed, a reminder that Avenged Sevenfold rarely places anything onstage without eventually giving it a purpose.

“M.I.A.” breaks professional composure

After seeing a band more than twenty times, you begin dividing its catalog into categories. Some songs are dependable. Others remain technically possible but emotionally filed under probably never happening.

“M.I.A.” belonged to the second group.

When the opening guitar lines cut through the Chicago-area night, my jaw dropped. My notebook, camera and professional detachment disappeared in the same instant. I was no longer working. I was another longtime fan shouting every word with the people around me.

Released on City of Evil, “M.I.A.” is one of the band’s most ambitious early compositions, shifting between tightly arranged guitar lines, military imagery and the psychological collapse of a soldier trying to survive what he has done. It does not reduce war to heroic posture. The song becomes more desperate as it progresses, eventually leaving its narrator trapped between guilt, duty and the knowledge that returning home does not guarantee escape.

Hearing it live carried the charge of discovering something I had quietly stopped expecting. The rarity mattered, but so did the performance. Synyster and Zacky’s guitars gave the song its serrated edge while Shadows pushed through its changes with a sense of urgency that kept the older material from feeling preserved behind glass.

For those few minutes, covering the show and loving the band became impossible to separate.

Dust rises during “Unholy Confessions”

By the time Igor finished his shift in the photo pit and met me on the lawn, the controlled rows beneath the pavilion had given way to something much less orderly.

“Unholy Confessions” turned the back lawn into a dust storm. Bodies collided inside a wide mosh pit, each impact throwing another layer of dirt into the air until portions of the crowd disappeared behind a brown haze. Shoes slipped against the dry ground. People stumbled, laughed, pulled one another upright and threw themselves back into the movement.

Near the edge of the grass stood a line of roughly eight to twelve venue security guards. They watched the pit with hesitation written across their faces, none appearing particularly interested in becoming the first person sent into the cloud. Their expressions said what nobody needed to hear out loud: I do not get paid enough to walk into that.

The chaos never seemed cruel. Fans opened space when someone fell and then closed ranks again once they were standing. It was loud, dirty and physical, closer to the old Avenged Sevenfold shows I first fell in love with than anything else that evening.

“Unholy Confessions” remains my favorite song in the band’s catalog, partly because it captures Avenged Sevenfold before the machinery became enormous. The guitars are sharp and immediate. The breakdown still pulls an instinctive reaction from a crowd. Years of larger stages, evolving production and increasingly elaborate compositions have not dulled its ability to turn an audience feral.

“Cosmic” burns orange

If “Unholy Confessions” brought the old violence back to the surface, “Cosmic” moved the set toward something more controlled and strange.

It has never been one of my favorite Avenged Sevenfold songs, but its live presentation made a stronger argument than the studio recording ever had for me. M. Shadows’ use of the vocoder gave the performance an artificial, disembodied quality while the arrangement gradually expanded around him. The effect demonstrated how far the band has moved from the straightforward metal expectations that followed its early career.

The visuals completed the song. Deep orange and fiery red spread across the stage, with the graphics shifting slowly behind the band. Brooks hammered through the arrangement from his elevated position.

The production did not simply make the song larger. It clarified what the band was reaching for. “Cosmic” is built around mortality, recurrence and the possibility that human connection might outlast the bodies carrying it. In the amphitheater, surrounded by orange light and thousands of people standing unusually still, the song’s scale finally made sense.

The encore that never arrived

After “Cosmic,” the stage went dark and the familiar encore calculation began.

People remained in place, waiting. I mentally worked through the catalog and became convinced we were about to hear “A Little Piece of Heaven”. The song’s theatrical structure, violent humor and enormous vocal arrangement make it an obvious closing spectacle, especially for an audience already prepared to sing every twisted word.

Minutes passed before road cases rolled onto the stage, crew members began unplugging equipment and the house lights came up.

