Murfreesboro, TN – As mentioned in Folk and Proper News’ Summer 2025 edtition, “The Murfreesboro-local Punk/Metal Scene (pt. 1), not only is the local Murfeesboro, TN, DIY, music scene seemigly an economy within itself, from the merch tables all the way to the “presented by,” / “sponsored by,” bigger venue shows across the municipality, Murfreesboro’s music scene, itself -or the bands, their shows, and the nights area-folks go out to enjoy- annually begins when the winter weather of spring lightens up, and through to the colder weather of fall; not only does the scene have a maelstoming, roving economy, but it’s also comprised of “in” bands, “out” bands, and “always” bands.
For definition, the “in” bands are those that come in from out of town, to spread their word, such as Pentegram String Band, a trio/quartet out of Kansis City, Missouri, whom visited the night of this background, just below in the cover photo, to play a memorial within the scene for local artist Scout Cerveny, apropos as one their favorite acts, according to “ask a punk,”and held at Murfeesboro staple, Crossroads punk house, at 6097 Lebanon Pike, November 1, 2024.

But for the sake of overimposing the moment for a point, “in” band, Germantown, Maryland’s hard-, stoner-, blue-rock and metal quartet, Clutch, who’s frontman, Neil Fallon, appears in the middle, has spent the last twenty five years playing Nashville venues, building their army, and eventually moving up, venue-wise to Nashville’s “mother church,” Ryman Auditorium, as well as newly dug cave venue, The Big Mouth Cave, of The Caverns, in Grundy Co., Pelham, TN.
Next to Fallon, to the right, and red, is Alyson Dellinger, lead singer and bassist for Murfreesboro’s modernly greatest, “out,” band, Flummox, who’s latest, yet recently dissolved iteration of Aly Dellinger, guitarists, Max Mobarry and Chase McCutcheon, drummer Alan Pfiefer, and keyboardist, Jesse Peck, have been one of the more successful, “touring out,” bands, carrying Murfreesboro’s message, up to ultimately, a side iteration, Aly

Anomaly, getting the opportunity to open for GWAR on Nashville conceptual act, Mac Sabbath, tour, coming up this fall.
To the left, shining in the brightness of a traveling suitcase light, like in Quentin Tarrantino’s Pulp Fiction, “always” band, Aye Mammoth’s frontman Micah Loyed, who with the help of drummer Phil Stem, has secured Aye Mammoth’s “always,” status within the area as they’ve released intellectual, yet brutal, old school homage and stoner doom-affiliated metal EP’s once a year, for the past 13 years, and going. It’s insane.
These m%therf*ggers, right here, over the course of the twenty twenties (the twenties), have developed a good example of how such a roving, sometimes maddening, but always oscillating, Murfreesboro-local punk/metal scene maintains itself as a functioning economy, be it just for t-shirts, or sometimes making bank at the door.

Clutch is a post-hardcore, stoner, alt. metal quartet out of Germatown, Maryland, that began in 1991, and much like the roads that systematically keep its citizenry trapped in in Murfreesboro, TN, Clutch has concentrically circled out of their hometown, and Baltimore and D.C-based areas -the hub of most post-punk and hardcore genre’d American rock, and the subgenres, there of, expanding (as well as encapsulating) their message, popularity, and record of pure rock fury, according to concert records at concertyarchives.com, and setlist.fm.
And “for more than thirty years, Clutch have stood apart from everyone else and carved out a sound entirely their own. Throwing hard rock, blues, stoner rock and classic metal into a melting pot, they have built a fiercely loyal global following through relentless touring, thunderous live performances and catalogue that is constantly evolving and refuses to stand still,” according to spotlightreport.net.
From the start, Clutch stuck around the D.C. area (similar to the dynamic of Murfreesboro acts playing in the bigger, Music City, Nashville, TN, due to proximity), , starting out in their local-er venues, such as Baltimore’s Polka Inn, and D.C’s Fort Reno Park, and the 9:30 Club.
From there, doing 10 shows compared to the previous starting year’s 4 (concertarchives.org), Clutch went pretty hard, running up the Northeast US, through Cambridge, MA, and NY, down to Pensacola, FL, all the way west to Lawrence, KS, and Elmhurst, IL, at MacGregor’s, and then back to the 9:30 club, and The Polka Inn, in their closer, yet fastly growing, concetric touring reach, playing tracks like “Arcadia,” “Wicker,” “Juggarnaut,” “Piledriver,” and “Far Country,” from their first EP, Pitchfork (Uncle Punchy Studio, Inner Journey Records, 1991) and workshopping up to their second and third releases, Passive Restraints (Uncle Punchy Studios, Earache Records, 1992), and their debut studio album, Transitional Speedway League: Anthems, Anedotes, and Undeniable Truths (Razor’s Edge, San Fran. and Spa Studios, NY, EastWest [Records]), solidifying Clutch’s (and Fallon’s) preacher-esque delivery on stage, due to their pointed, lyrical delivery, and tightness in the bass department -two heavy identifying factors in their lives shows.

In 1993, Clutch somewhat stuck to the same route, amplifying it up to 118 concerts, that year, up to Minneapolis, Toronto, Raleigh, and Atlanta,, that yea (from 4 their first year, then 10, their second), sharing the bill with friends, Monster Magnet, as well as Unsane, Cop Shoot Cop, Lubricated Goat, and Daltonic, all fellow rockers of the time and space with their own fanbases.
And, so it went…

