On the Beat: Lily Seabird's Big Shout-Out

Lily Seabird Credit: Courtesy of Eliza Callahan

Despite a shortage of venues, a difficult touring landscape and continual cuts to federal arts funding, Burlington’s indie-rock scene is thriving. Acts such as Robber Robber, Greg Freeman, Greaseface, the Dead Shakers, the Leatherbound Books and Dari Bay make up a young and vital cadre of songwriters and musicians that’s helping reestablish the Queen City as a hotbed of new music. And while local fans — ahem, and music journalists — have been screaming this from the city’s rooftops for a few years, the rest of the country is now starting to catch on as well.

Case in point: Lily Seabird was just featured in the (digital) pages of Rolling Stone. The article highlights the local indie rocker’s LP, Trash Mountain — named for a landmark near her Burlington apartment — and calls her “the latest artist to break through from Vermont’s thriving music scene.”

Such national exposure is evidence of the gains our local crew has made post-pandemic. The volume and quality of indie-rock records coming from the Burlington scene has made it almost impossible to ignore, size be damned. And there’s plenty more on the way: Freeman drops his new LP, Burnover, in late August and recently released the excellent advance single “Point and Shoot.”

Seabird has hit the road to support Trash Mountain this summer, though she’ll be home for a Radio Bean show on July 29. In fact, many of our young bands are out around the country, driving their rented vans and sleeping on couches to spread the gospel of Vermont indie rock. So keep an eye on the calendars at Radio Bean, the Monkey House, Standing Stone Wines, Higher Ground, Spruce Peak and other venues — you might not be able to see these folks at tiny clubs much longer.

Speaking of new local releases, trumpeter and composer Tom Gershwin has debuted a single, “Belong Here,” ahead of the release of his album Wellspring in August. It’s a sultry, laid-back piece of smooth jazz that gives Gershwin plenty of space to explore with his trumpet, laying down clear and sophisticated phrases on top of a slow, head-nodding rhythm. The song is streaming exclusively at tomgershwin1.bandcamp.com.

Mark Daly and his indie-pop outfit Madaila have issued a new single every three weeks since late February, all in the run-up to the release of a new LP, Night Cuisine, later this summer. The latest single, “Cruel World,” dropped last Friday, the night the band played a Burlington Discover Jazz Festival set at the Lounge at Nectar’s. The track is available on streaming services.

Synth rockers Night Protocol have been busy lately, organizing local showcase nights at Higher Ground and filming a video at Smugglers’ Notch Resort in Jeffersonville. The shoot was for the band’s new single, “MIA,” and is a re-creation of the classic video game SkiFree. You can watch the clip on YouTube.

The Halifax, Nova Scotia/Winooski project We Should’ve Been Plumbers, the brainchild of Canadian musician Kim Carson and Winooski songwriter Jillian Comeau, is back with a new double-sided single, “Life Of Crime.” The tunes “explore two sides of the economic spectrum from a criminal point of view,” according to a press release from the punk band, whose members were once in the Halifax band Like A Motorcycle. Sharp-eyed locals might recognize the cover models on both sides of the single: Burlington drag artists Rhedd Rhumm and Katniss EverQueer, who have worked with Comeau as part of her DJ GAYBAR project. The new tunes are available at weshouldvebeenplumbers.bandcamp.com.

On the expat front, New York City singer and composer Andrew Richards has dropped three new singles over the past few months, including “Sophia Hold My Hand.” Richards, a crooner with as clear a voice as you’ll find, weaves elements of jazz and R&B into his melodies, with just the right hint of classic pop. The tracks, available on streaming services, feature on A Wondrous Toy, the Vermont native’s third album, released last week.

Zach Pollakoff is opening the doors to his Charlotte art studio, Bauschaus VT, for the season and kicking it off with a tasty show on Saturday, June 14, headlined by Brooklyn guitarist and composer Ezra Feinberg. Pollakoff is an artist and musician, as well as the executive director of Heavy Duty Projects, a creative firm that sources music for film, TV and ads.

He moved into the former home of the late painter Maize Bausch in 2021. Her second husband, architect Carl Bausch, designed the house and its nearby art studio in 1968. In tribute to the couple’s artistic legacy, Pollakoff took to calling it Bauschaus VT — a portmanteau of Bausch and the 20th-century German art school Bauhaus.

Feinberg, formerly of the San Francisco psych-rock act Citay, caps off a fantastic bill that includes two Vermont artists: indie rocker Lutalo and experimental musician Amelia Devoid. To learn more and for a link to tickets, follow Bauschaus VT on Instagram @bauschausvt.