At first, the ending did not feel real. Fans stayed where they were, looking toward the stage as though the crew activity might somehow be an elaborate fake-out. It was not. Avenged Sevenfold was finished.

For a band with this much material, ending without a conventional encore created a strange hollow space. The performance itself had not lacked intensity, but everyone appeared to be holding something back for one final release. When it never arrived, the crowd’s anticipation had nowhere to go.

We remained in place for another moment before accepting that “A Little Piece of Heaven” was not coming. Around us, people gathered blankets, checked for lost phones and began the long shuffle toward the parking lots. The night had delivered “M.I.A.,” “Unholy Confessions” and a visually commanding “Cosmic,” yet the abrupt finality of the house lights still left a small bruise.

Afterglow

Walking back toward the car, exhaustion finally caught up with me. Excitement remained, but it had become tangled with a strange sadness I had not anticipated.

For years, I had imagined what covering Avenged Sevenfold would feel like. Once it happened, my mind immediately asked an unfair question: What do I do now?

Checking off the highest item on a bucket list carries its own kind of comedown. The dream does not disappear, exactly. It becomes a memory, and there is a brief period when your brain struggles to understand why something that once felt impossibly distant is suddenly behind you.

After escaping the parking lot traffic, Igor and I headed into the Chicago area rather than turning immediately toward Iowa. Our business and personal lives had been heavily scheduled for weeks, so we claimed Friday as a miniature vacation. We visited the beaches along Lake Michigan, wandered through Alef Sausage & Deli and eventually treated ourselves to dinner at Enzo & Lucia Ristorante in Long Grove.

The prices matched the quality of the food, but we had earned it.

Later, the laptop came out. Memory cards filled the screen with images from the pit, and the post-concert blues disappeared beneath the familiar rhythm of editing. Igor and I compared crops, discussed lighting and framing and zoomed into the strongest photographs he had captured. The adrenaline returned as we realized how much of the evening he had preserved.

I looked at the screen, then across at Igor, and the full absurdity of the previous day finally landed. We had received approval at 12:19 p.m., dropped everything, driven five and a half hours, survived the parking confusion, entered the official press pit and watched Avenged Sevenfold command one of the Midwest’s largest amphitheaters.

We had actually pulled it off.

Sitting in the laptop’s glow, I stopped worrying about what dream might replace this one. There would be another assignment soon enough, another impossible drive, another email arriving far later than anyone sensible would prefer.

For that night, it was enough to know we had chased this one down.

Avenged Sevenfold and Good Charlotte’s North American run continues through August, with dates still ahead in cities including Belmont Park, Mansfield, Camden, Charlotte, Tampa, Dallas, Denver, Salt Lake City and Phoenix. Anyone still debating whether to go should stop treating the decision like an encore that might never arrive. The remaining shows are already on sale, and tickets are available here.

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There was a wedding reception happening next door at DADA, which meant downtown Sioux Falls had produced one of those scenes nobody could have planned better. Guests in pressed shirts, dresses and polished shoes moved through the building while, only a room away, the local music crowd gathered in black denim, band shirts and various shades of artsy grunge. Each doorway seemed to open into a different Saturday night.

That contrast is part of what makes ICON such a gem of a venue. It can hold several versions of Sioux Falls at once without sanding any of them down. Wedding photos in one room. Loud guitars in another. Somewhere between the two, a person dressed for one occasion inevitably realizes they have wandered into the other.

The occasion was Off Contact’s “Can You?” record-release show, with Cat Mouth, Original Star Band and Sioux City’s Glue filling out a bill that kept changing shape. No two sets approached the room from the same direction. The night moved from bug punk abrasion to country-tinted storytelling, then into theatrical rhythmic disorder before Off Contact gathered the loose pieces into something softer, stranger and built for movement.

No wasted time

Cat Mouth opened the night at 8 p.m. with their first live performance as a band, exactly when the flyer said the music would begin. Myles settled behind the drums, Gregg took the bass, Sion handled guitar and Jon Michael stepped forward on vocals. The first blast arrived before the room had time to second-guess whether the night was truly underway.