Here’s Mike Rivkees, of touring band, The Rumjacks, to describe the process:
“If someone were to ask you, ‘how do touring bands make money?’ You’d probably say, ‘merch.’
After 20 years of touring, I can tell you the answer to that is a little more depressing. Let me explain.
First, I play in a band called the Rumjacks, and we’re on the road several months out of the year.
We’re actually on a tour, right now.
Now I think we all know and agree that the live music industry is pretty cut throat.
Expenses are super high. Margins are thin. But that doesn’t mean no ones making money.
If there was zero dollars to be made in the industry, there’s no way all these bands would be on the road just, simply, on hopes and dreams.
If we do a six week tour, I can pay my mortgage for a few months if I don’t spend that money on anything else. So, we aren’t just losing money all the time. Cause you can have the best merch table with all the slickest designs: the cool varasity jackets, the scarves, the football, soccer jerseys, but if there’s no one at your shows, who’s going to buy it? You gotta be filling these rooms in the first place.
But how?
I think in the modern age, a lot of us would assume, like, everyone’s on social media, so you gotta go viral so that everyone knows about you, so that when you tour, the rooms get filled. But this isn’t always the case.
You can take an 800,000 subscriber music youtuber, send them on tour, and their still going to lose thousands of dollars. I made a whole video about that (How much money did this Musician/YouTuber lose on a tour?! Mary Spender lays it all out).
You can follow all the trends on TikTok. All the social media posting strategy/online growth, but all that’s going to do is make you bigger on the internet. You still have to grow in person.
Now, when we were on the hunt for a manager, I ended up talking to a big industry guy -he was a little bit out of our league- but he was explaining to me that, in the current age, record labels are signing bands in two different categories: wether they’re an online artist, or an irl artist [“in real life”]. Because in many repeat cases, they kept running into the same problem. An artist has a song go viral, the label says, ‘oh, look at these social numbers, we gotta sign this guy,’ -goes on tour, can’t fill rooms, loses a bunch of money on the advance he doesn’t know he has to pay back (laughs)- and then that song’s fifteen seconds of fame are over, it stops generating streams. So then these labels are treating the way they sign artists differently.
So, for this video we’re talking about irl artists who play shows and tour.
Now, as far as how much a band actually gets paid to play a show, it basically comes down to two different types of deals: a door deal, or a guarantee.
A door deal means they get a percentage of the door, so if the band has an 85% door deal, and the door makes $10,000, that means the band takes home $8,500.
If only a few people show up, that band isn’t leaving with much money.
Guarantee is pretty much what it sounds like. Part of the contract, the band gets paid a certai amount of the money, no matter what.
If their guarantee is $5,000, they’re going to ge $5,000 wether they sell ten 10 tickets, or 2,000. And then there’s all sorts of other situations like break-even point. There’s guarantee, plus door-deal. So, I’m keeping it simple and just referring to these two. But in general I think you guys are smart enough to understand that as a headliner, if you sell more tickets, and you’re filling bigger rooms, you make more money.
So how did my band get to this point
In 2016, before I was in the band, the Rumjacks moved from Australia to Europe and started road-doggin’ it. They slogged it out, playing like, three months at a time. And these rooms were small. Some with only 70 capacity rooms, some with 250. That doesn’t mean they were filling a 250 cap room. A lot of these shows were pretty empty; had like ten to fifteen people. They definitely played to a lot of empty rooms. But they kept coming back and hitting these cities year after year. Sometimes twice a year.
Now, I joined in 2020 (a great year for live music, btw), but by the time we started touring in ‘21, I was starting to see the result of years of playing the same cities. I mean, I couldn’t believe the size of some of these crowds.
Pulling 600 people in Zabrez, Poland, which I’d never heard of before, was completely new to me. I’d never. I’d never played club shows that big.
Now, we’re currently on the road, here, in Spain -mostly Spain. And the Spanish market has always been a really hard one for us. Its just a tough one to crack into. But this tour has been our biggest one, yet.Just taking Madrid, for example, when the band first played here, I think the band played to about 50 people, they said. Then, they came back and played with the Addicts, opening up. When I first played with them here, it was 2022. We pulled about 35 people. This was kind of a weird run, because Cock Spar, The Casualties, and Lion’s Law, were all on tour at the same time, in Spain. So, I think everyone’s shows were less attended. But then last year, with our friends, Grade 2, we sold out a venue, I think was at 192, was the cap. Then, this year, we did a much bigger venue, with 200 presales alone -this was, like, two nights ago, so I don’t know what the final count on the show was, but it was a lot more.
Quick note about presales, in a lot of countries, we kinda depend on presales to know how much money we’re going to be making, [so’s] how much merch we should bring. In Spain, you cannot rely on presales. People just generally buy at the door. It’s a “walk up market,”as they say. So, it’s kind of tricky to plan ahead.
The point is, it has taken us years to get to this point where we are actually filling this venue and actually starting to make some money.

In Oviedo, it was the same thing.
In 2022, we opened up for Moscow Death Brigade, who has a solid following here, and we came back last year with our friends, Grade 2, that absolutely helped ticket sales. And then, this year, we sold out the venue by ourselves. We didn’t even have an opener, which is always really, really weird for us. I hate playing shows without openers.
And its the same story for all these shows […] You zoom out on the map of Europe and you realize this band has been doing this for ten years (mikerivkeesyoutubevidscreenshot), hitting some of the same cities over and over and over, again, putting in years of their lives doing this.
The amount of time just sitting in a van, looking out the window, it’s like half you life (laughing), if you’re a full time touring musician. And it makes you think how much time does this actually take?
-It takes a lot of fckn time.
It takes years of patient determination, [and] hard work. You
have to dedicate your life to this, hoping that it works out. Some bands absolutely will blow up over night, but some bands have to play the long game. -And of course, you’ve got to be active on social media. You still have to do the marketing, make music videos, all the online stuff, but the in-person growth happens year-to-year.

It is a marathon. Not a sprint.
…And, of course, some shows will be smaller than the year before, or the last time that you played whatever city.
That’s why the only way to do this is if you really fckn love doing it.
And I do.
If I was able to tour, and wasn’t making any money, I would still do it.
Of course, I’d be working full time and taking clients while I’m on the road -which I still do from time to time. I spend a lot of time working from green rooms, hotels, long van rides. I come from a marketing backgroud, and I still have one foot in the corporate world. But since we are finishing these tours with money in our pockets, I don’t have to rely so heavily on finding a client that’s cool with me getting them an edit a day late because my hotel in Sopron, Hungary, didn’t have wi-fi.
So, the way touring bands really make money is by playing the long game.
Returing to cities, being cool to everyone they meet, not trashing green rooms and venues, and most importantly, writing good fckn music. -Oh, yeah…And merch.”

All right, [attention to] Clutch was picked up at 1998’s The Elephant Rider, out of Columbia Records and 99’s subsequent, self-released, Jam Room [Sessions], after Clutch’s concentrically shuffling and hustling productions througfh – labels, and touring since their first live shows in 1991, up to that point, first playing around Baltimore and D.C., and by the time ‘picked up,’ were already pulling off nationwide touring, getting starteshooting over to the
And by ‘picked up,’ it’s meant, in college at 2003, stoner rock took over the living room I was practically staying in, hanging out with my sister’s boyfriend, though “Space Grass,” was actually the hook, off of Clutch’s self-title, 1995 release, Clutch.

