Without a doubt, this new concert venue made the biggest shockwaves in the local music landscape this year. The mighty triad of promoter Pete Olen (Endoxa Booking) and club owners Will Walker (Will's Pub, Lil Indie's, Dirty Laundry) and Jerry Dufrain (the Orpheum in Tampa) — all of whom are Central Florida concert cornerstones — joined forces and took over the long-running Haven Lounge, turning it into a proper live venue. While keeping the worn-in rock patina, they've dramatically opened up the room and upped the level of booking and operational quality. Now its stage is lit with a regular procession of bigger national names and better local acts. Moreover, the musical menu has expanded beyond just heavy metal to include a much wider range of sounds. And it has already reshaped the scene.
As important as history is, it isn't always fun. But the Orange County Regional History Center's feature exhibition for the past year has been maximum rock & roll. Figurehead: Music & Mayhem in Orlando's Underground memorializes the foundational and seminal years between the 1980s and 1990s that practically launched the indie-rock scene in our city. It's a vivid display of a thrilling era in Orlando's history whose influence still pulses in the veins of our music culture today. Moreover, the Center has paired the exhibition with great associated events all year long that tell even more sides of the ongoing story, from the women who've moved the local music scene to local hip-hop to local gig poster art. One of the museum's most buzzing and modern efforts ever, the Figurehead exhibition has garnered national accolades and is now held over. It's a must for all music heads.
So, yes, you should bop over to the History Center if you want to see Jim Leatherman's photos of Sonic Youth in full early 1990s flight. But if you want to experience that sneering noise circa the eternal now, you need to catch new Orlando band Warm Frames live. Which we did! Several times! The first time we were deaf for a week, even with (very) fancy earplugs. But we went back for more (several times) once the ringing subsided, and have been ever more impressed by this (very) young, loud and snotty quartet's gloriously skronky take on the NYC no-wave sound. This is the (No) future!
Between musicians and concertgoers alike, anyone who's been active in the Orlando music scene in the past decade-plus knows Katie Burkess. Whether it's been through her work in the Legendary JC's, Liberation 44, Eugene Snowden's combos, the Absinthe Trio, Kevin Maines Band or Leisure Chief, she's a key figure on every stage she stands on. But because she's so often seen and heard, it might surprise some that Burkess hadn't actually released any solo material until this year. While the wait was long, debut single "Stone Cold Love" is a tight bottling of the powerhouse soul that's made her famous around here. Fortunately, more solo recordings are in the works.
May 6-7, 2023
Five years since their hiatus, Orlando was resigned to the idea of never seeing emo legends You Blew It! play live again. So when the band announced their first Will's Pub reunion show, it's no surprise it quickly turned into two back-to-back sold-out shows. The best of Orlando truly came out those nights: diehard fans, lifelong friends and beaming proud parents of the band all together in a sea of never-ending crowd surfers and fans screaming every lyric to every song at the top of their lungs. The pours were heavy and the significance of the moment was palpable. This is one of the rare reunion shows absolutely worth the wait — though we hope You Blew It! doesn't keep us waiting another five years for the next gig.
It's always an event whenever local folk supergroup the Za-Boo-Zays gathers to play a show, but the shows they did last year when various members were no longer living in Central Florida became downright mandatory. The Za-Boo-Zays consist of three stars in their own right — Hannah Harber, Olivia Wynn and Kaleigh Baker — joining forces like Orlando's answer to CSN or Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris to trade harmonies and songs with almost telepathic interplay. Shows are sold out, audiences are rapt. Keep an eye peeled for the next one.
Creatively, Orlando's TzariZM has spent recent years deep in production work for notable acts like Planet Asia, Homeboy Sandman, Wordsworth, Apathy & Celph Titled and Killarmy's 9th Prince. This year, the hip-hop warhorse at last returned to his roots as a rapper after nearly a decade and got back on the mic with his album O.T.H.E.R. As a reminder of his double-threat talent, the rapper also produced the lion's share of the album's tracks himself. The result is an impressively self-contained and powerfully cohesive opus. Steeped in the tradition of rap's golden age, O.T.H.E.R. keeps the flame blazing for hip-hop's true school.
A book about breakout 1980s New Jersey hardcore band Adrenalin O.D. may seem far removed from Orlando, but this memoir belongs here. In this year's If It's Tuesday This Must Be Walla Walla: The Wacky History of Adrenalin O.D., Dave Scott Schwartzman — who grew up in Jersey but has been an Orlando resident for years — chronicles his illustrious time coming up in a crucial era of American punk rock alongside a pantheon of legends. And Orlando does figure into the book, because he recounts both the band's Florida escapades and his ultimate relocation here (as well as that of AOD guitarist Bruce George Wingate), which has entailed AOD reunions all the way up to the 2020 COVID shutdown. The book is a fun, first-person ride through the punk underground that gets both up-close and local.
It's trap-goth phantom Haize's world and we're just living in it. This new Orlando musician seemingly materialized out of nowhere, going from open mics to Circuit Church to opening slots for the likes of Leætherstrip and Planning for Burial, and then releasing a truly essential album this year, 222. Their performances are equal parts ritual and peak jazz-age diva pose. Haize's music is hypnotic, soulful, haunted and sweaty. We expect (more) great things.
Oct. 29-30, 2022
Winter Park's Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts was buzzing with activity over Halloween weekend, as the venue teamed up with Swamp Sistas La La Foundation to hold a two-day benefit show for local hurricane relief efforts. The Blue Bamboo Festival for Hurricane Relief, organized and curated by Blue Bamboo's Chris Cortez and Beth McKee of the Swamp Sistas, raised funds for the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida's efforts to get food into the hands of locals impacted by Hurricane Ian. The two-day event featured a Swamp Sistas jam and a mammoth Cortez-led jam. The musician-led benefit featured star-spangled performances and raised money to help provide meals to our disaster-stricken neighbors.