The band describes its music as bug punk, a name that suits both its nervous movement and its refusal to make itself comfortable. The songs came on loud and directly, driven by long, drawn-out vocals that stayed moody even as the instruments pushed harder underneath them.

Jon Michael did not simply sing toward the audience. He bent into phrases, pulled away from the microphone and struck poses that made the physical act of performing feel inseparable from the music.

There were familiar faces in the lineup for anyone who has spent time around Sad Eye Pearl or the Full Circle Book Co-op music community, but Cat Mouth did not feel like a side project assembled from recognizable parts.

Compared with the more measured character associated with some of those other connections, this band was more confrontational. The songs pressed forward instead of waiting to be approached.

At moments, the enthusiasm became almost too much for the equipment. Feedback tore through the mix more than once, thin and piercing enough to make shoulders rise around the room. Cat Mouth never lost its composure. Nobody froze or stared helplessly toward the sound booth. The band stayed inside the performance and let the noise become part of the damage.

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The room changes clothes

Original Star Band walked into the space Cat Mouth had just left and changed nearly every assumption the opening set had established.

The five-member arrangement created more room within the music. Troy Manning handled guitar and vocals, Cain Rotert added a second guitar, Jacob Vande Vegte played drums, Jensen Twite held down the bass and Dan Nissen worked the keys. After Cat Mouth’s compressed force, the additional instrumentation felt expansive.

Manning’s voice carried a country twang, but the band never stayed inside a clean country outline. Folk textures appeared, then gave way to blues-shaped guitar solos that added depth without turning the songs into showcases for technique. Rotert’s guitar work often functioned as an extra voice beside Manning rather than merely reinforcing the same chords.

Nissen’s keys helped keep the arrangement from becoming too dry or traditional. Notes appeared around the edges, softening some passages and thickening others, while Twite and Vande Vegte gave the songs enough movement to keep the set from settling into a front-porch sway.

Original Star Band moved between an alternative looseness and a more visibly country posture. The interesting part was not choosing which description fit best. It was hearing how naturally the band stepped between them. A song could begin with the directness of a folk story, pick up momentum through the rhythm section and suddenly open into a blues guitar passage without sounding like three different groups negotiating for space.

The set carried an upbeat quality without becoming lightweight. Storytelling remained central, but the stories moved rather than sitting still for inspection. Manning delivered them with enough personality that even listeners unfamiliar with the material could follow the changes in mood.

Time behaved strangely during their performance. Cat Mouth had made every minute feel sharp and immediate. Original Star Band made the set seem to pass within a blink. That was not because the material lacked distinction. The opposite was true. The arrangements kept introducing small changes before any one texture could wear out its welcome.

By the time the final song ended, the room had shifted from bracing itself against Cat Mouth’s attack to moving more freely. The formal clothes passing in the hallway outside no longer seemed quite so distant. Original Star Band had pulled the concert closer to the wedding for a moment, not by becoming polished or restrained, but by giving the room music people could sway to without asking permission first.

Glue brings the strange

Glue began by introducing themselves.

It was a small simple gesture, but one too many bands forget. David Hansen identified the group before settling into bass and vocals, with Aaron Chedester on guitar and Demetrius Dominick behind the drums. The audience did not have to wait until the end of the set, search the flyer or quietly ask somebody nearby who they were watching.

Then the courtesy ended and the chaos started.

Glue’s songs often rode on a steady, compulsive pulse. Dominick’s drumming created something close to a heartbeat, but not a resting one. This was the rhythm of a body that had realized something was wrong before the mind caught up. Eerie sounds hovered behind it, adding unease without overwhelming the trio’s physical attack.

Chedester’s guitar scraped through the repetition while Hansen used the bass to make the songs feel heavy without simply making them slow. The three players understood how to build disorder around a dependable center. Even when the music appeared ready to shake apart, the beat kept returning.

