PUREHONEY 120

10/1

RESPECTABLE STREET: Emo Night Brooklyn

REVOLUTION LIVE: Electric Feels: Indie Rock + Indie Dance Party

PROPAGANDA: Dark Wave Disco Party

GRAMPS: Rare Americans, DYLYN

ITHINK AMP: Alice in Chains, Breaking Benjamin, Bush

MATHEWS BREWING: Angels of War NAOMIS GARDEN: Mike & the Nerve, Over Mania!, Iliad, The Wrong Number

10/3

REVOLUTION LIVE: War on Drugs

10/4

FLA LIVE: Panic! at the Disco

CULTURE ROOM: The Knocks x Cannons, Juliana Madrid

10/5

REVOLUTION LIVE: Peach Pit, The Districts

10/6

REVOLUTION LIVE: Coin, Miloe

RESPECTABLE STREET: Amanda Moore MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Calypso House

10/7

RESPECTABLE STREET: Symbols ‘Valentine’

Album Release

NORTON MUSEUM OF ART: Art After Dark

PROPAGANDA: Spooky Mermaid Party, Tiger Sunset, Mount Sinai, Baron, Vendors,Circus Performers

CULTURE ROOM: Victor Wooten, Steve Bailey, Derico Watson

MATHEWS BREWING: Palm Beach Country NAOMIS GARDEN: Mind State, Fox Gloves, Stellus, Age of Anxiety

UNSEEN CREATURES: Pulp Love, Sunny Side Up, Ex Monarch, Further North Further South

10/8

HARD ROCK LIVE: The Smashing Pumpkins, Jane’s Addiction

RESPECTABLE STREET: Genitorturers

MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Lucy Dacus

REVOLUTION LIVE: Hardwired- A Tribute to Metallica and Products of Rage MATHEWS BREWING: Girlfriend Material, Kris & Alex, Maximum Friction

THE PEACH: Morning Meditation w/ Wenji

10/9

MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Gospel Jam

ITHINK AMP: Zac Brown Band MATHEWS BREWING: Jordan Richards

10/10

THE PEACH: Space of Mind PROPAGANDA: Vomit Forth, Simulakra, Snuffed on Sight

10/12

RESPECTABLE STREET: Babyjake

THE PARKER: Weird Al Yankovic

CULTURE ROOM: Melvins, We Are the Asteroid 10/13

RESPECTABLE STREET: Traitors, VCTMS, Worm Shepherd, The World I See PROPAGANDA: The Academy THE PARKER: Weird Al Yankovic UNSEEN CREATURES: Comedy AF

10/14

NORTON MUSEUM OF ART: Art After Dark REVOLUTON LIVE: Fletcher, Verite

THE PEACH: Ruben’s Comedy

CULTURE ROOM: Vista Kicks, Cannibal Kids

MATHEWS BREWING: Project X

GRAMPS: Nunslaughter, The Black Moriah, Malevich, Beastplague

BAYFRONT PARK: Jack Harlow

10/15

BRYANT PARK: Bark Back Benefit Spred the Dub, Boxelder, The Shake, Fire water Tent Revival, The Copper Tones

EPOCA BREWING CO: Houndstooth Release Party w Personal Demons

RESPECTABLE STREET: Ethan Bortnick

MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Italian Hit Week

RESOURCE DEPOT: Family Workshop

THE PEACH: No Shade

PROPAGANDA: Cinema Stereo, The Boas, Playkill, Dirty Rivals

MATHEWS BREWING: Metalucious, Maximum Friction

10/16

MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Pigeons Playing Ping Pong

RESPECTABLE STREET: Attila ‘Rage’ Tour

MATHEWS BREWING: Dominic Delaney

PROPAGANDA: Lion’s Law, 1983, Killed by Florida

10/19

MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Latin Beat Fest RESPECTABLE STREET: We Were Promised Jetpacks, Breakup Shoes

PROPAGANDA: Shots of Love Comedy Speed Dating 10/20

MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Psychic Mirrors

PROPAGANDA: Modern Natives, Cosmic Sun

10/21

WYNWOOD: III Points ft La Femme

NORTON MUSEUM OF ART: Art After Dark

RINKER PLAYHOUSE: National Geographic

Live: Terry Virts – View from Above

THE PEACH: Heather Couch

RESPECTABLE STREET: The Callous Daoboys,

REVOLUTION LIVE: Gumbo: A Live Phish Adam Jason BREWING: Roxanne (Police Trib) FOR SUBTROPICAL AFFAIRS:

