Yelawolf has been around in the music industry for a powerful fifteen years: founding record label and brand Slumerican, working with artists ranging from Eminem to Ed Sheeran, and now rapping his way through “Searching for Heaven”, a sneak peek from the album Whiskey and Roses, which will be released on July 11. The album is a collaboration with upcoming artist J. Michael Phillips, who combines raspy country vocals with trap beats, telling stories of his rough past which he has fought tooth and nail to push through.
“Searching for Heaven” aims to highlight the moment where life’s momentum breaks through distracting temptation. Phillips’ vocals traverse pop, rock, and country, piercing with genuine exasperation, as the path to salvation is broken. However Yelawolf plays a mere part in the song, leaving the impression that he is a featured artist rather than a partner. His verse picks apart the song’s rhythm, which is seemingly discombobulated either way.
There’s still a lot of promise with eight unreleased tracks from the Whiskey and Roses which you can pre-save now. The new duo has fresh music and messages for you to listen to and you won’t want to miss them.
Yelawolf & J. Michael Phillips – Summer 2025 Tour June 13 – Colorado Springs, CO at Ford Amphitheater June 14 – Denver, CO at Mission Ballroom July 3 – Charleston, SC at Refinery July 11 – Cleveland, OH at House Of Blues July 12 – Harrisburg, PA at XL Live July 13 – New Haven, CT at Toads July 15 – Albany, NY at Empire Live July 16 – McKees Rocks, PA at Roxian Theatre July 18 – Cadott, WI at Rock Fest July 19 – Grand Rapids, MI at Upheaval Fest July 20 – Cincinnati, OH at Bogarts July 22 – Louisville, KY at Old Forester’s Paristown Hall July 24 – Fayetteville, AR at JJ’s Live July 25 – Jefferson City, MO at Capital Region MJ Healthcare Amphitheater July 26 – Wichita, KS at Cotillion Ballroom July 27 – Oklahoma City, OK at The Criterion July 30 – Salt Lake City, UT at The Complex August 1 – Sacramento, CA at Channel 24 August 2 – Rancho Mirage, CA at The Show at Agua Caliente August 3 – Santa Cruz, CA at The Catalyst August 5 – San Luis Obispo, CA at Fremont Theater August 7 – Santa Fe, NM at The Bridge at Santa Fe Brewing August 9 – Sturgis, SD at Iron Horse Saloon August 10 – Sioux Falls, SD at The District
Festival season is upon us. Even if you aren’t braving a multi-day, camping festival on a farm (Hello, Bonnaroo!) or in the wilderness (Hinterland, we love you!), there are urban festivals (Lookin’ at you, Riot Fest!) and those tucked away in parks (Hi, Outsidelands!) all across the United States and beyond.
But with these events comes facing the elements. You have to make sure you are prepared for the weather, whether you like it or not. Here, TK products to take with you on your next festival adventure to keep yourself in good spirits.
magnum solace magnesium oil
Travel can lead to excitement, a difference in schedule, and irregular sleep. Camping outside can make it almost impossible to sleep comfortably.
For the moments where you could use a little help falling asleep, this magnesium oil is incredible. Spray the unscented oil on your arms, legs, or feet, and lay down to get one of the best rests of your life.
Erin Zimmerman sent this to me to help me keep my sleep patterns regular. I let a co-producer borrow this while they were on a consolidated schedule in a different time zone and she said she had never slept that well outside of her own bed.
drip drop electrolyte powder
No matter what you’re up to this summer, staying hydrated is key. I try a lot of different hydration beverages, and this one – so far – has been my absolute favorite. You can find DripDrop at Costco online, a 40 pack of watermelon and lemon/lime powders.
The watermelon tastes like a watermelon Jolly Rancher, and the lemon/lime option tastes exactly like Gatorade. They include no sugar, and 3x the hydration of some of your bulkier beverages.
five below honey & jojoba shimmer body oil
You can’t hit up a festival without a little bit of glitz. This natural body oil is packed with sparkles, but is also extra hydrating and has a light scent to it (nothing overwhelming). You won’t feel any guilt about spraying it on your décolletage, shoulders, and legs because it’s budget-friendly, at just $1 at Five Below.
trader joe’s facial spf
This sunscreen is silky smooth and easy to apply, the same texture and consistency as lightweight foundation primers. It is oil free, and won’t leave a cast or any weird residue. The size of the bottle makes it easy to keep it on your person at all times, which is great for re-application of the SPF 40 formula every 40 minutes as suggested.