Their banter brought some air into the set, though Hansen’s performance remained intensely physical. He moved with the exaggeration of somebody refusing to let the stage become a place where musicians merely stand and reproduce recordings. Every motion carried a little extra drama. He leaned into the microphone, worked his body around the bass and treated transitions as opportunities rather than dead space.

At some point, apparently, cake entered the situation.

A restroom break pulled me out of the room for the exact moment, which is perhaps the least dignified way to miss the night’s strangest piece of stagecraft. By the time I returned, it appeared Hansen had thrown cake on himself. I cannot responsibly explain the motive, sequence or deeper symbolism. I can only report the aftermath and admit that Glue seemed like the band most likely to make cake feel less like a prop than an occupational hazard.

That uncertainty almost suited the performance. Glue did not offer a clean explanation for every sound or movement. The trio created a controlled mess, then allowed the audience to decide which parts were funny, threatening or simply strange.

Their set sat at the night’s most unstable point. Original Star Band had opened the room outward. Glue tightened it again, replacing twang and blues color with repetition, eerie atmosphere and a rhythm that refused to release its grip. The shift should have felt abrupt. Instead, it clarified what the full lineup was accomplishing. Variety was not an accidental byproduct of booking four bands. It was the evening’s central strength.

Can You?

This was my second time covering Off Contact, and the groove remained the first thing to register.

The band’s core lineup of Brogan Costa, Pat Nelson, Qarl Koyzer and Simon Keller approached the stage with a softer vocal presence than the groups that had come before them. Softer did not mean smaller. Koyzer’s voice stretched across the songs in long phrases while guitar and bass blended beneath him, revealing the chemistry of musicians who understand how much pressure to apply without crowding one another.

Their new album, “Can You?”, had been released the day before the show. Hearing the band present that material after three drastically different opening sets made the record-release performance feel less like an isolated headlining slot and more like the point where the night’s changing moods finally met.

Off Contact can be groovy without becoming carefree. The rhythm invites movement, but the sounds around it retain a slight haze. Guitar lines do not always announce where they are headed. Bass remains melodic enough to pull attention away from the obvious focal points. The drums provide shape while leaving room for the songs to stretch.

Koyzer’s vocal approach brought an unexpected pop softness into that mix. At moments, his melodies carried a faint Savage Garden quality, not because Off Contact suddenly sounded like late-1990s radio pop, but because his phrasing favored smoothness and sustained notes where another post-punk vocalist might have chosen detachment or barked repetition.

He also manipulated his voice throughout the set, changing its texture and adding depth rather than singing every passage with the same tone. Those choices gave the performance more variety and kept the softer delivery from becoming passive.

A fifth musician, Jay, joined the band on saxophone, introducing another color without making the arrangement feel crowded. The instrument gave the music a sharper flash of personality and made the set feel slightly less predictable. Off Contact already operates between categories, and the saxophone pushed the songs farther away from easy classification.

The band’s official descriptions reach toward post-punk, shoegaze, psychedelia and Madchester grooves, but the live performance was more convincing than a stack of genre terms. The evidence was in how the songs moved. Bass and drums created a body-level pull. Guitar supplied atmosphere and tension. The vocals floated above that foundation without losing contact with it.

Then Koyzer began dancing with the microphone stand.

It could have been a small gesture. Instead, he turned the stand into a partner, guiding it across the stage before lifting it overhead like a trophy. The moment had enough confidence to avoid looking self-conscious. It was dramatic because he committed to it fully, not because the production demanded a grand pose.

That image stayed with me. After watching Cat Mouth throw themselves into bug punk theatrics, Original Star Band slide between folk, blues and country, and Glue turn rhythmic anxiety into something involving cake, Off Contact ended the night by raising the microphone stand as though the act of making music deserved its own victory ceremony.

Maybe it did.

Afterglow

When the show ended, the divide inside ICON returned to focus. Wedding guests were still dressed for photographs and slow dances. The concert crowd carried the warmth and ringing ears of four sets that had refused to resemble one another.

