PROPAGANDA: J Hoffman & the Residents, Like Harvey NORTON MUSEUM: Art After Dark, Bianca Rosarrio
9/7
RESPECTABLE STREET: BUMBLEFEST 8
feat. Dion Lunadon (NYC), Psychic Death (ATL), Fiona Moonchild (Seattle), forceghost (Augusta), ISYA (St. Augustine), Akasha System (Tampa), Severed + Said (JAX), Justin Depth (Tampa), Night Foundation (FTL), Mr. Entertainment and the Pookiesmackers (Hollywood), Zippur (FTL)
MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Micro TDH
THE PEACH: PEACHFEST 3 Year Anniversary Art Walk: Live Music all day / night ft “The People Upstairs”! Pop up Dance by Loud Live. Live Graffiti by “Loe”, Creative Vendor Village, Live Art, Activities, Spoken Word, Comedy, DJ Darren, Delicious Food by El Segundo, Drink Specials and more.
ARTS GARAGE: Dialogues with Dion Kerr
MAGIC 13 BREWING: Blood Moon Mafia
REVOLUTION LIVE: Goth Homecoming
PROPAGANDA: Cookie Eating Contest, Drag, Vendors, Dj
THE LIBRARY: Ruby Tesla Burlesque Show NORTON MUSEUM: Art After Dark, Burgundee, Sarah Bass
9/21
MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Mustard Service: Zest Fest
REVOLUTION LIVE: Gimme Gimme Disco
MTN SPACE GALLERY: Maxine Specto & R.J. Rodriguez
CANYON AMP: Melina Almodovar
BAR NANCY: Sofia Luna Burlesque
ARTS GARAGE: Nestor Torres: All About Jazz PROPAGANDA: Goth Celebration
9/22
TARPON RIVER BREWING: Flamingo Flea CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Big Medicine
9/23
REVOLUTION LIVE: Gawvi
THE PEACH: Comedy, Open Mic, Drawing & Acrylics
PROPAGANDA: Hoods, Southpaw, Old Habits
9/25
MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: La Santa Grifa
REVOLUTION LIVE: Joeyy, Laker Brady
THE PEACH: Artist Talk & Critique, Creative Corner
BAR NANCY: Gorgatron. Misfire. Vicious Blade
CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Electric Kif
THE LIBRARY: Electrosonic Workshop
9/26
MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Juan Fernando Velasco
CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Mixtape
PROPAGANDA: DJ Residents, DJ LAMEBOT
REVELRY: Psych Soul Art Party, ShangriLa Collective, tiny.blips, Laura Atria, Kelcie McQuaid
9/27
POMPANO AMP: Violent Femmes
OLD SCHOOL SQUARE: The Resolvers
SUBCULTURE DELRAY: Hannah’s Mom
BAR NANCY: Brothers of Others
ARTS GARAGE: Suénalo
PROPAGANDA: Dirtbike
NORTON MUSEUM: Art After Dark, Jon Lehrer Dance
9/28
REVOLUTION LIVE: Lawrence, Jukebox the Ghost
MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Miami Beach Salsa Fest
BAR NANCY: Modern Mimes, Silenmara, Open Nerve, Sevensins
ARTS GARAGE: Memphis Lightning
CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Floating Brains
9/30
THE PEACH: Comedy, Open Mic, Drawing & Acrylics
VIOLENT FEMMES
by david rolland
I know I heard Violent Femmes before I stumbled on an abandoned cassette of their 1983 self-titled debut masterpiece sitting in a boom box at a menial job I was working. A decade after its release, their archetypal track, ”Blister in the Sun,” was still a college radio staple and a signifier of underground cool.
But I didn’t really get the Violent Femmes until I played their lo-fi rock ’n’ roll over and over while having to endlessly scrape algae off of fish tanks at a university laboratory. The jazzy, beatnik instrumentals, with lyrics sung in almost spoken word form by singer Gordon Gano, felt like a soundtrack of underappreciated youth. It captured all the angst, unfulfillment, lust and demand for love and adulation that so many feel until life kicks it out of them.
Violent Femmes were started in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by three Velvet Underground obsessives. “Someone introduced Gordon to me as a pint-sized Lou Reed imitator,” bassist Brian Ritchie told me in a 2015 interview. “He was very young. We all were, but I recognized his raw talent right away.”