At just $8, there’s no reason not to consider this.
supergirl! disco stick
If you aren’t immediately drawn to the glitter branding and the name of this product – anyone returning to the days of Lady Gaga’s single? – then you will be thrilled by the price. For just $5 at Five Below, you can grab this SPF 30 dry oil stick. Perfect for your décolletage, this unscented sunscreen is a bit of a highlighter for the skin. No weird, sticky, slimy feelings after application, either!
newman’s own organic herb blends
This may seem out of left field, but Newman’s Own recently introduced a tasty line of organic spices to their offerings. Lucky enough to have tried them recently, I can say with absolute certainty that keeping the Churro blend and the Citrus Herb blend on-hand can help add flavor to anything you may be eating. I might not pull them out at a fancy restaurant, but I would absolutely season my takeout, food truck findings, and camping-friendly items with them.
If you love tacos and intend to try some out, there is an incredible Street Taco blend that you might want to throw in your bag.
loop earplugs
I did not understand relief until my sister bought me a 3-pack of Loop earplugs. I got three different decibal protection levels, each in their own keychain carrying case.
The fun part about these earplugs is that you twist them into your ears, where they nestle well. Each pair comes with adjusters in small, medium, and large so you can fit them to your ears, reducing the common earplug issue of them popping out.
Now, I can protect my hearing against noise pollution at any point, I just need to reach down and grab them out of my keychain.
I can also drown everyone out with the noise cancelling attachments and the small carrying case the set came with.
arctic air breeze jet (air conditioner/fan)
I cannot gate keep here. The Arctic Air Breeze Jet is the #1 item to add to your festival list this year. This mini air conditioner/fan has 3 speeds and is relatively quiet, meaning it certainly won’t be an issue in a loud environment with your ear plugs in. It comes charged up with a USB plug that will easily get the battery back to 100% on-the-go. Clip it to your belt to get the airflow going up – and under your shirt, if you’d like – or attach it using the lanyard that comes with.
As more nostalgia topics have cropped up since the beginning of the – let’s admit it at this point – ongoing pandemic, PBS has been top of mind for so many people who were able to grow up – or raise their children – with its expanse of knowledge ringing throughout their homes. Having educational experiences accessible to many different demographics – and on public access television – is an important resource for many.
Searching for Augusta Savage is the first film in a new series from PBS called American Masters Shorts. Augusta Savage was a Harlem Renaissance sculptor and art educator, whose work largely reflected the joy and expression in the Black community. She overcame numerous obstacles to further her own education and get her work seen. She captivated audiences long before her death, and her art stood to progress the inclusion of Black artists in spaces they had otherwise been excluded from.
A curious thing is that many pieces of Augusta’s work have gone missing, and her name is not as well-known as it once was, or should be. Why is that? Why has her legacy not been salvaged and taught as widely as other artists of her time?
This 22-minute episode is a deep dive into what history can tell us about this incredible black artist’s life and work.
The song “Lines in the Sky”, which starts Cole Gallagher’s EP, The Confluence, has a soft sound. It makes you feel like you are at the beach, as he compares the person in his song to the sea. Emotions of excitement flow through the song, expressed through high notes. He is truly enjoying a fun time with this person at the sea.
As I contemplate more, I realize the sea is also a metaphor for his dreams being as vast as the sea when he is with this person, as they make him believe he can do anything he wishes. He is living in a world that is twisted, expressed through his voice. Deep and raspy, it captures emotions of anger, freedom, and pain, in a melody that flows smoothly and makes you feel like you releasing all of your emotions into the world. As he lets go of all his pain and anger, he finds that freedom is hard when you do not have the person you relied on to encourage you to see your dreams as vast as the sea.
As Gallagher sings the song “Stumbling in the Dark”, he goes through emotions of struggling to impress the person he is singing about. He believes he cannot live up to their expectations of how to act, and who to be. Despite feeling he cannot be his true self, he follows this person because he loves them too intensely to emotionally leave them. She is the only girl he will ever truly love. He is desperately searching for her so he can look into her eyes again. He is unsure how to show her that he cares about her forever and he hopes that her life is free of pain and worries, as he expresses by singing that he hopes the skies are blue for her.
During “Delilah”, the listener discovers the name of the person the lyrics to his EP has been flowing about. Delilah’s joy is his joy too, because her emotions are connected to how he feels. They are like a string, so when he or Delilah gets pulled or twisted a certain way, they are impacted by each other’s emotions. As expressed in his lyrics, his heart is open to her eyes, because he is open to looking deep into her soul and understanding life from her perspective. His heart will beat to her emotions and what she goes through in life.