“Elephant Riders” through “Eight times over Miss October,” through “The Yeti,” “Muchos Veces,” throug “Crackerjack,” and “Wishbone,” riled up the sentiment of, “I mean, c’mon, man,” when it came to Sult’s psychedelic, pedal driven lead guitar and Neil Fallon’s newly found, puncuating, eventually preacher-esque deliver of outer-worldly sentiments that straight-up matched and contributed to the blunt-rolling techniques and subsequent haze administered to the living room’s developing haze. It was out of a nineties version of Dazed and Confused, if you will.
Then Jam Room came out in 99, with all to say about that for a second, the opening lines of Neil Fallon , Dan Maines, Tim Sult, and Jean-Paul Gaster, “Hey, hey, now. What’s that smell? It’s just like Cornbread done too well.”
“What you need,” the quartet continues, Fallon on lyrics, “You know I got. So heads up, who wants to rock?” as Gaster hammers down the snare, Sult licks on the nexk for a blues riff, held together by Maines.
Clutch started out as a quartet out of Germantown Maryland…
‘91, the Polka Inn, in Baltimore, and a couple spots in D.C., Reno Park, and the 9:30 Club, where they were doing “Arcadia,” “Juggernaut,” “Shovel,” “Driven,” “Pile Driver,” “Wicker,” “The Wheel,” “Far Country,” and “Dirt,” according to a match between concertarchives and setlist.com, respectively, promoting the first half of Pitchfork and workshopping the subsequent two albums up to their self-titled.

In ‘94, Cluth did a 149 show run, their 3rd year of existence on the road, opening for Prong, the inspiration from which they got their amount of syllables for a band name, hitting the same cities, plus more of that stature including Comulbus, Milwuakee, Charlotte, and Orlando. The opener-openers were an industrial quintet out of Los Angelos, Drown, started in 1987.
In ‘95, Clutch spent the latter year opening for Marilyn Manson’s Smells Like Children tour
That year, between a few tours, Manson covereed 150 shows, with a Knoxville show at The Electric Ballrom, May 5, found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDxnm-lXciE&t=1s. Pretty sick.
Again, starting at 9:30 Club in D.C., January 1996, Clutch’s touring schedule dropped down to the mid-sixties, compared to the developingly increasing number of gigs performed, years prior, but opening for Sepultura and Limp Bizkit come February, as well as their first European tour, that month Though halfing the show count, it was made up for in tact. Clutch was getting huge, yet still niche, pushing their seven month old, self-titled, sophomore album, which stapled them truly into the annals of hard stoner rock, with hits such as “Big News 1,” lyricizing the fortune of a sinking luxury ship, then floating casino (Big News 2), as well as “Spacegrass,” a song about dragracing (on the moon?).

Clutch would get back, early March to sandwich between Life of Agony and Pist On, before hitting some more bigger tours with Fu Manchu and Orange 9mm, penultimately opening a little on Anthrax, Cannibal Corpse, and Danzig for the Stomping Around the World Tour, then ultimately ultimately the Hamilton, Ontario date of Ozzfest, with Sepultura, Danzig, and Ozzy Osbourne just before finishing out at the Superbowl of Hardcore.

Sticking with major metropoli throughout the next year, situating the number of shows and stature of headliners opening for, Clutch differed by playing a lot of solo shows, compared to the last couple years runs, but on May 16, 1998, Clutch stopped by Nashville, TN, for the first time, on their schedule of mid-late nineties, world domination, as a consistent and dependable face vibrators -at 328 Perfomance Hall- as they’d been dabbling in Memphis, the month before/in the area, on the Elephant Riders tour. Clutch played 177 shows that year, according to concert archives.
As 328 closed down in March of 2002, Exit/In was changing management from the 30 year prior owner/runner, Owsley Manier, just in time for a new breed of journalist from Middle Tennessee State University to figure out the band stands right behind the stage during their breaks, next to the bathrooms, and could easily be talked to. Unfortuately, my sister being a little blonde girl that she is, at the time, got to talk to Fallon, first, securing an autographed Clutch had that would forever go down in TN annals as The truckers hat, once it was stolen from their house that year. I think it’s in our Mother’s garage, now, but it’s almost been lost, and lost, a myriad of times.
-At this juncture, I’d be remissed not mentioning within the previous 30 years of Exit/In’s existence during a lifetime before mine, in my father’s Nashville adventures and tenrue, as he had good times (and my sisters and me), at one point when he was in college, he and his friend, Tom Whitlow, hit up Exit-In and there was a band that was sort-of comprised of the Broadway Show, I think, at the time, he said -comrpised of some of the members of the cast of Sugar Babies, who had a sidestage attraction of a juggler during their sets. Well, Dad and Tom were in the front row, to the side, next to the juggler when one of his bowling pins, on fire, went into the crowd and caught some sht on fire. As he and Tom took in what’d just happened, and as things started flaring up, Dad popped off his new jacket, my Grandma/his Ma, had just given him, and put out the flames.
Said his mother had to patch up a few holes when he got back home the next couple days, if I remember correctly.
-Nonetheless, Clutch didn’t come back the remaining Elephant Riders tour, on into the Jam Room tour, throughout the year of our Y2k, 1999, but hit every other major city in Tennessee, including Chattanooga, halfing the previous year, and playing with the likes of Jethro Tull, and Bob Weir & Rat Dog, Iron Maiden, and headlining for Drown.
In 2000, half the year was spent across the ocean setting up fandoms, even farther, down to Italy, and back over here, as close as The Bay, in Chatt., again.
It wasn’t until February 28, 2001, until Clutch played 328, again, on the Tore Up from the Floor Up tour, echnically not starting a tenure at Exit/In, to form a proper Nashville fandom (and waiting for me). Clutch began their Pure Rock Fury tour, that March, however.
Clutch played 200 concerts in 2001.

And 92 shows, in ‘02, with the likes of Dillinger Escape Plan, System of a Down, and Alabama Thunder Pussy.
It wasn’t until September 4, 2003, the papers freshman year in Murfreesboro, that Clutch began their tenure at Nashville venue, Exit/IN.
As a younger brother, it was tow-along situation spurned by the
sister’s-boyfrrend’s Sam’s Club crew, that got a tradition going: Clutch shows in Nashville.
That time in Clutch’s history, they had built enough and weren’t specifically promoting any one album, so the set that night was a scatter of songs from every album (Transnational… to PRF) and some unknown to the paper, as the paper was not as steeped, yet. But they played “Spacegrass,” and love of the live show ensued.
In hindsight, they seemingly started playing Nashville bc they’d run out of other towns in TN to take over.