The band played where they could, busking at any street corner, coffee shop or venue that would have them. “When we started out, we didn’t want to fit into the music scene, and we still don’t,” Ritchie said. “We see ourselves as storytellers,”
They’ve put out ten albums of their stories in rock form. But it’s that debut that continues to be their claim to fame, whether its Ethan Hawke performing “Add It Up” in 1994’s Reality Bites, Gnarls Barkley covering “Gone Daddy Gone” in 2006, or Ritchie and Gano making sure to play that first album in its entirety on just about every tour date.
I never found out who left that Violent Femmes cassette behind in that lab. But when I was unceremoniously fired from my post I made sure to leave the tape just as I found it. Maybe these songs of alienation would help the next worker also feel not so alone.
Violent Femmes play 8pm Friday, Sept. 27 at Pompano Beach Amphitheater
JUKEBOX THE GHOST
by olivia feldman
“The ground below is shaking / It’s a century in the making / Every heartbreak’s just another tale / For telling.” Jukebox the Ghost’s most recent full-length, 2022’s Cheers, opens with an undeniable truth: Sharing your hurt and baring your soul is no longer just the province of the artist. Anyone with an app can replay family strife, job losses, failed relationships and tricky friends as stories to be told and lessons to be learned.
Jukebox the Ghost have a ton of experience as storytellers. Currently supporting pop soulsters Lawrence on the road, the piano-powered trio from Washington, D.C., has endeared itself to fans with whimsical, perceptive tunes since 2006... (when our publisher booked them at Dada in Delray). Ben Thornewill, Tommy Siegel and Jesse Kristin came together in college, and within a few years were performing on Late Show with David Letterman and touring with acts including Jack’s Mannequin, Barenaked Ladies and Adam Green of The Moldy Peaches
The release of their third album, 2010’s Safe Travels, signaled a more confessional turn of songwriting, with lyrics reflecting personal experiences instead of just fictional narratives. Robust piano chords and soaring vocals from Thornewill, playful guitar from Siegel (who moonlights as cartoonist for The New Yorker) and perfectly rhythmic drum beats from Kristin made their musings on life’s constant challenges all the more relatable and powerful.
Despite this band’s clear talent, the music world didn’t quite know how to classify them. But if we had to pick one reference, it might be Queen Freddie Mercury was known for his falsetto and Thornewill comes pretty close to hitting those Mercurian highs, especially on albums such as 2018’s Off to the Races — possibly a nod to Queen’s A Day at the Races? Larger-than-life choruses swell like new bohemian rhapsodies on tracks such as that album’s opener, “Jumpstarted.”
Jukebox the Ghost prove that a band can deliver great songs and stories without being required to “stay in their lane” or fit under one tiny genre umbrella. They can stand out in the deluge of personal online testimonials with their own kind of musical truth-telling.
Jukebox the Ghost w Lawrence 7pm Saturday, Sept. 28 at Revolution Live in FTL.
AMIGO THE DEVIL
by erik kvarnberg
How many searing emotional experiences can you squeeze into a single album? Yours Until the War is Over by Amigo The Devil answers this question vividly. There’s romance, damnation, intoxication, regret, and characters and narrators in various states of disrepair: pleading on the phone, blackout drunk in an Applebees, “loaded on ketamine and heartbreak” or turning a trip to the store for booze into a bloody gas station holdup. Amigo The Devil’s latest album is a gallery of fallible humanity, each song morosely honest or hideously comic, with music and words that soak down into your bones.
The person behind The Devil, Miami-born, Austin-based Danny Kiranos, is a madman through his many voices, rasps, screams, and spoken word interludes, all steeped in a folkloric atmosphere that he’s been refining ever since he started turning heads in the previous decade with songs such as “Hell and You” and “Perfect Wife.” Yours Until the War is Over is this unsparing view of life distilled into an unskippable album.
Tracks such as “Garden of Leaving” and “Closer” employ stripped-back arrangements to painfully open and re-open wounds between Kiranos and an unspecified other. And then all tension is made light with a number like “One Day at a Time,” a jolly, heartbroken song about self-destruction.