In Cole’s song “Chatting Through Steal”, he struggles that his dreams have been packed up by people refusing to believe in him, and rejecting him. It is melancholic and contemplative, stirring pause in its listener.
In “Sugarland”, the melody intertwines as words enter this song, with emotions of helplessness. He wonders about what it would be like to see beyond the fields he lives in. Loneliness overwhelms him and he feels trapped in the fields. Hope fills his soul as he watches the bluebirds flying in the sky and “the flames rise up,” as articulated through these descriptive lyrics.
“The Ocarins of the Tennessee” starts with a slow, calming melody. As he is floating away, he continues to keep the attachment of this person whom he loves in his heart, vowing to never forget the sound of their voice. The sound of this person’s voice brings him both comfort and grief. He compares this person’s voice to the sounds of the sea because the sea is where he has had many memories with them. His heart is floating away with this person in his mind and away from this person in reality. At the end of this song, his high notes repeat in a steady flow in a pattern, capturing the emotions of being content with this person at the sea and the pain of losing them.
There were warnings of storms looming all day on Saturday, July 1st in Kansas City, Missouri. At any moment, a pop-up shower could leave any part of the metropolitan area drenched. And it did. Multiple times.
But not that night.
Not that evening when German rock band – and Midwest fav – Milky Chance opened for Young The Giant at the gorgeous Starlight Theatre. They dazzled the crowd with eye-catching style, serotonin-boosting tunes, and envious hair (according to pretty much everyone there). Here are some beautiful moments from the opening of the show.
It’s been 10 months since the first episode of “Only Murders in the Building” premiered on Hulu. This week, our beloved trio of geriatric-minded comedians – and we would argue that Selena Gomez, at times, takes the cake for seeming the most mature – is back on the small screen with the season 2 premiere.
What is all the hype about?
Take two legendary comedians (Steve Martin and Martin Short) and one millennial who has always had a dry sense of humor and comedic timing like no other (Selena Gomez) and put them in a room together. Add in a murder mystery storyline set in Manhattan for some east coast flare, and you’ve got yourself a winner.
Vibrant, nuanced, twisted. Audiences rated it a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes while critics gave it a glowing 100%. Dad jokes, slapstick, and sarcasm. “Only Murders in the Building” has it all.
What happened in Season 1?
In a situation of happenstance, Charles-Haden Savage (Martin), Oliver Putnam (Short), and Mabel Mora (Gomez) meet in a diner during an evacuation of their apartment building, The Arconia. Conversation strikes when they realize they are all trying to catch up on the latest installment of a true-crime podcast.
But the evacuation in their building was for more than just a standard fire drill. The three new friends find out that one of their neighbors has been murdered. With their shared, vested interest in the case, they decide to create a podcast around the killing–effectively getting to the bottom of a case the police can’t seem to crack.
Tim Kono’s (Julian Cihi) murder isn’t as cut and dry as our protagonists wanted to believe. First, there’s the neighbor with a cat who doesn’t really like anyone in the building. There’s the fact that Mabel and Tim were childhood friends, something she hides for several episodes. (Why?) Plus, there is someone else who knew their childhood friend group–Theo (James Caverly)–living in the building with his father (Nathan Lane).
But his rich father couldn’t possibly know anything. He sponsors the podcast.
While their sleuthing leads them to one red herring after another, the tension and fear for their safety builds. Mabel is seemingly stalked and attacked by a man that turns out to be another member of their friend group, fresh out of prison for a murder he didn’t commit. (Or did he?)
Savage’s new girlfriend – another tenant named Jan played by Amy Ryan — is stabbed and left to die just inside her apartment door. Nosy, annoyed neighbors begin to throw obstacles in their mystery-solving path. But is it because the podcast seemingly blows up overnight, making the entrance at The Arconia a busy mess of fans? Or is it because one of these neighbors is the murderer?
Spoiler Alert
While there were certainly moments of clarity throughout the season, the uncovering of the murderer in the last two episodes and the way she spirals is a bit of a shock to the viewer. Jan, the oboist girlfriend of Savage, was Tim’s unexpected lover and murderer.
Case closed, right?
Well, the last episode unveiled a fresh murder. And now Mabel is being framed.
Season 2 is Here
Today is your lucky day. As of midnight on June 28, 2022, the first two episodes of Only Murders in the Building season 2 went live on Hulu.
