The Zender Agenda

Nelsonville Music Festival 2025

2025-06-24T20:29:00.001-04:00

Another year, another great Nelsonville Music Festival - with great friends and memorable experiences. Here are a few...

This year’s highlights:

MJ Lenderman
Waxahatchee
Candy Rain DJ Collective
Gardner
Two Runner
Esther Rose
Watchhouse
Bonnie “Prince” Billy
Charley Crockett
Black Lips
Ocie Elliott

Mumford & Sons (6/18/25)

2025-06-19T19:54:00.001-04:00

This was a last minute show with some friends offering up a free ticket. If I were going to see Mumford & Sons live, Blossom is the place I’d like to see them. The weather was looming this day and I was able to see a few good songs, but the weather was telling me I should bug out early. Glad I did - because it became a SPECTACLE. The drive out of the valley was a became treacherous quickly. We were weather warnings and was notified that the show was on hold. I’m so glad I left when I did!

Opening I got to see Good Neighbours, who were quite charming fellas.

Perfume Genius (6/15/25)

2025-06-16T17:49:00.001-04:00

My third show in a row at Globe Iron, and my 4th this month! They’ve been killing it. This is also a long way away from when I saw Perfume Genius at The Sco in Oberlin back in 2012! Beyond his songs being as good as ever - he’s become quite the showman! He’s making the most of that stage with a rotating platform, step stools, and a yoga ball! The lighting was also spectacular.

Santigold (6/13/25)

2025-06-14T21:48:00.001-04:00

Another concert at Globe Iron! This time I was getting to see Santigold. Having last seen her at House of Blues in 2016, I was excited to see her again at this venue. Of course Santigold made the most of her performance with great beats and sychrnonized dancing! Great show!! Can't wait for new music.

Tennis / Billie Marten (5/25/25)

2025-05-26T21:17:00.001-04:00

Globe Iron is really knocking it out of the park with their opening lineup of shows this month! Tonight they booked the final tour of the delightful pop band Tennis, with Bille Marten opening. I first caught (part of) a Tennis show at the Grog Shop back in 2012, but was happy to finally see a full and proper concert - even though it would be their last.

Billie Marten was a treat, and this show was enough for me to acquire the rest of her recorded music - and would love to see her again!

Aaron Lee Tasjan (5/16/25)

2025-05-17T20:40:00.001-04:00

I've been appreciating Aaron Lee Tasjan's direct and sometimes irreverent songwriting for some time and was thrilled that he was going to be at the Beachland Tavern! Definitely had some favorite songs I was looking for, and was happy to hear!

Shakey Graves (5/10/25)

2025-05-11T20:14:00.001-04:00

A new music venue has come to Cleveland! This was a new AEG / AXS Venue so it was still corporate, but I was excited that we had a reliable local veteran doing booking! Shakey Graves was a great first show to see there. Overall the venue was well laid out, sounded great, good sight lines, and expectedly high drink prices. I’d easily choose this venue over HOB anytime. :-P

Saint Motel (5/9/25)

2025-05-10T21:38:00.001-04:00

Saint Motel is one of those bands from the mid 2010s that I enjoyed but never got to see live. While I continue to avoide House of Blues when I can, I did appreciate also getting to see Brigitte Calls Me Baby who had been recently recommended to me by a friend. It was still a decent show, which you can tell by the excitement of the audience in the video!

Brigitte Calls Me Baby was cute, and would like to see them in a different venue sometime.

Bendigo Fletcher (5/8/25)

2025-05-09T21:28:00.001-04:00

I was able to catch Bendigo Fletcher open for Rayland Baxter back in 2018, but was happy to catch a headlining performance at the Beachland Ballroom!

Youth Lagoon (5/3/25)

2025-05-04T21:21:00.001-04:00

It had been over 10 years since I first tried to catch Youth Lagoon at the Grog Shop and only caught a single song. Enjoying the new album and really enjoyed seeing a full show!