The following year, they’d play Exit/IN, Dec. 12, with High On Fire, and Fu Manchu.
A lesson in karma was learned, that round, as a guy I befriended, working at Ahart’s pizza garden, on Old Fort, right next to, now, Mystic Panther Tattoo -took me and a couple of girls to the GO USA funpark WaffleHouse (right next to it), and we dined-and-dashed. I mean, to the extent the waiter was chasing us out of the building as I drove away looking back at him (Madison left him a five, though), Dec. 11, 2004.
The following night, I rallied at my sister and her boyfriends house, just off Bilbro, on Monroe,sitting in my normal chair in their living room, pre-gaming, until we left.
Got to Exit/In that night to find my drivers license missing, somehow, so I couldn’t get into the Clutch show, that night.
The ticket had cost $24 dollars, back in ‘04 money, as did the bill we skipped out on the night before.
The win was, Jerry’s buddy, Dean, whose girlfriend didn’t particularly wasn’t interested in staying the show, and is a very pretty blonde girl, took me across the street to the little burger/pizza shop, at the time, and we drank beer.
Got back and found my license in the chair.
Come to think of it, I saw that guy I befriended, back then, on a bike on Lokey, the other day, thought about how he was, noticed he had a goatee, then for some reason, I left a similar goatee on, shaving my face, a couple days later and got arrested for domestic assault, that night.
Clutch, on the other hand, utilized what Mr. Vikrees was mentinoing, playing more at Exit-In, over the course of their future, while more of my sister’s friends taught me Zippo tricks waiting in line, helped me go through my first bashful attempts at music journalism, working at the MTSU newspaper, Sidelines, etc…
In 2005, Clutch hit Sounds of The UnderGround tour, with everyone who is anyone, including GWAR, and Exit/In, Nov. 12, 2005.

-The ol’ City Hall venue, April 29, with Kamchatka, and The Cannery Balllroom, Oct 1, with The Sword, Graveyard, and Never Got Caught; Sept. 23, 2009, at Cannery; their first Australia stretch in 2010, and their first Bonnaroo Music Festival, in Manchester, for four days; March 6, 2011, at the other side of Cannery, Mercy Lounge, and their first HellFest, Junes 17-19, in Clisson, France; March 9, 2013, at Marathon Music Works; Oct. 6, 2015, at Marathon; Dec. 16, 2016, at Marthon; Feburary 21, 2019, at Marathon, and Clarksville! Sept. 27, 2019 at O’Connor’s Irish Pub; Sept. 24, 2022, at Marathon (with J.D. Pinkus); July 31, 2023, at The Ryman Auditorium (No Stars Above tour); May 9, 2024, in Pelham, at The Caverns; out in the ocean for Headbanger’s Boat on the Norwegian Jewel, as well as in a cave (The Caverns, Pelham, June 22) 2025; and an upcoming ‘nother go-around, in Australia, 2027
(if there’s a skip year, they played another city in TN, or COVID).
Clutch’s Ryman and Cavers shows were pretty sweet, too, finding fandoms not only at the upper-echelons of Nashville venues, finally, but underneath the ground, in southern Middle Tennssee, with the bluegrass folks.

With Clutch finally making made their first appearance at Nashville’s historically country/gospel venue, Ryman Auditorium, as the Ryman began booking more comedy shows (with their first ever technically-a-residency, John Mulaney’s rehab tour appearances, August 2022), as well as harder rock shows, and alternative rock shows, ultimately grandfathering metal shows in, over the course of the last two years – last year, especially- to metal shows, as well, so you get stuff like metal shows, and punk shows, and rock shows, so you’ll be with the ability to see Pavement, and bands like Clutch, with their openers Red Fang, seemingly long-game help Clutch not only bridge the boundaries and fandoms of the community traditionalist area-Country Western, Gospel, and Bluegrass, but moving up, venue-wise, in Music City. -Which was a very Metal show in a very Gospel tabernacle, July 31, 2023. 

B.E.Harmon Youtube channel playlist: Clutch in a Cave😊 -The Caverns, Pelham, TN, June 22, 2025 – YouTube

The Crying Game, w/ Aly Dellinger [Mom and Dad broke up]

Through odds and sods of one of the sickest stage shows this town has recently seen, the ups and downs of arcing trans, prog. rock, metal quintet Flummox, with only offshoot iterations left of a band that initially brought together the Murfreesboro community, trans communty, and the mental health community -as well as the nation, coast to coast. Flummox utilized the intelligence needed to explore and conceptualize processing what’s going on in their heads, their past, and in their surroundings.
There’s a dramatic arc over the past few years of following them around, as they shared the conflict of disassembling religion to become a poster-children through sometimes satire. Prog. in the eyes of their fans from the Murfeesboro, TN scene on into the neighborhoods of Atlanta, Birmingham, Clarksville, and Nashville, scores of Dellinger’s friends, and a tremedous amount of work has gone into “being seen,” sometimes naked, on stage, maybe and killing a baby, depending on how the crowd’s into it -or which set list they spontaneously make up that day, all the while other iterations and literal theatrical aspects of Dellinger also perform Shakespeare. The Hermitage troupe even snuck in some of her minor chord-drive, metal guitar work for the songs in a Midsummer Night’s Dream, and this is all before ultimately opeing for GWAR, come October on a run with friend and fellow conceptual artists, Mac Sabbath, a Black Sabbath tribute band out of L.A. where the words to the songs and stage act are rearranged to incorporate the feel of a Sabbath show, just the famous fast food giant’s universe, in Drive thru metal.

[-Introduced us to some great bands along the way, too]

An ATL turn-and-burn:
Following Flummox’s Aly Dellinger down to ATL for a brutal metal lineup at The Star Bar (Star Community Bar, 437 Moreland Ave.), an introductory into Flummox live shows after [missing] her 30th birthday party at Graveyard Gallery, shortly before, “Andromeda Productions Presents…” either Among the Beasts, or Sight of Theia, some amalgamated acts for December 1, 2023.

The next closest show played was in introduction to Mariah Schneider’s band, Slider, during a mashup lineup of Flummox’s metalurgic shnanigans with Slider’s alt. rock bordering shoegaze, May 30, 2024, at psuedo video store rental and publication venue, Nashville’s DRKMTTR, located at 1111 Dickerson Pike., 37207. Slider would become the dead bodies from which Dellinger’s future Tuff Softies would be built, and metalized.