SXSW 2022 – as we have established – was such a welcoming and wonderful experience. With 2020 being canceled and 2021 being an all-digital event, coming back into a hybrid in-person/digital setting was everything we could have hoped for. This year, the film/television panels and events were spread out further into the week than years past, and we were thrilled at the thought of trying to get a glimpse of Donald Glover and the Atlanta team on the red carpet on Saturday, March 19th, at the Paramount. Not expecting to get a chance to actually step foot into the theater, we were shocked when we got into the premiere with no issue as secondary music badge holders. Viewers were promised the first episode followed by an extended Q&A. We got that PLUS the second episode!
“We like to under promise and over deliver.” – Show creator, Donald Glover.
If you love Atlanta already? You will be pleased right out the gate. If you didn’t love Atlanta already? It’s absolutely time to give it a try!
Without any big spoilers: The first episode is a reimagining of real events. Because there are plenty of things that happen in this real world – in our individual lives – where you just think: that could have happened differently. One of the things the cast revealed in the Q&A was that, in putting together these final two seasons of Atlanta – If you didn’t know, now you know. Seasons 3 and 4 have been filmed, and they will be the show’s last – they spent a lot of time watching other amazing shows like Succession while asking themselves: What is something these shows CAN’T do that we can?
And with the preview of just the first two episodes? This team can do a LOT that others can’t!
During the first season, the writers and cast genuinely felt like they were trying too hard – and, upon reflection, they can still feel it in the work itself. During season 2, they were trying hard to prove that season one wasn’t a fluke. They earned that success, and they did a brilliant job. In these final two seasons? They’ve grown up, survived 2 years of a pandemic, some even have growing families that they didn’t have before. Admits Donald of how he writes post-children: “Kids make you soft as butt.”
The consensus this time around? “We’re just trying to have fun.”
And, when the Q&A host asked if some of the subject matters in the first two episodes were based in truth (including instances of black face and euthanasia), show writer (and show creator Donald Glover’s brother) Stephen Glover said: “That shit is just funny”.
“We’re just fucked up people,” Donald added. “It came from us.” He went on to explain the correlation between fear and comedy, which are both massively present in Atlanta. “Fear and comedy are closely related, they’re always touching each other. They’re very connected. That’s why we’re trying to do that.”
From a viewing perspective? This show has always hit the tough, societal, human notes right alongside the wacky, weird, hilarious, bizarre WTF moments.
The panelists revealed that their writer’s room has been a physical location – but also a group text thread filled with memes and videos. Which, in hindsight, is made crystal clear in season 2, episode 6 with the character of Teddy Perkins (IYKYK). Donald Glover revealed that the character and episode were inspired by a photo of Michael Jackson ducking and covering, and the follow-up question: “What if you were being chased by that version of Michael?”
After this theatre viewing, we can admit it’s OUTSTANDING to watch alongside other fans, but just as hilarious, poignant, and effective when watching alone. Starting this season, you can watch it on Hulu the day after the episode airs on FX. And if the rest of the series continues with the cadence of the first two episodes of the 3rd season? You will not want to miss a single second.
The insight during the panel revealed self-awareness and an all-encompassing relatability to the content. With everything I learned about the creative process behind Atlanta, with its text thread writer’s room, I am feeling inspired to start my own writer’s room text thread. Because, my friends and I are SURELY clever enough to create our own epic, highly anticipated show, right?
On second thought, I think I’ll leave it to the pros. I already miss you, Atlanta crew!
Episode 1 of the 3rd season drops tomorrow, March 24th on FX. (Available on Hulu starting March 25th!) Keep up with our continuing coverage of SXSW here.
As the weather gets crisper and we snuggle up under more layers, there is a specific kind of music we yearn for. Nostalgia, warmth, fun. Luckily for us, polymathic artist Miles Francis gives us a run for our money with a curated playlist that provides a little boost of energy to keep us going through the cold winter months.
“breezy bass lines and smooth rhythms to keep it hot as the temp falls.”
Lowertown, the duo comprised of Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg, are excited to release their new single “Seaface”. This is the first song from their upcoming EP The Gaping Mouth. Osby and Weinberg spent time in London recording the EP “that they call their most honest, interesting, and mature work to date”. “Seaface” is a tune that combines dreamy lyrics with music that builds from a single guitar to a full mix.
Pick what you want to be, It can be anything. If you close your eyes, It’s fun to imagine Another body, another life.
Despite the constraints of the pandemic, 2020 proved to be a productive time for the pair of 19-year-olds – they graduated high school (where they met in math class), signed to label Dirty Hit and released their EP Honeycomb, Bedbug. 2021 looks like it could be as big a year for Lowertown.