RESPECTABLE STREET: Kitchen Club 80’s New Wave & Classics

WYNWOOD: III Points ft. Orbital

THE PEACH: October Art Walk MATHEWS BREWING: One Rebellion

10/23

GRAMPS: Frankie and the Witch Fingers, Kairos Creature Club

MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Love is Love

REVOLUTION LIVE: Bazzi RESPECTABLE STREET: Daikaiju, Hellfire Hooch, Big Lux

FTX ARENA: Gorillaz, Jungle

FPL ARENA: Rufus Du Sol, Bora Uzer MATHEWS BREWING: Mick & Billy

10/25

MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Hippo Campus HARD ROCK LIVE: Greta Van Fleet, Durand Jones and the Indications, Crown Lands

10/27

REVOLUTION LIVE: Neil Francis GRAMPS: Narrow Head, Temple of Angels, Bleed, Stripmallravestarrr

MATHEWS BREWING: Jordan Richards

10/28

RESPECTABLE STREET: MEGARAVE

NORTON MUSEUM OF ART: Art After Dark

REVOLUTION LIVE: The Black Market Horror Fest Night 1

THE PEACH: Life Drawing Class

PROPAGANDA: MRSA, Livekill, World Eater, Snake Healer

GRAMPS: Melt Banana, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat CULTURE ROOM: Toadies, Reverend Horton Heat, Nashville Pussy MATHEWS BREWING: The Chili Poppers, Product of Rage, Maximum Friction

10/29

500 BLOCK DNTN WPB: MOONFEST

RESPECTABLE STREET: Pietasters, Spred the Dub REVOLUTION LIVE: The Black Market Horror Fest Night 2

DREYFOOS HALL: The Phantom of the Opera Silent Film w Organist Cameron Carpenter

MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: RAM Fet Gede RESOURCE DEPOT: Artist Talk

PROPAGANDA: Halloween Extravaganza, Comedy, Tribute Bands, Costume Contest

MATHEWS BREWING: Sound Junkies

CULTURE ROOM: The Wallflowers

THE BRIDGE: Spooky Cafe ft. Cannibal Kids, Suz, Frogs Show Mercy, Project Rukus, The Floridians, Soukpax Burgundee, Dylan Hall, Swimmer, TX2, Ozzy Apollo, Bause Mason, P.M Tiger

10/30

REVOLUTION LIVE: Chapo Trap House

MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Rocky Horror Picture Show

MATHEWS BREWING: Jose Almonte

10/31

RESPECTABLE STREET: HALLOWEEN PARTY

11/5

HATCH 1121 LWB: Dia De Los Muertos REVOLUTION LIVE: Day of the Dead

11/12-13

MAD ARTS SPACE DANIA: SPF 2022 YESTERYEAR VILLAGE: Steampunk Adventurers Weekend

LA FEMME

by Amanda

Four trombone players sporting blonde bobs, down a dusty stair and through a heart-shaped an abandoned Vegas hole in the wall transforms Reminiscent of Lady Gaga’s breakout performances, “Paradigme” featured imaginative choreography, editing to produce unforgettable moving art of template for winning over the world.

The accompanying album, “Paradigmes,” arrived escape from Covid times and an evocative a feature-length companion “Paradigmes: the album. The titular opening track, though capture its harrowing isolation: “The souls of are often lost/ And carry in them, twisted desires

It was a maiden trek through 20 U.S. cities, in that begat a red-carpet welcome back home French record labels. The duo formed by guitarist Magnée quickly evolved into a psych-punk-rock-pop contributors. More EPs followed and, in 2013, Berlin,” exclaimed their love of France’s own movements. In short order La Femme were climbing following with their liquidating, lustful melodies

La Femme operate as a fluid entity, not just approach, writing music first and then seeking process allowing for continuous metamorphosis. approach to the concept of “featuring,” creates sound while remaining true to La Femme’s Their expansive, tropi-pop, euro-dance energy representing a few music-fan constituencies Pop at Desert Daze, The Killers at Voodoo Music at Electric Panic

These visionaries are making more trans “Sacatela,” from a forthcoming Spanish-language November 4. A tasteful, suggestively sensual met with present-day blunt sexuality, washes of “Sacatela.” Set poolside at the love-themed draws viewers into a quirky and quite possibly infuses Latin erotic flair into La Femme’s coastal

“Sacatela,” though consistent with eccentric members’ close hometown proximity to Spain through South America. La Femme are also on the new album. If the single and corresponding of the rest, fans can expect more ardor and the original (pre-Los Angeles) Whisky a Go Femme are an embodiment of the French unrestrained and provocative endorsement

Touring with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, performing Quealy, springing guest artists mid concert, everything except guaranteeing that they’ll in online forums reviewing their gigs — and finish. Le Femme want everyone at their giant, one of their recent tour posters: “I want to see in Los Angeles/ You came closer/ I don’t want It’s like we already/ Know each other.”