Labeling Amigo the Devil as just “folk” is deceptive and a little cruel to listeners who would pass him by because they think folk equals country. “Murderfolk,” as one Spotify playlist calls it, comes closer to describing Kiranos’ raw storytelling and the sense of unease bred by his spooky banjo and mournful guitar playing. There is no talk of pickup trucks or chewing tobacco, only blunt acknowledgements of reality and, on 2015’s “One Kind of People,” chants of “People who die.” Despite its often dark and solitary cast, Amigo The Devil’s music takes on a shared quality in concert, and Kiranos radiates gratitude for audiences that appreciate how well-made this music is.
Amigo the Devil, with TK & The Holy Know Nothings and Suzanne Santo, performs 7pm Tuesday, September 17 at Respectable Street in West Palm Beach. amigothedevil.com
ST. PAUL AND THE BROKEN BONES
by abel folgar
Hark! In these dark days of musical confusion, nothing invigorates, nay, feeds the soul like the crescendo of organs and brass atop warm percussion, deep basslines and punctuated guitars. Throw in the full range of emotions evinced in charismatic leader Paul Janeway’s earthy yet fluid voice, and you’re in church. Whatever that church may be, it’s exactly where St. Paul and the Broken Bones need you to be.
Formed in Birmingham, Alabama in 2011, the eight-piece has garnered a following that spans generations with an era-crossing blend of influences — classic soul, rock, funk, psychedelic and more. Visually, St. Paul and the Broken Bones fall somewhere between discarded photos from a Selecter or Madness shoot and the theatricality of Swedish rockers Ghost. Wielding tent-preacher energy, this crew of musical saviors has a downright apostolic mandate to lift spirits and and soothe all skeletal ills with electrifying soul of the highest order.
Their debut, 2014’s Half the City, marked their arrival with a retro sound steeped in the foundational soul of legends such as Otis Redding and Al Green. Promoters took note, leading to performances at Lollapalooza and Glastonbury and critical acclaim. Their follow-up, 2016’s Sea of Noise, delved into societal and political issues with an expanded sonic palette. Forging ahead, the band has continued to evolve and infuse its sound with personable touches that include heavier funk and disco and don’t stop there. Their two most recent offerings, 2022’s The Alien Coast and 2023’s Angels in Science Fiction, have expanded their gospel into Greek mythology, dystopian science fiction, parental promises, and introspection – while incorporating stoner metal, hip-hop, and minimalist acoustic moments.
Opening will be locals Soulpax, a Miami indie funk band that understands the assignment and will heat the night with their modern r&b styling. Led by Julia Camayd, whose wise vocals also bristle with youthful chutzpah, the band is hot on the heels of its latest album, Look Down the Barrel, a great continuation of the groundwork laid by 2018’s Inside Outside St. Paul and the Broken Bones and Soulpax perform 7pm Friday, September 13 at Miami Beach Bandshell. stpaulandthebrokenbones.com
3 FORMER LOCALS RETURN PLAY BUMBLEFEST
by tim moffatt / sean piccoli
South Florida is a lot of things. Hot, sprawling, expensive, crowded. Cool, airy, gifted with an waterfront, the gated ‘burbs, the backcountry vibe in pockets inland and the whole amazing prehistoric swamp reptiles that will patiently outlive everyone, the place defies efforts to apply
Three of the bands coming from other cities to play Bumblefest 8 this month have South founding members of Philadelphia’s Lo Fives grew up in West Palm Beach before first heading laden psych-punk music, and then returning east. Members of the affable punk-rock power spent early years in and around Palm Beach County. The leader of the Gainesville, Florida folk-punk deep a South Florida band résumé as any you’ll find.
For various reasons they resettled in other places. Coming back for Bumblefest, they have places that they kindly shared with PureHoney in email missives unlocking some of their histories.
AMERICAN DREAM SURVIVORS (Gainesville)
“I started my music career in Palm Beach with a bunch of small, politically-driven punk bands,” says American Dream Survivors’ singer and banjoist Sergio Witis. As a teen-ager he played in Endeavored Establishment and then got what he calls his “first taste of being in totally functional touring band,” playing bass in the hardcore punk-crust outfit Dead Patriot
A move to Gainesville led to his first unplugged, folk-punk foray in O’haste Annihilation, and to experiences that both uplifted him and put him at risk. “I learned so much about DIY and community thanks to places like Wayward Council, Civic Media Center and punk houses and collectives,” Witis recalls. He also battled addiction and returned to South Florida to, as he puts it, “change my life.”