The building had held both nights without asking either one to quiet down.

That was the real beauty of the evening. Cat Mouth arrived on time and bit into the room. Original Star Band loosened it with twang, keys and stories. Glue rebuilt it around an anxious pulse, theatrical motion and one unexplained dessert incident. Off Contact closed by letting softer vocals ride across deep grooves, blended guitars, saxophone and the confidence of a band presenting new work on its own terms.

Outside, those different crowds would eventually return to the same downtown sidewalks. Dress shoes and battered boots. Wedding songs and bug punk. A microphone carried overhead like proof that, for a few hours, the strange room next door had won something.

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Note from the editors: We are excited to welcome Molly of Molly Ravenscraft Photography to the team! Thanks for taking the time to read her first article with us!

When I Sing My Last Song

It’s easy for me as a photographer to get so lost in the music that I forget to hit the shutter button. Ha! If I may, let me take you back to Saturday night, August 1, at Pensacola Unplugged, and you’ll see why.

A songwriter night begins long before the first chord. It starts in the green room as artists prepare, in the easy camaraderie between performers and fans and in the rare accessibility that allows everyone to connect before the show. Once the music begins, the setting invites you to completely immerse yourself as artists share the stories behind songs that have transformed our lives—or as someone you have never heard before sings the song you never knew would hit you right in your feels.

Learning who inspired a lyric, what happened while it was being written or why a songwriter nearly abandoned it can change the way the next three minutes sound.

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A Room Made For Stories

Pensacola Unplugged offers the listening-room experience inside the atrium of the Studer Community Institute in the heart of downtown Pensacola. Founded by three songwriters—Devan Dunlap, Rachel “Goldie” Lahr and Jessie Ritter—the series was created to bring artists and listeners close enough for the stories to remain part of the music.

August 1 marked the third of four Pensacola Unplugged showcases scheduled for 2026. The lineup featured Zachary Thomas Diedrich, Kevin Swanson and Jerry Salley, three writers with distinctly different catalogs but the same willingness to let an audience see the people behind the songs.

Finally Learning to Fly

Diedrich and Swanson opened the night by alternating two songs each. Close friends, they played off one another while exchanging songs and stories about imposter syndrome, life, love, heartbreak, too many Bushwackers and perhaps the questionable wisdom of writing a song while driving.

Two songs stayed with me.

Kevin Swanson’s “Finally Learning to Fly” is a love song about commitment, emotional safety and the freedom to be completely yourself with the person you love. He dedicated it to his best friend, who was getting married. What kept it from becoming another generic wedding song was its focus on acceptance—not finding someone who completes you, but finding someone who makes it safe to remain fully yourself.

Diedrich’s “The Neverends” arrived July 14 and was dedicated to his mother. He began crafting it during the dark months of 2020 and finished it after Hurricane Sally. The song does not pretend grief disappears. It acknowledges the days when pain feels permanent, then offers the reminder that no matter how endless those days may seem, everything can still be okay.

Placed beside one another, the two songs showed different faces of hope: one looking toward a marriage and the life ahead, the other finding a way to keep moving through loss. Neither treated hope like an easy answer. Both made it sound earned.

Three Chords and The Lord

Up next to close the night was Jerry Salley, whose songs have been recorded by some of the biggest names in music, including Chris Stapleton, Reba McEntire, The Oak Ridge Boys, Brad Paisley, Loretta Lynn, Toby Keith, Sara Evans, Travis Tritt and John Anderson.

Among Salley’s recent high-profile credits is “It Takes a Woman”, which he co-wrote with Stapleton and Ronnie Bowman for Stapleton’s 2023 album, Higher. Salley’s songwriting and production career has also brought Grammy and Dove Award recognition. He received a 2020 Grammy nomination as producer of Gonna Sing, Gonna Shout, then produced and performed on Dolly Parton’s award-winning recording of “In the Sweet By and By.”

