When I listen to music, I have at least one of a few goals: (1) to get lost (2) to get found (3) to get transported When I go to shows, I have at least one of a few goals: (1) to lose myself in the many (2) to find […]
Tag: matthew ruppert
First Thursday, 6.2.2022
WTMD has long championed the causes of up-and-comers in the indie scene and identified the musicians and acts that will capture the nation’s interest. The June 2022 iteration of First Thursday is no different, with the soon-to-be-massive Momma playing a massive set before the ascendant beabadoobee followed. Momma Momma has […]
Finding Revelation with Big Thief @ The Anthem, 4.21.22
Sometimes, the easy disenchantment of the music business overtakes us, its lab-grown and cut stones a little too much. Have you ever taken a fist-sized rock – maybe in your backyard, maybe somewhere in the woods – and cracked it against the ground, its hidden crystals shining on the pavement, […]
Revisiting Hiss Golden Messenger’s Poor Moon
God is good and it’s understoodhe moves in mysterious ways. M.C. Taylor Back in late 2012, as the leaves shed their false selves, I traveled along the dusty and unpoliced blogosphere, finding a song on my feed with an album cover featuring a red handprint, no artist named, and the […]
Singing Lamentations with American Aquarium – 12.9.21 @ Baltimore Soundstage
BJ Barham writes sad songs. Everybody knows that, and everybody writes about it. I won’t be any different. But before I do, let me remind you of an absolute truth: American Aquarium is one of the best rock bands operating in the world right now. BJ struts, dances, and tears […]
Jason Narducy @ Club 603
A few lessons from a backyard punk rock show You cannot numb your anger selectively It is better to laugh You cannot deaden the expression of your love Expansion is the way forward Love is real Pain is the con I parked where I always park, as close to the […]
“Fine, But Not Okay” with Hallelujah the Hills
March 14th, 2021 The reality of the pandemic settled into my heart 365 days ago this morning, every slice of information I can find promising this virus would be worse than we feared. The sudden onset of a break – schools closed, world slowed – held nearly no peace, no […]
New Music Friday 8.7.2020
Note from These Subtle Sounds: if you like something and you have the means, please pay for it beyond your chosen streaming services. Streaming services do not provide musicians with reasonable payment for their work. While we include Spotify due to streaming’s ubiquity, we have also linked Patreon, Bandcamp, and […]
New Music Friday 7.31.2020
Note from These Subtle Sounds: if you like something and you have the means, please pay for it beyond your chosen streaming services. Streaming services do not provide musicians with reasonable payment for their work. While we include Spotify due to streaming’s ubiquity, we have also linked Patreon, Bandcamp, and […]
New Music Friday: 7.24.2020
Note from These Subtle Sounds: if you like something and you have the means, please pay for it beyond your chosen streaming services. Streaming services do not provide musicians with reasonable payment for their work. While we include Spotify due to streaming’s ubiquity, we have also linked Patreon, Bandcamp, and […]
New Music Friday: 7.17.2020
We here at These Subtle Sounds have been working to navigate the new world we inhabit as best we can, trying to figure out what we can do to keep carrying the music flame. We typically and historically have focused on covering live music – and we’ve certainly written about some livestreams […]
Finding a Way On the Darkest Road: Roll On by Water Liars
Barry Hannah wrote the sort of short stories that took something nearly prosaic and built it into something surreally shattering, brimming with edges of the grotesque, of a distant kind of humor, but always fundamentally human. “Water Liars” was one of those stories, its closing line, “We were both crucified […]
Save our Stages
For over ten years, I have been photographing concerts on a weekly basis. My favorite place to be is in a music venue, along side of fellow music lovers, live music photographers, and musicians. Going to shows has been my life-line for when things get stressful, overwhelming, discouraging, or just […]
Tribute to John Prine
When I still nipped at my parents’ heels, small enough to be childlike and old enough to want to not be, I discovered the unquiet joy of simple songs and dreams laid out on carpets. My dad played records and cassettes in the basement, his old collection and that golden […]
Entangled Empathy with The Honey Dewdrops
At the end of January 2020, winter hasn’t exactly been winter, but the cold still bites, night still settles early. In the wake of the day’s historic events, a different kind of bite settles into the soul. So it was that I found myself seeking community at The Creative […]
Bringing Light and Dark: Fruition at Union Stage on 2/6/2020
The vagabond life comes with its hopes and failures, its wild joys and its lonely moonrises. Fruition – Jay Cobb Anderson, Kellen Asebroek, Mimi Naja, Jeff Leonard, and Tyler Thompson – essentially became a band on the road, busking on sidewalks around all around America. The product of easy serendipity […]
Staying Warm with Charm City: Battle of the Bands Round 1
Every year, in the lead-up to April, Charm City Bluegrass hosts a battle of the bands featuring local-ish acts, most of which have gotten little to no real exposure. At the least, the winners have benefited from the Baltimore audience seeing them at Druid Hill Park in Baltimore, but often, […]
These Subtle Sounds Year in Review – 2019
We had an amazing year! Special thanks goes out to all of our amazing contributors for making our inaugural year a success! Read about each of our contributors in our “About” section and check out their contributions to the blog in their bio posts! For our Year in Review, we […]
Finding Community and Epiphanies with Tim Showalter: Strand of Oaks Winter Classic