La Femme perform Friday, Oct. 21 at the III

FEMME

Amanda E. Moore

black tails and fishnet stockings promenade heart-shaped neon-lit entryway, and what looks like transforms into a space-electro dreamland. performances, La Femme’s 2020 music video for choreography, electrifying visuals, and experimental backed by modern synth-pop — and a kind

arrived in April 2021 as a hypnotic audiophile evocative retelling of life on the road. There was also Paradigmes: Le Film,” essentially a movie musical for though written before the pandemic, seemed to the evening that we meet on the sidewalks desires and dark thoughts.”

2010 in support of a self-released debut EP, home and a signing frenzy for La Femme among guitarist Sascha Got and keyboardist Marlon psych-punk-rock-pop collective with a rotating cast of 2013, a debut studio album, “Psycho Tropical own ’60s underground and ’70s synthwave climbing charts and amassing an international melodies and lounge-pop esthétique.

just in gender representation but in creative seeking out complimentary collaborators — a metamorphosis. This production model, a contemporary creates a trans-temporal, psychedelic-exotica philosophically acute and libidinous lyrics. energy has also landed them on concert bills constituencies — with Gorillaz at Austin City Limits, Iggy Music & Arts Experience, and Kendrick Lamar

waves internationally with the release of Spanish-language album, “Teatro Lucido,’ due on sensual strain of ’70s lounge-surf psychedelia, washes through both the lyrics and music video love-themed Hotel Amour in Nice, France, the video possibly eternal summer’s day (and night), and coastal euro-pop-poshness and ambience.

eccentric earlier works, speaks to some of the band Spain and to more recent tours there as well as also said to be exploring reggaeton influences corresponding visual art piece are any indication and romance set to rhythms made famous by Go discothèque in the French Riviera. La expression “à gogo,” with their intoxicating, of joy.

performing at secret locations with DJ Sam La Femme excel at being unpredictable in they’ll be “incredible live” — a recurring phrase they’ll have everyone dancing from start to giant, rolling electro-disco dance party. To quote see you/ I want to have you/ In the nightclub want to forget the touch of your skin and laugh/

Points festival in Miami.

BARK BACK

by Abel Folgar

Here’s a fact that seems made up: Florida has among the best state animal protection laws in America. So says the Animal Legal Defense Fund, a California-based nonprofit highly rated by Charity Navigator. As reported by the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, in 2020, the state achieved a new lifesaving record of nine out of every ten animals taken in throughout the year — an 81% jump from 2019, and an overall 54% increase since shelter data collection began in 2013.

More can always be done. Since 2015, Mick Swigert and friends have worked to improve the lives of South Florida’s four-legged residents through the Bark Back Benefit. The annual festival was created to celebrate the lives of Nesta and Etta, the Swigert family’s beloved canine companions that passed away within a month of each other earlier that year. The festival benefits the Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League and the Barky Pines Animal Rescue, both in Palm Beach County.

“At Peggy Adams’, over 34K dogs and cats benefited from services provided last year,” event co-founder Jacqueline Batcha tells PureHoney. “Barky Pines has saved the lives of 890 dogs in Palm Beach. The need for these amazing shelters continues to grow, so our little festival has grown with them.”

A bigger venue this year in Lake Worth’s Bryant Park means an expanded lineup of vendors, artists and food trucks alongside Bark Back’s undeniable star attraction: the First Responders Runway Walk with adoptable dogs. A stellar roster of bands will perform throughout the day. Swigert’s own good time reggae outfit, Spred the Dub, will headline. Other bands include Jupiter legends Boxelder, The Shake, Firewater Tent Revival, and The Copper Tones

From general admission to limited VIP packages, the seventh annual Bark Back is offering multiple ways to meet and greet adorable, adoptable doggos! “We have a beautiful community of animal lovers here in South Florida that never let us down and we’re looking forward to a gorgeous day,” says Batcha.