In Delray Beach around 2008 he co-founded Viva Le Vox, a band casting a raucous, bluesy, punk spell with upright bass, electric guitar, drums and a singalong air. “We had an amazing time being part of the South Florida scene during a flourishing time,” Witis says.
He had two more bands after that, Everymen and Ghost Party, and he eventually circled back to Gainesville, where American Dream Survivors have established themselves with a hybrid of punk directness and vintage flair: Banjo, fiddle (Arthur Rosales), upright bass (Vinnie Dellucci), drums (Steve Lots), unadorned vocals and songs like “Blue Prints,” a twangy dirge about connecting with your inner child as you try to treat your psychic wounds and carry on.
“Inner child work is something that helped me so much during a hard time in my life, and it is something I do with our clients at the mental health facility I work at,” Witis says. The quartet recorded “Blue Prints” with fellow Floridian FayePatrick Kennedy on guest vocals, a collaboration Witis found member to American Dream Survivors has entered the band’s thought process.
SHEHEHE (Athens)
LO FIVES (Philadelphia)
It will be a homecoming for Zackery Fleming and Sara Fleming, and not the first, when Lo Fives “We’ve played Respectables a few times as Lo Fives in the past (and I’ve played numerous times be best known in South Florida for his work with indie-rock bard Josh Simkowitz, a.k.a. Chaucer growing up in some formative years. Sara and I, now married, had some of our first meetings held a very special place for it.”
Lo Fives came together when Zackery and Sara relocated to the Pacific Northwest and, after Portland guitarist Mike Stortz. Lo Fives emerged from the PDX scene blending post-punk, psychedelia whole that’s equal parts beat-poet strangeness and mad-science sonic curiosity.
Stortz, still based out west, will be in town to join them on guitar. Stepping in for Joshua Soltroff be Jordan Pettingill, the backbeat engine for the low-end thrashers of Cop City/Chill Pillars
He didn’t yet know how to play drums or be in a band, but Jason Fusco loved music and he could dance, so the instincts and timing were already present for this punk rocker in waiting. He just needed a spark.
Around 2006 he moved in to a drummer friend’s house near the ocean in Lake Worth. “He, a drummer starting to write songs on guitar, and me, good dancer and lover of music, falling in love with the drums and playing music with my best bud,” Fusco recalls. “My first band, Myself Mysizzle was born in that house in Lake Worth.”
“We would go jump in the ocean, sometimes surfing or bodysurfing, mostly just getting our daily ocean fix, and then we’d hit a dive bar, have beer or two, make a setlist, then head back to the house for more beers and to play music to our hearts’ content.”
Like his future wife and Shehehe bandmate, bassist and vocalist Nicole Bechill, Cusco has South Florida roots, moved away, came back and started to see possibilities in making music. Their connection was essential to Shehehe’s formation, but a move to the Georgia college hometown of the B-52s, R.E.M., Drive-by Truckers, Widespread Panic and key bands of the Elephant 6 indieverse made everything click.
With Noelle Shuck rounding out the trio on guitar and vocals, Shehehe have won a place for themselves in Athens — no easy feat in a cradle of modern rock that wears its laurels proudly and guards its legacy. Shehehe’s brand of punchy, crackling punk-rock evokes the hooky goodness of Ramones, Cheap Trick, Joan Jett and The Muffs with energy and co-ed glee. They fit their present surroundings, but Fusco thinks warmly of the “It was the most wonderful place to learn an instrument and to become a musician, and was hard to leave,” he says, adding, “Learned how to love with my wife, Nicole, down there!”
Bumblefest is Sept. 6 and 7 in downtown West Palm Beach. bumblefest.com.
an ocean and endless sky. Between the glimmering amazing ethnographic montage, not to mention the apply one label that sticks.