Night One On a Thursday night in December, arriving following a long drive from Baltimore, I walked into the Boot and Saddle, its dim wooden interiors brightened by colorful holiday lights. Settling in at the bar, I hear soundcheck ending in the back of the club – “Keys” in all […]
Finding Revelation with Caleb Stine: Live at the Creative Alliance, 11.23.2019
A chilly, steady rain thwacked to the ground along Eastern, the Patterson Park movie theater shining in the distance. A steady line of people drifted into the doors under the marquee, the Creative Alliance already filled near to the brim long before doors would open for the night. One […]
Exploring the Mystic Country of Caleb Stine and the Revelations
Life is so often governed by sea changes, those massive scale events that happen almost suddenly, but the world had never stopped changing under the surface. Mystic Country by Caleb Stine and the Revelations represents a sea change. As ever, Caleb sings directly – you can glean certain information quickly […]
Photo Recap: This Old Town – A Celebration of Music, Art, and Storytelling
This Old Town took place last month on October 12th at the beautiful Howard County Historical Society Museum in Old Ellicott City. Those who attended were treated to an evening of traditional Appalachian storytelling, song, and dance. Music by Geraldine and Caleb Stine provided the soundtrack for the evening. Joe […]
Expanding Sounds with Town Mountain
Town Mountain tours a lot. Somewhere between 130-150 shows a year, with significantly more days spent traveling, they’re nearly always on the road together, a tarheeled traveling family. Hailing from Asheville, North Carolina, I talked to Zach Smith, the band’s bassist, about their upcoming tour, including a show at The […]
Taking Heart and Hanging Tough: Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster and Spencer Thomas
As autumn begins to fall, I find myself in an unsteady state, somewhere between the rising dread of lost daylight and the untamed joy of undressing forests and breath-stopping winds. A dichotomy of being that certainly has more shades of gray, but it’s hard to see past the splitting. […]
Melting at Oregon Ridge: Hot August Music Festival
Hot August Music Festival celebrated its Forever 27 this year, inviting a wide-ranging cast of artists, honoring the festival’s blues history, its emphasis on local musicians, and offering the multigenerational crowd a taste of music spanning genres and decades. From the rising stars of Billy Strings and Vanessa Collier to […]
This is Matthew Ruppert
People aren’t as self-directed as they like to imagine, our interests, careers, and hobbies coming just as much from opportunity as decision. Photography is like that for me, though like anyone else in this little slice of existence, I increasingly guide my path. My wife scrapbooks. That’s important, I promise. […]
Beating the Heat with WTMD: First Thursday, August 2019
WTMD – undoubtedly Baltimore’s best music station – has hosted/arranged First Thursday events for a decade and some change, beginning in Mount Vernon before moving to Canton Waterfront Park in 2014. Since moving to the Waterfront, First Thursday is less of a traditional outdoor concert and more of a monthly music […]
Finding Hope: Flying Over the Trees with The Steel Wheels
Music is hope, right? The Steel Wheels, from Harrisonburg, Virginia, traffic in that kind of positive ideology, steering roads on their bicycles and in vans, spreading a kind of honest truth in their music. Which isn’t to say their songs are full of Kumbaya (that’s not bad, either, fwiw), but […]
The Wildest Joy: DelFest 2019
To call it “difficult” to summarize DelFest understates the reality. As an event, it offers more than music – which, frankly, is a lot in and of itself – instead providing a profound sense of community, of togetherness, and a wild joy. If anything, the truest theme and the greatest […]
Finding a Strong Point: Interview with Wicked Sycamore
I find myself pulling into a park I’ve never seen in a part of town I’ve rarely been to meet the women of Wicked Sycamore. A sunbright solid blue afternoon, the suddenly massive fields of Leakin Park – the honest-to-goodness largest continuous park in an urban setting in America (take […]
Jackie Greene on Musical ADD, Palate Cleansing, and City Winery
Jackie Greene has earned the nickname “Prince of Americana” for his own albums, has toured the world with Phil Lesh, has played with nearly everyone at some point or another, can pick up any instrument (but the sitar, he admitted), but right now, he’s working on some new recordings and […]
Scott Hutchison: Tiny Changes Make Huge Differences
College, senior year. I discovered Sing the Greys and then, more importantly for me, The Midnight Organ Fight. Unpolished, honest, and almost painfully direct; Scott Hutchison sang songs that felt familiar, those yawn-deep voids of depression, the jittery stumble-steps of anxiety. And the flickering joy, the emphasis that, even […]
Kingman Island Brings Bluegrass to D.C.
The festival season has arrived! Last month we kicked things off in Baltimore with the Charm City Bluegrass Festival and earlier this month, D.C. joined in with their annual Kingman Island Bluegrass Festival! The Kingman Island Bluegrass Festival took place the weekend of May 4th. The line-up consisted of amazing […]
Talking to Del: Grammys, Dodging Knives and Building a Festival
Del McCoury has had a big year already. In February, he celebrated his birthday with the Grand Del Opry, which he characterized as “a great honor”, and his sons’ band The Travelin’ McCourys won a Grammy for their first album. “You know, last year we had a release party there […]
Buying Happiness with American Aquarium
BJ Barham writes and acts from a place of honesty, sincerity. Every little thing he does suffused by the principles he’s nurtured, developed throughout his adulthood. Hard-earned, celebrating five years of sobriety, two years of parenthood, and approaching fifteen years in the music industry. A cliche of sorts, sure, but […]