Bark Back Benefit VII starts 11:30am Saturday, Oct. 15 at Bryant Park in Lake Worth. barkbackbenefit.com

After nearly three decades of Moonfests, the kept the party on ice (2020) and then bottled bash in 2019 covering several blocks of Clematis a costume party, music festival and bar crawl it had originated 28 years earlier. This year looks Street, and most of the businesses in the Subculture Maurice Costigan, owner of O’Shea’s Irish Pub, those venues are regularly hosting weekend

So under the waxing crescent moon, on congregate on the 500 Block. “In traditional event Moonfest Main Costume Contest, held at O’Shea’s, cash prizes,” says Costigan.

For serious contest entrants, the stock witch, zombie costumes are not recommended. inspiration might consult October’s astrological an opportunity to reflect and move forward desires; combined with the Year of the Tiger, and independent.

For specific colors or designs, there are this holographic sheen produces rainbows under commonly mistaken for ruby or emerald. Together, which we can all use a little more of in our lives.

Moonfest runs 9pm-midnight, Saturday, Oct. 29 Palm Beach. osheaspub.com/Moonfest

FRANKIE & THE WITCH FINGERS

by Abel Folgar

While science helps to explain the brain’s response to psychedelics, the individual experience in all of its transformative capacity is spiritual — yet somehow still quantifiable for Frankie and the Witch Fingers, one of the most exciting acts on the current landscape of American psychedelic rock.

Formed in 2013, Frankie and the Witch Fingers are on a journey of relentless evolution spanning six studio albums, assorted singles and EPs, and one major relocation — trading their leafy midwestern college hometown of Bloomington, Indiana for the sprawl of Los Angeles. Musically they range across psych terrain shaped in part by the likes of Can, Blue Cheer, the Stooges, King Khan and West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. With audible reverence for their muses, the band’s particular garage-psych sound also straddles a line between wild and unrefined, and highly stylized and deliberate. The controlled chaos of a carnival as seen through lysergic lenses comes to mind.

That amalgam has coalesced in full within the grooves of their latest album, 2020’s “Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters…” In the funk-laden, early Santana-esque opener “Activate,” the introspection-seeking heraldic jammers “Where’s Your Reality?” and “Can You Hear Me Now?”, and the volatile crescendo of the title track, the album neatly defines the mathematics of the band’s creative drive.

A 2021 single, “Cookin’” b/w “Tracksuit,” incorporates gospel-like grandiosity into the design. Whether a result of pandemic isolation or reinvention for a new decade, these sounds are further steps forward in a Devonian trek led by founding band mates Dylan Sizemore, on vocals and rhythm guitar, and Josh Menashe, on lead guitar, with newest arrivals Nikkie Pickle and Nicholas Aguilar taking over on bass and drums, respectively.

Another byproduct of a band that is as much visual as it is aural, is an even more energetic live experience. Not that we’d recommend you “drop” in, but missing Frankie and the Witch Fingers would be hard to explain.

Frankie and the Witch Fingers perform with Kairos Creature Club and more 7pm Sunday, Oct. 23 at Gramps in Miami. frankieandthewitchfingers.com

MOONFEST

by Amanda E. Moore

A Cheshire Cat slinks into an open seat at the bar next to Poison Ivy, while The Joker bolts outside, leaving his drink, to catch up to an angel disappearing into the All Hallow’s Eve mist. If this sounds like a scene from an alternative cartoon universe, it’s actually one that South Floridians know well — from downtown West Palm Beach’s annual Moonfest

the pandemic and local politics, respectively, bottled up (2021) since the last full-on Halloween Clematis Street and environs. The 2021 edition was confined to the 500 block of Clematis, where looks to be a reprise. “O’Shea’s, Respectable Subculture Group, will host stages with live music,” Pub, tells PureHoney. To drum-up excitement, block parties as a lead-in to Halloween time.

Saturday, Oct. 29, costumed revelers can event form, attendees can participate in the O’Shea’s, competing to win a total of $1,000 in

witch, vampire, ghost, cat, pirate, Batman and recommended. Attendees searching for spooky-season astrological readings: A crescent moon is considered forward with new energy, embracing one’s own it encourages individuals to be brave, fierce

this month’s official gemstones: opal, whose under light; and tourmaline, a complex gem Together, they represent love and mystery, lives.

