THE WELL + MOON DESTROYS + PALMETTO SLUG
SAT AUG 22 | 8 PM | THE WORMHOLE
Austin earns its reputation as the Live Music Capital partly because so many good bands stop in on their tours. As for artists from Austin, the list isn’t as long as one might guess. There are plenty of standouts, like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Gary Clark Jr., The Black Angels, Spoon, Big Boys, and The Sword. But a deeper dive doesn’t pack the star power the town’s reputation implies.
The Well is either working its way to that list or are already on it, depending on your level of enthusiasm or knowledge of the band’s output. Employing a Goldilocks combination of psychedelic, stoner, doom, and heavy rock that’s just right, they do a few things that set them apart. The guitar fuzz levels are set to near-perfect, the psych and stoner vibe isn’t trying too hard, and the doom is clear but kept on the down-low to avoid becoming the soundtrack to a dead glacier.
Despite clear influences of Black Sabbath, Sleep, and Blue Cheer in the riffs, you know it’s The Well when the singing starts. Quite often, guitarist Ian Graham and bassist Lisa Alley either trade or layer their vocals, giving it a haunting, male-female distinction that you’d be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. There’s also an admirable consistency from their 2014 debut Samsara to their latest single New Hallelujah for the Damned.
Fans of Torche, perhaps the best heavy band from Miami, are sure to love Moon Destroys. Formed in Atlanta by founding guitarist Juan Montoya, who left Torche in 2008, and former Royal Thunder drummer Evan Diprima, the band is a lot closer in sound to the former than the latter. Huge guitars, hazy shoegaze, and hypnotic post-rock space inform the alt-metal.
The band started as a project with contributions from Troy Sanders of Mastodon and Bryan Richie of The Sword before becoming an established trio with additional guitarist Zach Amster. This bass-free live setup mirrors another Miami heavyweight, Floor, which also included Steve Brooks of Torche. Despite the absence of the thunderbroom, expect sufficient heaviness that could dislodge your fillings, if not your complete set of molars.
Take Five often stresses avoiding the bullshit idea of being fashionably late in order to see worthy opening bands. This one is the strongest recommendation yet.
Palmetto Slug, one of the many, many bands featuring local heavy music scene MVP Tanner Hamilton, opens. This will be Hamilton’s first live appearance since his workplace accident, and he’ll be supplying “noise box stuff and vocal input.” He’ll also have the biggest smile on his face, something all of us who know and appreciate him can’t wait to see.
MEATWOUND + THE BLACK STRAIN + CICADAKULT
SUN AUG 23 | 7:30 PM | COASTAL EMPIRE BEER CO.
For the second time in less than a calendar year, Meatwound graces Savannah on the Day of the Lord. What better way to balance out a morning sermon with ridiculously heavy noise rock that makes room for sludge and hardcore? There may not be one, at least not until a powerviolence band plays live from the choir loft at your favorite house of worship. The four veterans of the Tampa underground music scene added electronics to their latest record, 2025’s Macho, to give a touch of inhuman menace to the dissonant, industrial-level pounding of the instruments. Vocalist Daniel Wallace rips his larynx to shreds screaming about war, violence, destruction, police, life on Florida’s west coast, and cats. Yes, cats. However, he could be reading the most delicate, beautiful poetry ever written for all you’d know. The exception may be the word “annihilation” on the track Compressed Hell. Despite this, the combination of indecipherable vocal ripping and violent music is what makes the Meatwound sound so deep.
A pair of popular hometown headstompers provide support. The Black Strain make a ton of Savannah sludge from just a guitar and drum kit. They add some doom for fun, with massive riffs, alternating doses of speed and sloth, and an absurdly thick tone that recalls High on Fire and Electric Wizard more than traditional sludge giants like Baroness and Kylesa.
When one band features one of Savannah’s most beloved barflies, Burke Stewart, and Black Tusk member Chris “Scary” Adams, you expect good things. Cicadakult delivers, with a crushing blend of hardcore, crust punk, and both musical and topical anarchy.
It has deep roots in old-school Savannah heavy music, with at least one drawing from the sludge pool and others extending into what the scene looks and sounds like today.