That résumé could have dominated the evening. Instead, it remained context. The songs and the people inside them stayed at the center.

Salley’s round moved through laughter, tears and deep reflection. We heard the stories behind songs including John Anderson’s “I Fell in the Water”, Reba McEntire’s “I’m Gonna Take That Mountain” and Stapleton’s “It Takes a Woman.” He also reached into his own catalog for “BYOB,” “God and a Dog” and “Three Chords and the Lord” from his newly released album, The Believer.

The titles can sound playful on paper, but the set never stayed in one emotional register for long. Humor, faith, mortality and family all belonged in the same round without one diminishing another. It felt like exactly what I needed.

Five O’clock Shadow

Then Salley introduced “Five O’Clock Shadow”.

Written for his son Ethan, who was in attendance, the song captures fatherhood through a small, recognizable image: a boy who wants nothing more than to remain beside his dad. Salley told us he was not going to break down while singing it as he had before.

He did anyway. So did we.

Nothing about the moment felt polished or guarded. With Ethan there to hear the song written for him, fatherhood was no longer an idea inside a lyric. It was sitting in the room. The writer became vulnerable to his own words again, and the audience was allowed to share in it.

That is what this kind of night is all about.

Afterglow

These are the raw, unfiltered stories behind the music, written by people like you and me, leaving us enamored, inspired and wanting more.

Salley ended the night with “When I Sing My Last Song”. It is human nature to wonder about death, about the people who shaped our lives and have gone before us, about the legacies we leave behind and whether we will be remembered.

By then, the answer felt less abstract. A mother had been remembered through “The Neverends.” A best friend had been honored before his wedding. A son had listened as his father tried and failed not to cry through the song written for him.

When songwriters finally lay down their pens and guitars. The songs keep finding new voices because someone hears a piece of their own life inside them. They remain because of how they made us feel and how, for a few minutes, they connected everyone listening.

Maybe that is why I nearly forgot to hit the shutter button.

I remembered to press it again, but I will not forget what made me pause.

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July 31, 2026 marked a first for me as a concert photographer and writer. For the first time, I attempted to cover two different shows in one evening. Just before heading to The Den, I had been photographing a performance at The Levitt, which meant my night was already well underway before the first note of this concert had even been played.

After surviving this experiment, I can confidently say it probably will not become a regular occurrence. Trying to photograph one show, rush across town, and then mentally reset for another is exhausting. By the time the headliner took the stage at The Den, I could definitely feel the effects of a very long day. Thankfully, the artists themselves more than made up for my fatigue, delivering performances that deserved every bit of attention they received.

Meeting Kimberly Meyer Before the Show

One of the biggest advantages of arriving early at these smaller venues is getting to spend a few minutes talking with artists before they perform. I was fortunate enough to chat with Kimberly Meyer before she walked on stage.

Ironically, because I was running on fumes, I asked a question that I normally avoid.

I asked when she started making music.

Usually I stay away from questions like that because a quick internet search can often answer them. Her response, however, reminded me why interviews are so valuable.

Kimberly admitted she doesn’t particularly enjoy that question because music has simply always been part of her life. Like many musicians, she grew up surrounded by it. While she intentionally began writing songs in 2020 and later moved into producing, putting a definitive starting point on a lifelong relationship with music doesn’t really tell the whole story.

Her answer stuck with me because it reflects something true about so many artists. Music isn’t usually something they discover overnight. It’s woven into childhood memories, family gatherings, church services, road trips, and countless everyday moments before it ever becomes a career.

We also talked about songwriting inspiration. Kimberly explained that every song begins differently. Sometimes it’s born from an incredibly vivid dream. Other times it’s a passing conversation that plants a single idea and slowly grows into something much larger. There isn’t a formula, only a willingness to pay attention to life’s moments.

Before wrapping up our conversation, she encouraged me to keep an ear out for “Black Perfume,” a song she felt represented her work particularly well.

A Powerful Opening Performance

When Kimberly finally started, it didn’t take long for people’s attention to move toward the stage.

