This was a fun one! You’ll hear some jangly indie-rock set to pop-energy tempos with heart-on-the-sleeve emotional ruminations with Sock Jock, and then you’ll get intricate guitar stylings and sweet, groovy psych-rock rhythms with charming, pensive, and sometimes metaphysical lyrics with Waunband!

I’m honored and thrilled to have the opportunity to bring talented members from the local music scene, where we can hear their stories, get to know them, listen to some of their new songs off their latest records and hear them perform live! And the good vibes I see resonating from these artists when they come in to this studio feels emblematic of how vibrant and supportive our local music scene; that supportive energy extends to us, the listeners, the folks in the audience, too! Thank you for listening, by the way.

Sock Jock’s self-made music joins metro Detroit’s scene

Taylor Brown aka Sock Jock is a talented singer-songwriter who has been playing music for most of her life, self-taught on every instrument she plays. She comes to us from North Carolina by-way-of Chicago, settling here after she wrapped up college at Purdue and released her first EP, “anothernovember.” 

Solid influential reference points for Brown would include Snail Mail, but you might also hear some Clairo and Soccer Mommy in there too. What’s rad about Brown, too, is that she self-produces and records her music, including her latest single, “Curtain.”

Brown shared how she initially chose this band name as a joke, intended to be temporary, but once one of her early singles went essentially viral and boosted her signal, she decided to embrace it.

We’ll also hear about how the last few years have led Brown to fall in love with the metro Detroit music scene, and we talk about upcoming shows where you can catch her live. During the show, she performed her song, “Sober,” live in-studio.

Waunband combines quirk and good company

Waunband is led by Jeremy Waun, a talented singer-songwriter who’s adjacent to, if reminiscent of, something we millennials used to call “freak-folk,” with a sound that feels warm and inviting, with narrative-rich lyrics and a vaguely classical-richness, but skewed with an appealing bit of quirkiness that might present itself in a turn of phrase, an aesthetic choice of tones, or even Waun’s own distinctive voice with its warbly high-arching hum.

Waun talked about starting out as a solo artist, but how it came to feel right to have a full band around him, particularly for the sense of camaraderie, as he’s known his mates for such a long time. The band includes Brad Potts on bass, Johnny Weeks on drums, and Steve Lofman on electric piano and synth.

Waunband releases their new album, “In These Lungs” this Saturday, with a release party that night at the Lexington Bar.

Also on the show this week, some new tracks to premiere, including, some experimental art-rock from Wolf Shambles, who are living somewhere between 90’s Tom Waits and 70’s Genesis—and honestly that doesn’t even come close. We also heard from the melodic indie-rockers Remnants, an ambient jazz project known as Yimes, and the latest from singer-songwriter Mike Ward!

Listen to the full episode for two weeks after it airs using the player above.

The Hamtramck Blowout is a local music institution. It happens every year, (usually), on the first full weekend of March. It’s overwhelming and chaotic, makes you grin and go all wild-eyed; it’s fast, though not really that furious per se, and you have to make peace with the fact that you are not going to see every band that you want to—unless you believe in miracles.

Above all, the Blowout is vital. It nourishes the local music scene, it opens it up to newcomers in a stylishly slapdash way, and it gives everyone a chance to appraise the wide breadth of talent and variety of genres that are consistently percolating across practice spaces and dive bars in this region week to week. It’s had four slightly-to-moderately different iterations over nearly 30 years, but it keeps on going.

Wanna meet the local music ecosystem and dive right in? Blowout is your best opportunity! All that being said, this week on MI Local, I was joined in-studio by the dynamic hip-hop duo known as Passalacqua, comprised of emcees Blaksmith and Mister, who fatefully formed their ongoing project during a live performance at the 2010 Blowout.

On the show, Blaksmith (Brent Smith) and Mister (Bryan Lackner), talked about their interesting origin story, some of the nostalgia they have around their formative years together as collaborative artists, and then teased a bit about their upcoming set this Friday night at Blowout, where they’ll debut some new songs!

Singer-songwriter Michelle Held also joined me in-studio. Held has been on stages before, with a background in theater. She started writing poetry at a young age, inspired by so many verbose musical bards and troubadours such as Bob Dylan, but she actually started playing guitar at a later age—an anecdote she expounds upon during the interview.

You can hear it, and I certainly saw it firsthand, Held is an incredible guitar player, employing the intricate finger-picking style, and you can hear her perform two songs on the show this week, with her accompanying guitarist Mikey Abbasspour. Her voice is aching with emotion, it hits a heartbreaking vibrato, and her words poignantly pluck the heartstrings. Held performed her latest single, “Another Jane,” inspired by Jane Goodall, and an unreleased song, “Unresolved.”

In the third segment, I was joined by the prog-rock duo known as The Last War, with Drew Moore on guitar/vocals and Mile Pardo on drums/percussion, discussing their new EP, Smile, which came out last week. You can see them live, next weekend, at Small’s in Hamtramck.

Drew told us about his relocation from California to Detroit in 2023, where he fatefully met Miles and attained almost instantaneous musical and creative chemistry.

The Last War have released several singles over the last few years, including a slew of covers re-imagining some classics, but “Smile” is essentially their solid debut! Their repartee, on mic, is notably charming, so listen until the end. Plus they performed a live song from the new album, “The Kids,” complete with Pardo on bongos!

Listen to the full episode for two weeks after it airs using the player above.