Lawnchair Youth, Birmingham:

:30, “Fifth Alley” recording:
F&P: Hello, Aly. How are you?
Aly: Doing good. How are you? (sweet voice)
F&P: My name is Bryce. I’m with Folk & Proper, and also the Garrison [Cove] Kroger (her eyes brighten up a little), and, uh, just following you around for a

while.
Aly: Oh, nice! (laughs)
F&P: [taking] in live shows / seeing how things come together, catching you guys […] this time last year in ATL, and yeah, … [started talking about Mac Sabbath article done for the pulse, years ago; the first attempt at concept journalism] Ten years later, you guys are going on tour with them. Was just gonna ask you all how its going with Mac Sabbath.
Aly: Yeah, totally. Um, you wanna do an interview afterwards?
-Opening band subhymnal, at Birmingham’s Lawn Chair Youth: “12:00, “We’re Subhymnal. Thank you guys for coming out. Despite all the football things happening, we really love every single one of you…. I’m just gonna do it,” subhymnal, soft-screamo, avant guard guitar chime, fuzz, and reverb duo said.
Aly: what’s your name again?
F&P: Bryce.
Aly: Bryce. Aly.
F&P: Nice to finally formally meet you.
Aly: yeah (upspeak)
F&P: It’s pretty cool, and you guys have some sick music.
I’m trying to keep up and get the lyrics. Now that you guys have recorded and doing videos, and stuff, and I can see your lips, and stuff, it’s a little easier to catch the lyrics.
ALy: Yeah. I’m pretty sure a lot of our lyrics are on the bandcamp, and stuff, too.
Bryce, apparently laying it on thick that night: -Awesome. I appreciate it.

-after show (show on B.E.Harmon Youtube chan) F&P: Thus, you…(There’s a child screaming in the background, the whole time, tiring themselves out. Probably 5 or 6, stoked to hear metal screams. The whole time. Metal af. We’re in the office of LCY Media, in the back)
F&P: I don’t know if the venues about to clear out. If you guys are heading back to Murfreesboro, tonight, and want to get the sht out of here, I can catch you later. That’s fine.
[note: For someone who has control of her band, for years, then someone comes along and puts in some work, suddenly, you can tell the reasons, but they do love each other].
Aly: We are heading back to Murfreesboro from here, but I think we can linger for a bit and take some questions. It’s not a problem. -They’re done with us, so I think me and Max the are the only ones that’s gonna be… Unless you want to get all of us.
Max: We’re usually the ones that talk (Max laughs)
F&P: Word. You guys been doing interviews lately?
Aly: I’m gonna close the door so we don’t get the backing vocal (laughs).
Chase comes in.
Alan and Jesse stay outside.
Max: Yeah, they’re fine. They don’t say much.
F&P: I’m putting this scene article togther for Folk & Proper […] and you guys are in a subsection of it that tours out. We’ve got the scene in Murfressboro -people who come in and out- and then there are the always […] I’m curious if you have any particular reasons why you go out? If it’s opportunistic, such as Mac Sabbath comes along? I’ve noticed that you guys will [stay] in and do DrkMttr, but you’re mostly spreading a lot farther out than most bands that are being written about in [these] article[s].
Aly: Right.
F&P: Thus, you guys are the ones going out with what would be the Murfreesboro [message], so is there an intetion with it?
Aly: Well, I mean, I guess the only intention really is to “further our conquest” [Aly in a middle earth accent] (laughs). I mean, we were a local band for a very long time – I mean, we still are, y’know, a Murfressboro/Nashville band. Before, we probably existed for five or six years, before we actuallystarted touring, and then y’know Covid started happening, and all that, and once some of the mandates had been lifted, and so forth, we were like, ‘okay, lets just get in a van and let’s go,’ And you know, at first it was just kinda like, roughly 300 mile radius. We just started branching out further and further. We got with Tone Deaf touring, so -we don’t -cause, like- we, we’re signed to Needlejuice Records, and we do sell a lot of records out towards the West Coast, and that sort of thing, [but] we’ve been slowly trying to make our way that way each time. And we also do pretty well on the East Coast, and so forth, so really its just a matter of us wanting to grow and perform in different areas, because Murfreesboro and Nashville, they -everybody already knows whats around there, for the most part. We like to obviously pop in and do shows at home, y’know, when it works out, and everything, but we don’t want to oversaturate ourselves, either.
F&P [possum = being queer, the next little bit]: The venting situation -you guys have [a] subtle message […] Who’s more receptive? Going out [of town], or inside [town]? Is it all the same? Does that even matter? Cause it’s all just one hell of a show.
Aly: You mean, like, who’s more receptive, like the local scene, or out … Cause, usually -since we’ve been around so long- usually we can throw together a show really quickly that’ll go really well in the Nashville scene, even if there’s not a whole lot of promo, but like, whenever we do anyting outside of our little radius -the bordering states, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, we do pretty decent- but we’ve played random little spots, here and there -holes in the wall- with sometimes two or three people that’re really into it- and sometimes we accidentaly play something to a crowd of college kids [with], y’know, a hundred of them there, and turning a bunch of people, I guess.
Aly: I would say locally, it’s just different. […] Locally, they already kinda know our whole shtick, and we’re usually testing our stuff on them. Like, we were doing the possum bit in Murfreesboro and Nashville several, several years before we took it on the road, y’know.
F&P: Recently, you’ve either birthed, or aborted a possum on stage?Aly: Birthed (laughs). The abortions another act.
F&P:I didn’t know how people would take the possum situation […] it gives the good Flummox feel.