Her voice immediately became the centerpiece of the performance. Without a full band behind her, every lyric stood out a little more than usual. Two acoustic guitars intertwined with a fiddle, creating a rich yet understated sound that allowed the storytelling to shine.

Some of the evening’s strongest moments came during songs like, as she predicted, “Black Perfume” and “Dark Side of the Room.” Rather than shying away from difficult subjects, Kimberly openly invited the audience into some of the darker chapters of her life. Those songs carried an honesty that made them easy to connect with, even if listeners hadn’t lived those exact experiences themselves.

Fortunately, the mood didn’t stay heavy all night.

She shifted into more upbeat material while taking time to recognize members of the military in attendance. Drawing from her own fifteen plus years serving in the South Dakota Army National Guard, she dedicated a song to active service members, veterans, and the families who serve alongside them. It was a genuine moment that felt especially meaningful coming from someone who understands military life firsthand.

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Finding Therapy on Two-Lane Roads

Kimberly concluded her performance with “Two-Lane Therapy” from her newest EP.

Before performing it, she explained how driving back roads serves as a place of peace and reflection. Sometimes the best way to process life’s challenges is simply getting behind the wheel and letting the miles create space to think.

That sentiment resonated throughout this room of Midwest attendees.

For someone who admittedly doesn’t spend much time listening to country music, Kimberly Meyer was a refreshing introduction. The stripped down instrumentation highlighted her vocals, while her honest songwriting created an intimate atmosphere that proved you don’t need elaborate production to captivate an audience.

Danny Grause Brings Guitar Firepower

Next up was Iowa native Danny Grause.

Although Iowa sits just across the border from South Dakota, Danny joked that this was actually his first time performing in Sioux Falls. His bassist, however, was much more familiar with the area, adding a little hometown connection to the evening.

Like Kimberly’s set, Danny’s band kept things relatively simple. With only electric guitar, bass, and drums, there wasn’t much room to hide.

Fortunately, they didn’t need it.

Danny quickly established himself as an exceptional guitarist. Nearly every song featured extended solos that showcased his technical ability. At times it bordered on being almost too much guitar, but he always managed to pull it back before crossing that line.

Equally impressive was the rhythm section.

Rather than relying solely on traditional country grooves, the bassist incorporated a noticeable funk influence that gave many songs a fresh feel. It added personality to the arrangements and helped distinguish Danny’s music from more conventional country acts.

Humor Between the Songs

Like Kimberly, Danny also took time to honor military veterans with a song dedication, another meaningful moment considering his own military background.

He also delivered one of the funniest moments of the evening.

Anyone who has attended a show at The Den knows that while the stage faces a large open floor, many audience members naturally gravitate toward the tables positioned off to the side. Danny couldn’t help but notice.

While introducing one of his songs, he joked that maybe the band should simply rotate ninety degrees so they’d actually be facing most of the crowd.

It was a small observation, but one that had plenty of people laughing because it was completely accurate.

Strong Musicianship, Different Themes

Lyrically, Danny’s songs centered largely around his own life experiences, something that fits comfortably within country music traditions.

Some songs leaned toward more personal relationships, while others ventured into more playful territory, including one centered around skinny dipping.

Those themes didn’t necessarily resonate with me personally, but that’s the beauty of music. Not every lyric has to speak directly to every listener.

What remained undeniable was the musicianship.

Between Danny’s guitar work, the groove established by the rhythm section, and the band’s chemistry, there was plenty to appreciate regardless of whether every song connected on a personal level.

Jackson Taylor and The Sinners Finally Arrive

Then came the reason many people had packed into The Den.

Jackson Taylor and The Sinners.

Unfortunately for me, this is where my ambitious scheduling finally caught up.

Their set didn’t begin until approximately 11:10 p.m., and after covering The Levitt, photographing two opening acts, and knowing I still had hundreds of photos waiting to be sorted and uploaded afterward, I simply couldn’t stay for the full performance.