South Florida’s complicated DNA in their genes. The heading to Portland, Oregon to perfect their mysterypower trio Shehehe, based in Athens, Georgia, likewise folk-punk troupe American Dream Survivors has as
have thoughts and memories about key times and histories.
health found so “magical” that adding a permanent fifth
Fives plug in at Respectable Street for Bumblefest. times in previous bands),” says Zackery, who may Chaucer. “Respectables has always been a social hub meetings and experiences together there, so I’ve always
cycling through various bandmates, bonded with psychedelia and noise into a freewheeling but focused
, the drummer in Lo Fives’ Philly-based lineup, will
place where he got his start. to play drums, surf, drive a stick shift and fell in
KATYA NEPTUNE
by kelli bodle
Visiting Katya Neptune’s show, Echoes Unveiled, at her studio in Delray Beach’s Arts Warehouse feels like a reverential act, as though one were entering a blessed place. Eight-foot rolls of fabric unfurl from the rafters bearing photo transfers of small children — images that float mystically before you as you make your pilgrimage through the gallery. At center: a stairwell as altar, and on the steps, messages projected in light from above.
Neptune’s exhibition is a paean to the work of ArtHeart, a creators’ collective and gallery in Fort Lauderdale founded by the PureHoney featured artist for September. ArtHeart hosts exhibitions and takes on projects to draw attention to the plight of orphaned children in countries such as Rwanda and Haiti. Through its endeavors, ArtHeart has been able to supply financial assistance to those very children. Some of the photographs ringing the gallery are images that Neptune captured during her work in 2012 and 2014 in Rwanda. “My daughter, Radha, who was 13 at the time, visited a few villages with me,” she tells PureHoney. “The children in these villages interacted with us the most — displaying incredible vitality and joy despite their daily challenges.”
“We were all eager to communicate, even though we didn’t speak the same language, so we focused on play,” Neptune says.
Neptune felt the first stirrings of what would become ArtHeart during a college class where she learned about the Rwandan genocide, a campaign of mass slaughter in 1994 that killed nearly a million people and left tens of thousands of surviving children parentless. “I felt an immediate calling to support the Rwandan people,” Neptune recalls. “I met other artists who were equally eager to share their work. This inspired me to curate my own exhibitions, empowering artists while fundraising for orphans.”
The feeling of the space Neptune has created for Echoes Unveiled is one of love, gratitude and respect. But underlying that welcoming and positive air is a personal journey that led Neptune — as a parent, activist and curator — into some daunting circumstances.
“As a viewer, understanding the historical context, you can begin to grasp the emotional and psychological weight this experience carries for me and how it influences my art,” Neptune says, emphasizing “the connection between working closely with Rwandan genocide survivors and its impact on my mental health.”
“Although I chose to focus on fundraising to support orphans in Rwanda and Cap-Haïtien [in Haiti],” she says, “serving others and managing artists took a toll on my mental health. Artists need to create,” Neptune says, “and the absence of that was like a slow death for me. Curating [exhibitions] and raising a family consumed so much of my time that my art practice took a back seat for many years.”
Those difficult years are realized in this stunning exhibition, which presented its own complications. “The biggest challenge I faced in creating this body of work was dealing with image transfers that would unexpectedly rip,” Neptune says.
But contained within those annoying tears was an emerging thread of insight. “I came to realize that embracing these flaws was exactly what I needed,” Neptune says. “When I allowed myself to accept and incorporate these imperfections, it became liberating. Telling myself that ‘I’m not perfect’ transformed from just words into a meaningful part of my creative process, allowing me to pour that acceptance into my work. It became a huge part of the work’s aesthetic.”
While the majority of the exhibition is dedicated to the image transfers, the stairwell-as-altar, Frequency, commands center stage. “The casted hands suspended from the ceiling are from artists I’ve curated in the past and those closely involved with ArtHeart,” Neptune says. “This piece is an ode to them, celebrating our collective efforts in changing the lives of nearly 400 children. Frequency is inspired by religious doctrine,” she says. “It conveys that, regardless of whether we vibrate on different frequencies, we can come together and leave a long-lasting impact on each other’s lives and the lives of orphaned children, who I believe are the most vulnerable.”
“Some people expect others - the universe, God - to alleviate suffering,” Neptune says, “but I believe we are God’s hands and are responsible for what we can reach.”
