The first-ever Ionia Freak Fair took place on Friday and Saturday at the Ionia Fairgrounds in Ionia, MI. The epic weekend curated by Billy Strings who grew up in the area. In addition to Strings and his band, the roster of performers included Greensky Bluegrass, Sierra Hull, Leftover Salmon, Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper, Lindsay Lou and Full Cord.

The Freak Fair featured multiple sit-ins across the board. Here’s a look at some of the highlights from Strings’ headlining performances each evening. Friday’s guests included: Leftover Salmon and Lindsay Lou over two sets, which included a tribute to Dolly Parton on “The Last Thing on My Mind.” On Saturday, Sierra Hull, Michael Cleveland, Terry Barber and Greensky Bluegrass all appeared during a performance that culminated with a 30 minute sequence that began with a first-ever take on Greensky original “Don’t Lie” which segued into Strings’ “Meet Me at the Creek,” then back

Dave Matthews Band performed two shows at Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre over the weekend. The group has played 14 gigs at the Greenwood Village, CO venue. DMB’s Friday and Saturday gigs were 11 years to the day from their Fiddler’s Green debut on August 28 and 29, 2015.

Both of these gigs featured songs that the group had not performed since 2022. On Friday night, deep into the band’s set, DMB revisited “Time Bomb.” This tune, which appears on 2009’s Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King has been a rarity since 2012. The group played it once the next year, then five times in 2018 and twice in 2022. The Friday version marked 243 shows since it last appeared in a DMB setlist.

Then on Saturday night, in the same portion of the evening, the septet played “Eh Hee.” This Matthews original was a staple between 2007-2013, then, as with “Time Bomb,” the

The Barr Brothers will perform the music of the Grateful Dead at Montreal’s Marché des Possibles this Sunday, August 30, as part of the Film POP series. The Barrs, who first made their name as members of The Slip, grew up on the Dead’s songbook and collaborated with Bill Kreutzmann in his Billy & The Kids project in 2023. The concert will take place after a screening of the new music film Summer Tour, which documents a young couple on Dead & Company’s final summer tour in 2023. A post from the Barrs reads, “We’re very excited to play some Grateful Dead music in Marché des Possibles for POP Montréal after a showing of summertourthefilm. For us, going to see the Grateful Dead play live in the 1990s was huge, we’re looking forward to paying tribute with some friends.”

For more on The Barr Brothers’ Dead roots, be sure to

Last night, Bruce Springsteen made a surprise appearance with Bleachers at Asbury Park, NJ’s Summer Stage at The Stone Pony. The New Jersey hero, who has been closely associated with The Stone Pony throughout his storied career, came on stage during Bleachers’ set to help on a cover of Tom Waits’ famed “Jersey Girl,” which he began covering 1981 and most recently played in Asbury Park in 2024 during the Sea.Hear.Now Festival. The Boss then remained on stage as Jack Antonoff and his band moved into “Chinatown,” a track of 2020’s Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night that he contributed to. Springsteen has performed the latter song with Bleachers a few times over the years, including a 2020 set on the roof of New York’s Electric Lady Studios that was recorded during COVID and a high-profile 2022 show at New York’s Radio City Music Hall.

The cameo took place

Fruition’s new studio album marks the end of the era for the group. As Jay Cobb Anderson says of Something More, which was released today,“This album is the culmination of almost two decades of making music as Fruition.” Indeed, the band has confirmed that following its current run of dates the group will step away from the live setting.

The group came to this decision after reflecting on the reality of life in the road in 2026. Kellen Asebroek acknowledges, “After the pandemic, the music industry tried to just pick up where it left off. But the reality of it was that the world has changed; corporate monopolies have tightened their grip, late-stage capitalism has left people grinding even harder to make ends meet, and Americans are more isolated than ever – from each other, from communal artistic expression, and from the world at large. We tried to just resume our flow as

Last Friday, Improvement Movement released their latest studio album via ATO Records. The album captures the wide-ranging sounds of the group that blends rich vocal harmonies and engaging melodies with some prog-rock predictions. The Atlanta-based band has been out on the road over the past few years, supporting Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Iron & Wine, Houndmouth, and Khurangbin. The quartet even performed a recent set at Relix. On September 5, Improvement Movement will appear on CBS Saturday Morning.