Aly: Well, we never play the same set twice, and we always have different antics. Like, this is like -possum is just one of things we could have done tonight, because we have songs, if I feel like Black Phillip, y’know I dawn the goat mask, and I -that’s the abortion one- where I kill a baby onstage, and pull gummie worms out. We actually did that last time we were here in Birmingham. And that’s one thing, going forward. We’re taking a few months, specifically, to hone a new stage show, add newer elements and shenanigans to it that -cause, again, […] we’ve done the possum thing and the baby thing for years, but a lot of people have never seen us do it, obviously, outside of a certain perameter. At the same time, we’re bored with it. So, we are always trying to come up with ways of making things a little more interesting and a little bit different. I mean, the possum thing is even a little bit different, like, every single night we’ve done it. It has a lot of the same [beats?], so we know where we’re going with it, but this past year, we even changed the monlogue, itself, and all kinds of stuff. We’re always tring to make the show -even if you’ve seen us a bunch of times- like, we want to make sure you’re seeing something you’ve never seen before whenever you see us.
F&P: Haven’t done a review for a Flummox album yet, for The Pulse, but we’ll do it -we’ve got a list. But, I wouldn’t know when the last album went out before the one you just recorded, or doing…?
Max and Alym tgh: Yeah, we just finished -Aly: we literally just finished mixing it, like on the road.
F&P: Good on you. I know that shts hard juggling all that stuff.
Aly, (pointing to guitarists Max Mobarry and Chase McCutcheon): Mostly these two…
Max: Yeah. The Hog and the Fox… A big reason we’re revamping the stage show is to perform this album we’re about to put out. It’s definitely a situation where we get -like you were saying, with Murfreesboro and Nashville-surrounding- it definitelybecomes more of a, like, lets take what we’ve got and kinda figure out how to make it better, and the further out we go, it becomes more like, ‘okay, what’s the best of what we have that we can show the people that haven’t seen us?’ Especially because we never play the same set order -we havent’ ever. There’s always something new. But also, just introducing new bits and seeing how they go over in different parts of the world -or going, ‘we were in a certain radium of this town, maybe, a year ago. Let’s look at what we played and play a different set this time,’ so they don’t come back and go, ‘well, they played this song and this song… I remember this one…’ We’re very cognizant as to not repeat ourselves. And give people, like truly a different performance as possible.
Aly: That’s part of the whole never-playing-the-same-set-twice. We keep track of every single set list we’ve ever done. So, it’s like she said, last time we played Birmingham, we did “Black Phillip,” where I killed a baby, and, of course, there’s always gonna be an overlap. Like there’re some songs that’s gonna be the same, but most of the time its completely different, if we can make it work that way. Even with this one, we were like, ‘well, we played this one last time, so lets do possum tonight,’ y’know?
Max: Or, we have a particular amount of listeners in one spot who like this one song, so we should do that one
Aly: Or…
Max: …for those folks
Aly: Or like, because we play with all kinds of different bands -sometimes its a bunch of, like, metal bands, so we’ll play mostly our metal material.
Max: Or not!
Aly, laughs: Yeah, just to fck with them! Which we’ve done…
Max: We’ve done that. Like, we played metal fests where we’re all like, ‘alright, lets just do something really out there, and not necessarily try to cater to the crowd. -Not to be obstenant. Simply to be like, ‘okay, well, you’ve got us here. You’ve seen us do something like metal before. We’re gonna do something off the wall, and that -I mean, we don’t make enemies. People usually walk away from the show and go ‘I respect what just happened.’ [note, their relationship: Max being the glue to a seemingly unhinged nature, with Aly’s sporadicism. Aly stated, going to the Les Claypool, Caverns show (and publicly, online, when Max left the band), that those two had been together for the last three years, writing in the same bed, tgh].
Max: …Enough if -I don’t know if they like the music, or not- I think people see the live show, and at the very least go…
Aly and Max, together: “That was something,”
Aly: Cause that’s the thing, even if you don’t really vibe with our music, necessarily, you’ll never forget our show, y’know? Even if its just like, ‘well, that fckn band that came and rolled around dressed like a possum…’
Max: When they did that song from Star Wars, Episode 6!
Aly: (laughs)
[…] Max: Yeah, yeah, it’s like, just here ya go. The little things, y’know. Little tags of things that get people to go, this is neat.
Aly: That’s another part of the whole setlist thing, we’ve learned a bunch of random covers just to keep things fresh, y’know?
Max: Yeah, we have an extensive repertoire, as well.
F&P: Y’all’s music caught me first because of the whole Frank Zappa arpeggiator thing. I noticed you have skill on bass, and with that, you just have [that] giant fret spread you run your scales on [to] apply to your taste -And have these people with you who are [just as] awesome. The technicalities and sophistications of y’all’s compositions is getting up there, as well. I’m bringing up Frank Zappa because he can jump around like that, five or six styles in one song, and create a stage album.
Aly: Yeah.
F&P: I guess that’s the tiring aspect of it, but it more appears you’re enjoying the evolution of it, I guess.
Max: Yeah.
F&P: Touring is part of the blood of it, and everything, and much like Mac Sabbath, talking about their costumes -I’ve talked with them years ago- they’ll be like, ‘yeah, we’ll be in the van some nights and just put them on. We haven’t washed them in so long, and get up there and do the show. It’s all part of the love of it. But you don’t have too many things to smell bad, besides the inside of the possum[mask]. I imagine that’s not too terribly bad.
Max: Not yet.
Aly: Not yet.
Max: Not until we come up with other stupid sht.
Aly: -Because it’s, like you said, we are trying to evolve. It’s never a situation where we come up with a bit, first. With the possum, its not like ‘what if we do a song where I dress like a possum,’ and do stupid shit. It started off like you would any other song. You write a song and it’s about opossums… it’s really like […] When we wrote this upcoming album, even, we wrote these songs. Some are a little lengthier than the others, and some of them are pretty short. And we’re trying to figure what kind of theatrics to do with some of the newer ones, and with one of the newer ones, for instance -we did it last night- it’s called “Long Pork,”- and midway through the song, the other four members of the band put on pig masks and act out the various stages of grief where they try to get stuff from them, I guess is the best way I can put it.
F&P: This is last night?
Aly: This is last night, yeah.
F&P: Are you just doing little pick pockets, or something?
little pick pockets, or something?
Max: yeah, we grovel…
Chase: I got a chapstick tube, last night. That was also pretty cool
Aly: That’s what that was! I saw that.
Max: So far, its been nice things. So, yes, that’s become a quick favorite. That’s a pivotal one.
Chase: I’m waiting for someone to give us, like, a joint, or something.
Max: I know.
Aly: People handed us drugs, for sure. Just not in the pig pen.
Aly: -So, we’re always trying to come up with different music, first. That’s always the new thing. Like, there’s this song on the new album called “Coyote Gospel,” that’s about me being raised in the South -y’know, Southern Baptist- growing up in the Christian church, and all that stuff. In the Christian, private school. And, y’know, deconstructing my faith, ended up being this queer weirdo in a band…
Max: A queer-do.Aly: A queer-do.
Aly: The whole song is started off, basically, like it’s a worship servce. It’s very much that sort of vibe. So, we try to, like (laughs to self), make it seem like a youth group, sort of, at first, and then lead it into our batshit, insane craziness, y’know.