29 on the 500 block of Clematis Street in West

SPF ‘22

by Olivia Feldman

With newspapers across the country ditching daily editions as they struggle to stay afloat, it is in some ways a terrible time for print. But not at the Small Press Fair, an annual expo in South Florida that celebrates ink-on-paper creativity in its many maker forms and just keeps on flourishing.

With a move to new digs at the MAD Arts gallery in Dania Beach this muchanticipated gathering of independent publishers, designers and artists is also expanding into a two-day affair for the first time since its founding in 2016.

The larger space can accommodate 70 different vendors. (There’s still time to apply for a table.) Among the local, regional and national exhibitors expected to return with new wares this fall: New York visual and sound artist Richard Vergez, who also owns a Miami record label, Noir Age; Brooklyn-based woodcut and letterpress maker Martin Mazorra; and organizers from the O Miami Poetry Festival. With alumni ranging from Radiator Comics in Miami Shores to Texas typographic artist David Wolske, the SPF trademark is an inspirational array of books, periodicals, artworks, posters and more expressing the beauty and power of tangible works even, and especially, as we’re awash in pixels.

“I’ve been seeing people of all ages wanting to get messy and feel something real in their hands,” SPF co-foudner Ingrid Schindall tells PureHoney. “The more digital we get, the more we see people rebelling or needing a break from it or needing to bring that information back into the physical world.”

Small Press Fair began with artist and gallerist Sarah Michelle Rupert approaching printmaker and studio owner Schindall about a joint exhibition. Rupert is collections director at the Girls’ Club art gallery in Fort Lauderdale. Schindall is founder of IS Projects, a public access printmaking and book arts studio which recently relocated to Miami from Fort Lauderdale. Their work in and around SPF is part of the city’s — and the region’s — growing and well-chronicled reputation as a creative arts scene not confined to the Miami-Dade County precincts of Wynwood and Art Basel

Schindall embraced Rupert’s spark of an idea, and through 2021 they have produced six consecutive SPFs, each attended by hundreds of people, with no pandemic interruptions. The 2020 edition was a Webcast, and the bounce-back year of 2021 also saw a horde of new exhibitors. Schindall has a cheerily groan-inducing pun she tosses out about putting on more layers of SPF every year — a joke that either preceded or possibly originated with the giddy 2018 SPF event poster.

Either way, the fair is leaning into the suncoast theme and arranging booth space accordingly: Beach Front for presses and universities; Zine Dunes for smaller organizations and individual artists such as Vergez, whose imagery combines both technological and human elements in its contemplation of ever-changing modern identity.

The MAD Arts facility also contains two rooms that will be dedicated to a print exhibit the fair is curating and an auditorium for a planned SPF artist talk that is still in development. Organizers feel the move to MAD Arts (from FATVillage in Fort Lauderdale) will enable a more immersive and historically detailed experience, and it adds peace of mind. “Being able to lock everything up safely and having some volunteers from their company run day-of logistics…[MAD] is making our dream of a two-day fair possible,” says Schindall.

The highlight of the fair is arguably The Steamroller: Organizers invite artists to create large-scale blocks, which can take months to prepare, and then hold a printing demo in which a steamroller driver lets ‘er rip — trundling over the paper laid atop the inked blocks to create mammoth prints on the spot. In addition to the fun spectacle, these sessions constitute a key part of the fair’s mission to show attendees how printmaking actually works. We’re going to go out on a limb and surmise that notwithstanding the fair’s move to a bigger and more enclosed space, Steamroller 2022 will still be an outdoor or at least open-air experience.

Small Press Fair runs noon-6pm Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 12 and 13 at MAD Arts in Dania Beach. spf-ftl.com | @spfftl | Poster by @baghead

JANES ADDICTION

by David Rolland

Like too many of my favorite bands, I got into Jane’s Addiction after they had broken up. I was fascinated by their music video for “Been Caught Stealing” when it played on MTV but I never dug any deeper.

A few years after their 1991 “break-up,” my friends and I skipped high school and took a couple of buses to South Beach. One of us carried a boombox blasting the “Been Caught Stealing” album, 1990’s “Ritual de lo Habitual.” From the opening Spanish words of “Stop!” that then devolved into Dave Navarro’s shredding guitars and singer Perry Farrell’s hedonistic wails, I was intrigued. But the album didn’t stop: It was one attention-grabbing, fast-paced adventure after another before chilling out into beautiful, heartfelt ballads.