High Water Festival (2025)

2025-04-29T20:55:00.001-04:00

When I saw this High Water Festival lineup, I immediately started dreaming up a road trip to get me there - and accomplished it! After a brief camping and hiking stop in North Carolina, I made it to Charleston, SC for this High Water Music Festival! I couldn’t have asked for better experience, and Charleston was charming!

A few quick standouts… I”m SO GLAD to have been introduced to Evan Honer. I was lucky to catch the Julien Baker & TORRES perform before they canceled their tour. Waxahatchee cementer her status as a FAVORITE. Counting Crows were meh. Arcade Fire was every bit as dramatic as I was hoping they’d be!

Here’s the list of bands I saw, most of them appear in the above video.

Evan Honer
Medium Build
Joy Oladokun
Julien Baker & TORRES
Mt. Joy
The Backstreet Lovers
Goldie Boutilier
Ethan Tasch
Wild Rivers
Trampled By Turtles
Waxahatchee
Counting Crows
Flipturn
Arcade Fire

Bright Eyes (4/9/25)

2025-04-10T19:51:00.001-04:00

Readers might remember I saw Bright eyes not to long ago - and it wasn’t a great experience. Coming back around on tour, under their official name - this time at The Agora - I thought they’d be worth another try. This one was better.

Basia Bułat (4/4/25)

2025-04-06T19:21:00.001-04:00

I was traveling to Minneapolis for a work conference and was ELATED to see Basia Bulat would be performing at The Cedar Cultural Center, supporting her newest album! I’ve been anxiously awaiting new music and a tour, and she hit all the notes. Such a personable and authentic performer - and a great venue too! I would have taken more photos, but I was too busy taking video! Now I just hope for a second leg of the tour where she comes to Cleveland!

Maia Friedman opened.

Occidental Gypsy (3/28/25)

2025-03-29T14:55:00.001-04:00

I’ve heard great things about BLU Jazz+ in Akron for years, and finally made it happen! Made this into a fancy night out in Akron, stopping at the Diamond Grille for a great meal and then BLU Social for a cocktail before the show. Occidental Gypsy was a treat. Classy and fabulous, all the way around. Looking forward to doing it all again.

Martha Wainwright (3/22/25)

2025-03-24T14:31:00.001-04:00

It’s been a long time since I’ve been to Ann Arbor, and probably even longer since I’ve seen a show at The Ark. I’ve always appreciated their business model, and I was even more excited to see Martha Wainwright was doing a 20th anniversary tour of her self-titled release! I saw her ON that tour back in 2005 at the Beachland Tavern - one of my all time favorite shows. Performance this night at The Ark completely lived up to it. I had a great seat for the show, but that also meant that it wasn’t really appropriate to capture any video of the show - so photos will have to do.

M3F Festival 2025

2025-03-10T20:49:00.009-04:00

This year I headed West to escape some of Ohio’s winter - and see one of the best lineups I've seen in a 2 festival! M3F Fest had an list of artists and I’ll include everyone I saw below. I won’t review each one, but the video is a collection of my favorite 15 seconds (or so) from each performance of the weekend. Seeing Phoenix was great too! Definitely want to go back:

Here’s who I saw!

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs (DJ Set)
LP Giobbi
Alvvays
LCD Soundsystem
Monster Rally
Confidence Man
Doss
Leisure
Mindchatter
Sylvan Esso
BAYNK
Girl Talk
Justice

Brite Winter Festival (2025)

2025-02-24T17:51:00.001-05:00

Brite Winter Festival, this year on the East Bank of the Flats! Loved it - as always.

Travis (2/11/25)

2025-02-13T18:52:00.001-05:00

It has been a pretty rough beginning of the year, and I had chosen to not see some shows - including ones that I even had tickets for (Joy Oladokun, Guster, ugh), but I did make it out to see this Travis show at the Agora. Going back and trying to figure out when I saw them last, I realized that it was before I started my blog (9/13/00 at the Agora), but I did post about them here - talking about how nice it is having just moved to a city where I don’t have to drive two hours back home after the show. Reading that was just a little extra motivation to make sure I made it to this show - and I’m so glad I did!