F&P: Is that where you got your training, you played music at the church?
Aly: No, actually, I did play in the church band, a little bit, but I didn’t really get serious into music until I was like, I guess probably, like 12 or 13, when I picked up bass, and I got really wrapped up in Geezer Butler, and Trevor Dunn from Mr. Bungle. Obviously those Zappa bass player[s]. Les Claypool, and stuff. And I just kinda like learned a lot of stuff that they did. And then I obviously, then on, tried to expand my musical theory knowledge, especially when I’m in a band with Max and Chase and Jesse. They’re like musical theory nut jobs (laughs). So we’re constantly -at least I’m- trying to expand on my own abilities, as well, as musical ambitions, I guess.
F&P: Do you think you’re James Brown-y, at all, hard on his band. And you guys […] sound clear, and all that. I didn’t know if you -becasue I’ve seen you on stage before, and if there’s an off clink, or somehthing like that, and you’ll mention it, ‘okay, well, that was that.’ That’s evident like when you rehease, you have things mapped out.
Max: Yeah. We ultimately -becuase of the ever changing nature of the set list, it definitely becomes soebody’ll throw a goofy little lick in there, and then we’ll all have to play off it, all of a sudden.
Aly: It’s definitely not like a James Brown situatin…
F&P: Where somebody gets fined for a different clank?
Aly: Yeah, it’s usually get laughed off unless its something, like, ridiculous, which doesn’t happen that often.
Max: It’s too much of a group situation, frankly, for it to be anything other than, ‘oh well,’ did the show -or did that sequence- go awkardly? It’s really just more like, ‘okay.’ These songs don’t really develop what they are until we play them together. And then the live shows will be how the songs interact between one another. That’s[another] one of the cool parts about the setlists, is ‘what if this song just kind of moles into this new one?’ We could easily just end a song and like […] now we’re going to do this next song. Go. Most of our sets are much more organic than that.
Max: We blend the songs a lot.
Max: We have to feel things out because they change all the time, sometimes someone doesn’t leave spots to tune (laughs), or to do certain things, and we have to feel it through. -Do we all know what the next song is, because we just figured it out an hour ago (Aly laughs).
Max: We change the set list at the show!
Aly: On Stage!
Max: Not just to save time. It’s ‘this is just this kind of show.’ ‘Now, we’re gonna do like a funk metal song, or an extreme metal song. Or ‘this bit, I don’t feel like being a fckn pig, right now…’
Aly: Somebody might say that they like a band or a movie that we happen to know a cover of, so we’ll throw that in there. -‘Hey, do you remember the Little Mermaid song, real quick?
Max: In the middle of another song.
Aly: It really depends, and there’s no need to be a James Brown, or a Frank Zappa about it, because everybody really does their homework, and its loose. Yes, we’re all playing really technical things, but if it becomes -everyone does there homework to get these huge technical compositions, and then we come together, and like, do whatever. And not to mention its not a situation where one person writes the music a certain way. It’s very much a group effort in that regard, as well. Sure, you will have -sometimes I’ll come up with an ararngement on my guitar, and show it to the band, and then they’ll put their flavor to it, and other times, maybe its Max, or Jess, [that] has a piece of something they put together, and then we elaborate on it, so it’s definitely not necessarily ‘yeah, I’m the original member of the band, cause I’m the one that’s been around doing it the longest,’ or ‘I’m the face,’ or whatever, but like, in reality, it’s very much like, if it weren’t these five people doing it, it would be a completely different scenario; completely different band, in a lot of ways. Even some of the songs we played tonight were before anybody else was in the band, much less…. But a lot of them are so new, and that’s my whole thing, is I like to, no matter what version of the band that I’m doing, or whatever band I’m in, outside of Flummox, I like to be in a band that utilizes the skills of the musicians, rather than making them conform to whatever sheet music, or whatever there is that exists…
Max: Which there is some that exists! Since I joined the band -and I don’t know exactly how it was done prior to my joining the band…
Aly: Drew.
Max: -I’m getting there. When I joined the band -I have perfect pitch. Well, actually multiple of us in the band have perfect pitch- we -I do a lot of transcription work, for hire, and I got guitar pro, and like writing stuff out- and when, not only am I pretty proficient at it, but it is also like a tool when we go to record, to have, like -because it can double as -we can import the tabs into the daw, in many cases.
I joined the band a few years ago -I’m the newest member- I do a lot of ‘all right, we’re working on a song, and I go into a transcription software, and I literally write out how we’ve been playing it, up to that point in time. And then we’ll go and jam it, and at some point, I’ll go back home and ‘I know we did that part different,’ and put the time signature change, whatever. And that’s a lot of how this latest album we are making kind of came about, was songs -some of which already existed- but also I would ‘it’d be a good point of reference,’ so we wouldn’t have to be like, ‘what did I play last time?’ Or I want to write some intricate part that I want to play with you on the guitar that is gonna be way easier to iron out if I just say I wrote it like this -and even so, it’s not like, you have to play it like this. It’s very much like I said earlier, when we get into the room earlier is when the songs become what they are. But yes it’s definitely become a cool thing for the group to have, like scores. For the new album, we have strings, and multiple different players, and I wrote out sheet music for them, like treble clef sort of thing..
F&P: How are you guys pulling the stings off?
Max: Very carefully (Aly laughs).
Max: We do have to arrange because, obviously, there is sax, and players that we can’t -y’know we have to do different cambres.
Chase: There’s a saxophone solo in “Trans Girls Need Guns,” for example, Max just plays the solo, live.
Max: I just play a guitar solo. Y’know stuff like that.
In some instances it’s like orchestrating -I’ll put on a special petal that gives it a higher octave and I’ll play, like, not what I play on guitar on the ablum, but like something, ‘oh right, this part needs to be represented more, because its so prevalent. Sometimes the violin parts will be more to the color of the song than just my rhythm guitar part, so then I change it to what I’m playing live to represent that. It’s just never gonna be the same. If anything, the versions you here on these records is just a testament to our studio meddling, than how -they’re already so different. We recorded a lot of this music we’re working on, like, a year/year-and-a-half ago, and we’ve been playing these songs for way longer,
Aly: Yeah.
Max: So they’re even different, now.
Max: Earlier we did a video here for one of the single for the album. Having to play along with the studio version was like, eh. We haven’t played it this slow in a long time.
Aly, laughs: Yeah.
Max: but it’s just evolved so much we’ve played it six or seven dozen times since we went to the studio to record it. And we played it a couple dozen times before that.
The music will always be different, which is a cool thing. I think about this.
F&P: [Chase] was saying you guys showed up earlier today to do a video. Is that the one you’re talking about?
Aly: Yeah; Max: The LCY Uncut, for the new singles. The title track, Southern Progress. That’ll be coming out, probably next week
F&P: These guys have been doing those videos for a couple years?
Aly and Max: Oh, yeah.
Max: I’m pumped. I’m excited to see it come out.
F&P: It’s like an instagram post, or an actual whole thing.
Aly: It’s like on Youtube, and stuff like that, and all the stuff,Max: we did the whole tune. It was a good time. I’m excited for people to see Us. Because that’s the big thing, is we Re-Flummoxed, which is still, I guess, our newest album, until this is out. Like, I had just joined. I only helped mix it, and a lot of that material was written prior to many of us being in the band, so this record we’re about to put out feels like the first instance of this group of people doing a thing together. It’s like, these personalities. It’s not like, Alyson and her old guitar player. Not Alyson and this lineup. It’s like, Alyson is the mouth piece for this five piece, five-headed hydra, that is this weird, progressive outfit even though some of us don’t like to use the word progressive.. I don’ really are, but Prog nerds, y’know…