The band’s multi-instrumentalists—Tony Aparo, Clark Hamilton, Marshall Ruffin, and Zach Pyles—have delivered an eccentric, eclectic album that has been matched by the videos that have accompanied the release. They have dropped a new one today for the song "In The Morning" that features hand-crafted giant likenesses of the band members.

The group notes, “This video explores the question, 'What if 'I’ll see you in the morning' was a threat?” Then adds, "When

One of the initial reference points for the new studio album by Johnny Blue Skies & The Dark Clouds, was a live performance by the critically heralded but criminally underappreciated funk fusion innovators, Stuff.

“We were on a European tour early last year on those double-decker kind of tight claustrophobic buses,” Sturgill Simpson recalls, as he details his group’s collective connection to the pioneering act from 1970s. “We were on the bus with the crew, whereas in the States we're on our own bus. So at night we’d have these TV listening parties, and we just started watching all these old Live at Montreux videos. At some point we were like, ‘Let's just do that. It looks pretty fun.’ So when we went into the studio it had nothing to do with the music we’d just played on tour. It was us trying to capture songs based around serving these grooves

Childhood best friends Eric Carter and Danny Hutchens formed Bloodkin in 1986. The band released eight studio albums and wrote hundreds of songs before Hutchens passed away in 2021. After struggling with the loss of his creative collaborator and longtime comrade, Carter has assembled a new version of the group and released an album.

Flowers & Ash, which will be released on September 11, was produced by Carter and longtime associate David Barbe. The record features the group’s current lineup of Carter (vocals, guitar), Betsy Franck (vocals, guitar), Tori Pater (vocals, guitar), John Neff (guitar, pedal steel), Jon Mills (bass), and Aaron Phillips (drums).

Today we are premiering “Drinkin’ Blue” from the forthcoming record. The song features the poetic, engaging songcraft that long endeared Bloodkin to bands such as Widespread Panic, which still performs Bloodkin originals such as "Can't Get High," "Henry Parsons Died" and "Makes Sense To

photo: Andy J. Gordon

David Byrne has long maintained a close relationship with notable filmmakers. Back in 1984 he worked with Jonathan Demme on the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense. More recently, in 2020, Spike Lee captured Byrne’s American Utopia during its Broadway run. Brady Corbet, who wrote and directed 2024’s The Brutalist, is the latest to collaborate with Byrne.

Corbet is currently completing postproduction work on a film that looks at Byrne’s recent Who is the Sky? tour. He opted to shoot the performances via large-format cinematography over multiple nights at the Hippodrome in Baltimore.

The post David Byrne Confirms Forthcoming Concert Film with Director of ‘The Brutalist’ appeared first on Relix.

This is a big day for Billy Strings. His new album has just been released via Reprise Records. Strings produced So Much for Goodbyes with T Bone Burnett. The 16-track record is a deeply personal work that is accompanied by original artwork created by Strings’ late mother, Debra Apostol.

Friday also marks the opening of the Ionia Frear Fair. The two-day gathering, which Strings curated, is a hometown affair that will take place at the Ionia Fairgrounds in Ionia, MI. The confirmed performers include: Strings, Greensky Bluegrass, Sierra Hull, Leftover Salmon, Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper, Lindsay Lou, Full Cord, and others.

Strings has also just confirmed a series of 2027 tour dates. He will appear with his band for five nights at the ExploreAsheville.com Arena in Asheville, NC. Then it’s off to Duluth, GA for two gigs at Gas South Arena. This will be followed by a pair of shows at Nashville’s