That afternoon I got a blank cassette. I honestly can’t remember if I paid for it but I’d like to think in honor of “Been Caught Stealing” I shoplifted it, which in those delinquent days was a possibility. And on the bus ride home my friend copied it for me on his boombox. Until I stopped having a car with a cassette player, that tape was a constant presence in my life.

I’ve often wondered why that record never gets old to me. Was it relatable because Farrell also spent formative teen years in South Florida? Was it their classic rock influences, which had them covering the Grateful Dead, Velvet Underground and the Rolling Stones, that gave their music a timeless foundation that a lot of their ’80’s and early ’90 peers lack? Or was it that their first incarnation burned out so quickly — after two blazing albums in “Ritual” and 1988’s equally equally fantastic “Nothing’s Shocking” — that they never had time to release any duds?

Whatever the reason, any time Jane’s Addiction reunites I try my damnedest to attend, as their musical energy always takes me back to that skipping high school spirit of youth and rebellion and fun.

The “Spirits on Fire” tour with Smashing Pumpkins and Jane’s Addiction is 6:30pm Saturday, Oct. 8 at Hard Rock Live in Hollywood. janesaddiction.com

HOUNDSTOOTH

It’s been bandmates Kapel began name under the couple’s Lollipops an all-encompassing At times actual recording function new albums

“We have of the late Simple Machines and Dischord,” Kapel tells still amazes me now as to how much cooperation labels when the ones driving them were high music. It’s really a passion project with hopes of music and art from the like-minded.”

The new albums are: “Lost Hours,” a music

“The Childrens Experimental Guitar Orchestra Meadows while he was teaching guitar to and, locally, “Personal Demons,” made up music community mainstays for 30 years. school. So its awesome to be working with book one of my bands,” Kapel says. “Both through their many projects.”

Personal Demons will headline a release party Miami where Houndstooth hosts a monthly copies on CD and cassette (w/download code) Bastard will be djing, and The World is a Wedding

Houndstooth Cottage hosts Personal Demons Epoca Brewing Company in North Miami.

by David

HOUNDSTOOTH

David Rolland

been almost a decade since married bandmates Maitejosune Urrechaga and Tony began using Houndstooth Cottage as a under which to start booking shows. Though couple’s rock band is known as Pocket of Lollipops, Houndstooth Cottage quickly became all-encompassing moniker for various projects. it was a booking contact; other times an recording studio. Its most important current is as a record label, one issuing - three albums on October 15!

have always had a love for the small labels late ’80s and early ’90s such as TeenBeat, tells PureHoney. “It blew me away then and cooperation and organization came from these high school kids just trying to share friends’ hopes of creating and maintaining a collection

music collective spearheaded by Bob Fay; Orchestra,” recordings captured by Sean to villages in Vietnam in the early 2000’s; up of Ed Matus and Ed Artigas, both Miami “We’ve known both Eds since early high with them. Ed Artigas was the first person to “Both of them are special to a lot of people

party at Epoca Brewing Company in North monthly event every third Saturday. “We will have code) and some buttons,” Kapel says. “Rat Wedding pop-up will be on site.”

Demons and more, 8pm Saturday, Oct. 15 at houndstoothcottage.com

JJ CROMER

by Veronica Inberg

Pop Art of the 1960s is as ubiquitous to collectors as the golden arches of McDonald’s: Lichtenstein, Warhol and Haring can be seen in the galleries of most contemporary American art museums. Initially critiques of consumerism through mass production and institutional elitism, the artists’ collective work in its enduring popularity has almost become the thing it was appraising, reproduced ad infinitum in shoes, hats, shirts, keychains, greeting cards and more. Warhol’s bright soup cans make it easy to forget that the ’60s were rife with political and racial conflict in a country convulsed by the Vietnam War and Civil Rights

But there was an emboldened and reactive counterculture in the wings. Gathering in Chicago, the proverbial Second City to Pop Art’s base of New York, were next-wave creators who embraced “outsider” art: anti-canon, absurdist, and bizarre. Focusing on eclectic elements of folk art, found objects and a DIY aesthetic, a collective emerged calling itself “The Hairy Who,” graduates of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who created exciting new work more akin to Abstract Expressionism than Pop Art that would influence generations to come.

Born in 1967, the PureHoney featured artist for this month, JJ Cromer, could have easily been one of The Hairy Who. He has invoked them as inspiration for his work, and as a self-taught artist he is able to personify a DIY ethos through his own vision and voice.

Cromer grew up in coal mining country, in a Virginia town near the West Virginia line, and still lives in the region, although he doesn’t explicitly cite Appalachia in his art. “It’s more like these references are the soil from which the work grows,” Cromer tells PureHoney in an interview.

