Doors @ 8pm | Show @ 9pm
Tickets: $12 Advance | $15 Day Of
* 21+ with valid ID
Dollar Signs
Dollar Signs have always played by their own rules. While in the midst of their last album cycle for 2021’s Hearts of Gold, it seemed like things were going to get easier for both the band as a unit, and the members as individuals. This didn’t happen, because nothing ever really does get easier. Things get different.
While the chaos of the year was unfolding, lead-songwriter Erik Button was holed up in his home with his fiance. The first few years of the 2020s seemed like an engine; sputtering and in need of gas. Erik’s song writing style had to adjust to the new situation. “I’ve always written in a very diary-like style but now I had to stop and take a breath. What do you write about when nothing is happening? It got me thinking about rock album cliches and especially the idea of “the home town” record. What about a record with that material set in the south where I was raised? Or how does that record change when you’re in your 30’s and you come back to where you were raised? Legend Tripping is a record about home; what it was, and what it is now, and how time creates a bigger distance than any amount of mileage could”.
After spending the summer in the Appalachian mountains, the result is a bombastic rock and powerpop record, laced with Button’s signature sardonicism. Chasing their own origin story, the band successfully crowdfunded this release in just eight hours–leaving labels behind and returning to their DIY roots. Legend Tripping was engineered by Charlotte producer Te’Jani and analog mixed by Rick Johnson (Mustard Plug / Bomb The Music Industry) and mastered by Jack Shirley. The band is touring throughout 2024 in support of Legend Tripping, which is now streaming and available on vinyl from Self Aware Records.
Dim Wizard
It’s tempting to call David Combs a pop scientist. From his work in the ebullient D.C. power pop band Bad Moves to his work as Dim Wizard, Combs’s songs are so tightly crafted and explosively catchy, it feels like they were made by carefully tipping test tubes into beakers and making precise notations in a spreadsheet entitled GOOD HOOKS. However, as the name itself suggests, Dim Wizard proves that Combs is more alchemist than scientist, combining ingredients to create something completely unexpected and magical. In the studio, Dim Wizard is a collaborative recording process where he brings musicians, songwriters, and producers together to all contribute to a single song. On the road, Combs assembles a group of local friends to perform an interpretation of the same songs–each one unique. Every Dim Wizard show, like every Dim Wizard song, is a true one-of-one, a moment in time when likeminded musicians get together, pour all their ideas into a cauldron, and stir until it forms something surprising and, invariably, catchy as hell.
Other than being masterminded by Combs, Dim Wizard is not a solo project in any sense. The project was born out of pandemic isolation. Unable to visit with his friends down the street, Combs began reaching out to long distance friends, reconnecting, and sending songs back and forth to spark his favorite part of music: the joy of collaboration. Friends coming together to jam has never translated more directly to recording: every Dim Wizard song sounds like it takes place a few hours into a house party where everyone you know is either in the kitchen or smoking on the porch. On the most recent Dim Wizard single, “X-Games Mode,” ruminations on impending climate disaster and existential dread give way an exuberant chorus that provides the only possible response when you and your friends face down the horrors of living and the fear of dying: you fuckin’ party. “Dodging the dark zone / Killing my ego / Drinking a 4-0 / Running on X-Games mode.”
Distracted Eyes
Solo project of Mary Grace McKusick (Petrov)
https://www.instagram.com/distractedeyes/