They sounded great. It wasn’t a huge crowd, which I’ll always appreciate. Even got a nice spot up front for some good video. They’re such a delightful and down-to-earth band. Fran in particular is a real character. I ran across a podcast he did with Bob Lefsetz. Very entertaining. And their new album is as good as anything they’ve done!

BoomBox (2/12/25)

2025-02-13T17:13:00.002-05:00

Another BoomBox show show at the Beachland Ballroom, another great reason to dance. Met some really fun people that night...

Of course it’s always a delight to see Joey Sardelle warm up a crowd.

Rubblebucket (1/19/25)

2025-01-21T17:45:00.001-05:00

I’ve seen Rubblebucket plenty of times before (2011, 2016, 2018), but as the first couple seconds of this video shows - they put on a spectacle when they perform. Of course the music continues to be great too. I mean how can you not love Stella the Begonia??

As like last time, Hannah Mohan (All The Kids) opened for them. She continues to have a cool indie sound about her.

Alisa Amador (12/10/24)

2024-12-11T17:35:00.001-05:00

For the second show on my Washington DC trip, I stopped by DC9 to catch Eliza Edens’ who’s album I had already in my music library. She was opening for Alisa Amador who I also really enjoyed (and added to my music library).

Eliza was every bit as charming and enjoyable as I had hoped. I look forward to seeing both of these artists again!

Abby Sage (12/9/24)

2024-12-10T17:29:00.001-05:00

Another work trip to Washington DC, and another chance to catch some concerts down there. My first night I saw Abby Sage at the Sonbyrd Music House. She has a cool, sharp edge to her pop sound and songwriting, which I enjoyed.

I was really hoping to also get to see ave.noelle on the bill, but seemed to have missed her performance. I also really enjoyed catching Ruqqiyah’s soulful opening performance.

Illiterate Light (12/5/24)

2024-12-07T17:21:00.001-05:00

Illiterate Light is an intriguing band, performing recently at the Beachland Tavern. Apple Music says it pretty well, draing “from a wide array of styles, from raw, guitar-driven indie rock and kaleidoscopic neo-psychedelia to synth-kissed, harmony-laden folk." They definitely put on a show and I appreciate their drive!

Opening was Virgina based trio Palmyra. They were decent

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings (11/23/24)

2024-11-25T20:14:00.001-05:00

I’ve been waiting for just the right show to finally see the Goodyear Theater in Akron, and Gillian Welch & David Rawlings was it! I knew it had been awhile since the last time I saw them, 2011 to be exact, which really got me even more excited for this one. Both the quality of the performance - and the still stringent restriction on photos and video - hence the minimal media. Still, this is some top quality performance and musicianship.

"It had been too long since Welch and Rawlings set foot in Northeast Ohio (if setlist.fm can be believed, the last time the pair played in the area was at the Kent Stage in 2011), and the singer/songwriters made up for it by treating the capacity crowd to two hours of tunes spanning the myriad projects they collaborated on over the past three decades.

While their brand of folk and bluegrass-indebted music is deceptively restrained and mild-mannered, the show was engaging from the moment the pair launched into ‘Orphan Girl,’ their voices and guitars (and occasional banjo) melding together as if part of a single organism."

(Via Gillian Welch & David Rawlings Hold Audience Rapt With Beautiful Folk Music at Akron Concert | Cleveland | Cleveland Scene.)

Tall Heights (11/15/24)

2024-11-17T19:36:00.000-05:00

I’ve seen Tall Heights plenty of times. Part of the motivation tonight was the opener, DUG, and also getting to ride my bike to the venue (taking the train back home). Tall Heights always have some good stories and some good camaraderie. They also reminded the crowd how lucky we are to have a space like Mahalls in our city. I didn’t stay for the whole show - had to get back on my bike to catch the train home.

DUG only has two songs on Apple Music. Those, along with some live videos on their website, were enough to have me psyched to see these guys. And speaking of camaraderie, they have it as well - despite only being a band for 1 year. As they both noted, they’re in their 30s and know what their doing. They even took a moment to announce that all all people named Doug will be granted free access to their shows - and that they haven’t been overwhlemed - yet. :-P Hope to see these guys headlining soon.