He uses pen, ink, collage and colored pencils on paper to achieve a layered, textural quality. He has developed a unique symbolist visual vocabulary that enables patterns, decorations and subject matter to be replicated across his output and understood by the viewer as his visual thumbprint. “Each piece is a kind of puzzle piece, connecting to a prior work,” Cromer says, though even he is unsure what the completed puzzle will be.

He also takes inspiration from a childhood spent in rural Tazewell, Va., with his parents who were both science teachers, and a secondary education in library science and creative writing. Motifs of the environment, literature and methodological grid-like structures can be seen throughout his work.

In a recent interview with Visual Melt, Cromer said he has attempted to create political art in The Hairy Who tradition. Asked to elaborate, he says he was referencing a series of his about coal mining. Devastating consequences from decades of industrial digging and poor land reclamation are issues his family and community still reckon with. “I wanted to see if I could make overtly political work,” he says, “where any ambiguity in the piece was secondary to the message: this practice is bad.”

In his former life as a librarian, Cromer took pride in finding answers. As an artist he says he prefers “ambiguity and mystery.” He welcomes “slips of the hand, a misapplied collage, spills,” he says. “They force me to trust my hand and my subconscious to do what needs to be done.” Through dueling acts of creation and destruction, Cromer is able to build tension in his work; a feeling he knows well living in a place where his worldview isn’t the dominant one.

Cromer’s ability to replicate the feeling of motion in his work is equally astounding, considering how small these pieces actually are: most no bigger than a piece of letter-sized paper; larger works topping out at 14”x17”. Much like a movie that reveals something new with each viewing, Cromer’s work is best consumed over an extended period of time.

Despite his lack of institutional training, Cromer has found success in the art world. His primary gallery, American Primitive, is in New York City, and his work can be found in London and Copenhagen, with a permanent home at Baltimore’s American Visionary Arts Museum. He is currently showing at the Outsider Art Fair in Paris. To see his full collection, visit jjcromer.com You’ll want to zoom in. @jjcromer

W.I.T.C.H.

by Abel Folgar

We Intend to Cause Havoc, the band name chosen by frontman Emmanuel “Jagari” Chanda and his mates, was a claim to distinction in a highly competitive music scene in Zambia’s post-independence rush — and a statement of impact from these champions of Zamrock that still lands, but differently.

WITCH, as they’re known, became a sensation in Zambia and southeastern Africa in the 1970s and 1980s before their breakup and a long hibernation that is now very much over. WITCH are touring again and being celebrated in a documentary film, and the Zamrock movement has re-emerged in reissues and compilations such as 2017’s “Welcome to Zamrock” to capture new generations of music fans globally. “To my amazement, we have young people in their 20s and 30s who are now following this music,” WITCH’s Patrick Mwondela tells PureHoney in an interview. “It’s mind-blowing, really.”

Amid a flurry of interest in African music in the 2000s — reissues of Afro-beat avatar Fela Kuti, explorations by the likes of Awesome Tapes From Africa — Zamrock also resurfaced. “The way I heard about this resurgence is that a Zambian student in Canada wrote a thesis on Zamrock and it went viral, creating interest in our music scene,” says Mwondela. “So people started looking.”

WITCH came to the attention of a crate-digging, Connecticut-born rapper, Egon, who also runs a Los Angeles-based independent record label, Now-Again. A string of WITCH album reissues in the early 2010s followed and helped to set Chanda and Mwondela on a path toward reunion tours beginning in 2017 that both might regard as providential. “We are both born-again believers, so our faith is very strong,” says Mwondela. “I’ve looked back and said to myself, ‘There I was back in the day, causing havoc in people’s lives and my own life as well,’ but I find this as an opportunity to play Zamrock and all the stuff we did, and to talk to people about life.”

Mineral- and music-rich Zambia gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1964. Zamrock, a term credited to Zambian radio DJ Manasseh Phiri, was a rallying burst of energy for dozens of post-colonial Zambian bands. A boon to the scene was the first president of the independent nation, Kenneth Kaunda, declaring that 95% of music on Zambian radio must be of Zambian origin.

Formed in the early ’70s, WITCH thrived in an era of both optimism and crisis: Zambia’s copper-powered economy was faltering, but bands such as Salty Dog, Amanaz, the Ngozi Family and Crossbones were everywhere. And WITCH led the pack. “In Zambia we were a household name, the shows were wild — the police had to be on alert,” says Mwondela. “We were true to the intention of causing havoc.”