JON LEE & THE APPARITIONS
SAT AUG 22 | 3–6 PM @ OVER YONDER | 9 PM @ BARRELHOUSE SOUTH
Southern rock is always better with a healthy dollop of buttery soul on the warm, musical biscuit. Back in the day, no one did it better than The Allman Brothers Band. They baked the blues, gospel, and R&B right into their sound. A couple of decades later, The Black Crowes carried the torch forward. Today, Charlie Starr of Blackberry Smoke keeps the soul firmly entrenched in the best of the genre. It’s what Savannah’s Jon Lee and the Apparitions aim for, and they hit the target regularly.
Influences from Stax, Motown, and the Allmans are clear enough. Lee’s high-register tenor has grit and grain, and plays off his squealing guitar tone well. The production on his latest release, Next Town, is stripped down, clean and raw, not unlike the ZZ Top album La Futura co-produced by Rick Rubin.
As always, an Over Yonder matinee is one of the best air-conditioned places to be on an oppressively hot Savannah Saturday afternoon in August. Soothe and cool your soul with good music and beer, respectively. But if you miss it, the evening show at Barrelhouse South offers a chance to correct that mistake.
LOGAN LEDGER
FRI AUG 21 | 8 PM | BROUGHTON STREET BOWL & BREW
At age 12, Bay Area kid Logan Ledger discovered Hank Williams and George Jones. He describes it as “a bomb going off in my mind” and it’s still exploding. He attended Columbia University in New York to study film before moving to Nashville. A friend testing a mic recorded him singing. It somehow made its way to 13-time Grammy Award winner T Bone Burnett, whose résumé includes Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, and the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Burnett couldn’t wait to meet him.
Upon confirming Ledger’s voice was the real thing, an otherworldly country archetype that feels like it came from the early ‘60s, Burnett produced and played on his self-titled debut. The lush, old-school country record was built around Ledger’s deep croon, with traces of Nashville classicism, folk, early rock ’n’ roll, and cinematic T Bone Burnett atmosphere.
His vocal chops were again the star of the show on his follow-up Golden State. Produced by Shooter Jennings, as famous for putting the “o” back in country as he is for being the son of Waylon, it was another winner.
Jennings rolled Ledger’s traditional country foundation and old-school croon into a warmer California vibe, adding country-rock, psychedelia, folk, and baroque-pop. He’s also adventurous enough to collaborate with Florida death-metal band Bodybox, proving his Hank/Cash old-school country voice isn’t trapped in a blob of calcified amber.
Why Ledger’s level of talent hasn’t made him a household name is anyone’s guess. Or just more proof that the music industry makes the payday loan business look as wholesome as family farming. If there’s a silver lining, it’s a $15 ticket price for such a skilled artist in a cool venue that doesn’t rob you for beers and cocktails.
TIDEZZ + HORRORSCOPE + YESTERDAY’S LAUNDRY
THU AUG 20 | 8 PM | THE PORTAL ARCADE
In the early years of underground metal, bands and scenesters recognized the poser menace as the fatal threat to purity it so clearly was. This was made abundantly clear by Chicago’s Thrust on their defining anthem Posers Will Die.
The Manowar wannabes made no bones about it, either, singing “You see them standing around/Strutting their stuff/Well, I don't know about you/But we've had enough/So don't you let them walk on by/'Cause tonight's the night/The posers will die.”
This three-band show is billed as “Poser Repellent” on the flyer. It’s not even a metal show, so it’s heartening to see the anti-poser ethos spread beyond metal. On the other hand, perhaps it’s an improvement to merely repel these despicable bastards rather than outright unalive their asses. The modern sensitivity and giving young people time to figure shit out and all that. What is certain is the enthusiasm and variety you’ll get.
Savannah’s Tidezz take punk in a number of directions, all interesting. From early oddball electronic atmospheres to the entertaining current LP Living In Somebody Else’s Paradise, the risks taken pay off with strong musicianship and songwriting.
Horrorscope, a Savannah DJ/EDM laboratory, experiments with dance music, hard beats, weird samples, and noise to move to. It has a punk soul and offers an interesting change of pace from the others.
Yesterday’s Laundry, a literal garage rock band from Statesboro and Ellabell, played their debut show at the Sentient Bean in June and apparently did well enough to land another gig in an edgier venue with edgier bands while staying true to their punk-adjacent alt-rock, which isn’t very edgy, seemingly on purpose.
By Frank Ricci