WITCH also evolved, from rock to disco/funk and finally to kalindula — a roots genre named for a lute-like bass guitar — before disbanding in the face of a devastating AIDS epidemic that decimated the whole Zamrock scene.

A keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist, Mwondela joined WITCH ahead of 1980’s “Movin’ On” album and led the band after Chanda quit to become a teacher. Mwondela credits his musical range to the global character of his education in the 1960s at the outset of Zambian independence.

“Zambia was exporting copper at the time; the currency was one-to-one with the British Sterling Pound and the schools were excellent and international with a lot of expatriate Canadian, English, Kenyan,” he says. “I mean, the whole world was in Zambia.” As young residents of a former U.K. colony, Mwondela and others were also listening to anything that was happening in London almost on the same day. “Motown, Deep Purple, Eric Clapton, Santana, those were the influences we had,” he says.

Mwondela cut his teeth with teen outfits on Zambian TV and with a youth band, Guys

and Dolls, that managed to upstage the betterknown Chanda and WITCH in a monthly televised concert with battle of the bands energy. “It very competitive, and we stole the show with blend of Zamrock and disco,” Mwondela says, since WITCH was looking for a keyboard player the time, they sort of headhunted me and I made deal with them that if they wanted me, they had take my guitarist [Emmanuel Makulu] as well.”

They were operating in an environment of musical superation based on every band trying to each other. Mwondela even claims acts musical espionage by concertgoers who would report back to other bands on sounds, and antics. “Musicians of my era learned instruments by studying the best players around and the level of musicianship was very high,” Mwondela. “It was because of this competitive nature and a mindset that because we were Africa not having access to many things, we being left behind, so that what little we had, really embraced it.”

WITCH’s first three albums, “Introduction,” “In Past” and “Lazy Bones!!” are crucial rock ’n’ classics. And while the later disco influence band’s original fans had grown up with musical versus disco world. Mwondela recalls when station. “WITCH fans that had been following records stores to buy the record,” he says, “but would actually be at the shops.” The supply the stylistic shift “gave us a sense of pride,” he

WITCH and their new sound found a residency early ‘80s, but as the AIDS epidemic ravaged out, Mwondela exited. “It was tragic. AIDS “Zambia struggled after the disco era. If you like many Zambian musicians, we were trying At the time, Zambia had such a small population a living and promoters were not able to get WITCH disbanded. Mwondela relocated to addition to teaching, has also worked as a They are the sole survivors of WITCH’s heyday help from Italian journalist Gio Arlotta, who reissues. Arlotta directed the 2021 documentary, on Chanda’s life post-WITCH and the excitement Chanda-Mwondela reunion combines every

When a concertgoer at one tour stop confided a parent’s struggles with drug use, Mwondela down the path of ministry through gospel, people where they are, as WITCH fans. “We beginning,” he says, “but now we are bringing The band just release their first single in thirty eight WITCH perform with PAINT at 8pm Saturday, Oct. Miami. facebook.com/weintendtocausehavocfilm

bettertelevised “It was with our “and player at made a had to well.” musical to best acts of would styles their around high,” says competitive were in were had, we

In the ’n’ roll influence might register with Westerners as a rift, the musical diversity and didn’t live in a binary rock “Movin’ On” was leaked to a Zambian radio following the band from the ’70s were queuing up at “but unfortunately it was months before they chain notwithstanding, the fan embrace of he says.

residency in Lusaka’s Moon City nightclub in the ravaged the country and band members cycled wiped out an entire generation,” he says. you look at our next [1984] album, ‘Kuomboka,’ trying to find our roots and reestablish ourselves. population that it didn’t allow for musicians to make things done.”

to London, where he still lives. Chanda, in diamond miner in Zambia’s old copper belt. heyday and are touring bandleaders again with learned of WITCH through the Now-Again documentary, “We Intend to Cause Havoc,” focusing excitement around the band’s rediscovery. The every era of WITCH music for today’s audiences.

confided her faith to Mwondela and talked about Mwondela realized that while WITCH could have gone he and Chanda are better poised to meet “We might’ve intended to bring havoc in the bringing harmony and peace into people’s lives.” eight years. Listen at PureHoneyMagazine.com

Oct. 22 at the Center for Subtropical Affairs in facebook.com/weintendtocausehavocfilm