Aly: It’s Prog…
Max: Prog nerds are a little…
Aly: Progressive is fine.
Max: Yeah. I run with the prog nerds. They can be a little insufferable, and that’s -I am one of them, I know. But, yeah, there is definitely the uniformity to the five of us that has been captured that is nice. It’s nice to have a flummox album coming out that sounds like the band that made it.
F&P: An amalgamation of all the tedium that you’re going through, and all the hard work you guys are putting together.
Max: It was worth it, but I think we’re all ready to put if to bed, too. We got other things to do. 2025 is going to be interesting.
Aly: We’ve got more songs to write (laughs)
Max: Yeah, we got ideas.
F&P: As things settle in this progressin, are you guys going to start in March [of next year?] May? January, you’re gonna get itchy to get back out?
Max: Yeah, probably gonna be really putting a stage show together, byt then. We’re gonna take a break for the holidays, and I think the goal when we come back is to be, like -we’re gonna kinda of keep to ourselves in the early months of next year, and just feel things out, but I think the goal is…
-Aly: April.
Max: Well, the record comes out in April, and from then on we’ll be probably doing some album release concerts, but if it all pans out, as such. We would like to play this record.[–You can feel the excitement for control shifting, and the want to hold onto it in this dynamic. From the other perspective, the excitement to be getting into and past some stuff from the past that kept… Flummox evoloved right before my ears and eyes in this interview, and truly defined ‘progressive’ in conversation.
Max: It’s something we really haven’t made a point to do, before, but I love doing the entire record-kinda-live show, and it gives us an excuse to actually format our show around something instead of being just like -again, the ever-changing set list, it makes it fun, but it’ll be nice to be like, ‘all right, this songs gonna go into this song, and then we’ll kinda be able to pace outselves in a better way.
Aly: It’ll be different for us to do, like, the entire record, and only for like select shows, because we still gotta play the “Trans Girls Need Guns,” and that sort of thing.
Max: Yeah, its definitely not like, next year we just play the album…
Aly: yeah, we don’t….
Max: -Because we’ve only been playing those songs for two- three years.
Aly: So, like, we’re definitely tring to play a few shows where its just us doing our album and then, that’ll probably start in April, when the record comes out, and then we’re probably gonna start doing a sht-ton of touring, afterwards, probably starting in May and June, and so forth.
F&P: Well, I’ve got good footage. Thanks for letting me record all night, tonight.
Flummox: Of course. -Yeah, absolutely. -It’s no big deal (laughs).
F&P: I would record the whole damn show…
Max: As long as I get to see it.
F&P: …but its such a good stage show, it’s never hiccup-y. Every now and again you’ll get like a Thank you, but then its camera right back up, again. Don’t have time to do antying before I have to hold the camera back up.
Aly: Yeah they can’t tune. Or so I’m told.
Chase: I will say, it is a good thing that we go so fast between songs, because, [for] a living, for those that don’t know, I’m a sound engineer. I’ve worked withhundreds of bands, at this point, doing live, and the ones that always win the crowds over the most, don’t stop. Or, they’ll stop for a second, and say, ‘Oh, thank you,’ blahblahblah, versus, ‘oh, this song is called ‘this.’ You just keep that flow going and it keeps that energy, just, that energy just transfers all over the room. There’s something to that, for sure.
Max: Totally.
F&P:Ive got a shtton of it. Just gotta edit through it, and process.
Max: I can’t wait to see. I’m a collector of all the Flummox footage, so I’m looking forward to seeing.
Aly: We try to have an archive, and everything, if we do.
F&P, to Aly: It’s trippy covering you every now and again. At first, I’d have no idea what you were doing or where you were going, so if I was trying to set up a shot, you would go off screen -or, I wouldn’t be able to keep up. -at multiple shows (laughs).
Aly: I left my wireless at home, so (laughs) I didn’t go around as much, tonight.
F&P: You were doing a show [DrkMttr], the other night, and you were hanging outside like Angus Young used to at CBGB. He’d be rocking out, and the venues small enough, and the cord long enough, for him to step outside and try to get people in.
Aly: That’s what you gotta do. Sometimes the wireless helps. Sometimes I will just run out where people are smoking cigarettes and be like, ‘hey! You motherckrs, get your ass inside.’ And then they’re just like, ‘uhhhhh….’
Max: ‘Was that the bass player?!’
Aly: Yeah (laughs)
Flummox’s Southern Progress can be found on their bancamp page.
Alyson Dellinger can
Chase McCutcheon has taken over sound in Nashville, as a whole, from Protomen shows at Marathon, to Nissan Stadium, but Chase McCutcheon’s Chaser Audio can be found in Pulse reviews of past, such as Marlena Minneci.
Alyson’s bands Tuff Softies , can be found online, and now, Alyson Anomaly, to tour with Mac Sabbath, some opeing for GWAR, this October.
They can all be found on socials.

Aye Mammoth: staples for the annals

With enough material until 2030, along with fluctuating bassists, project to project, parable-heavy, and back to the basics, Aye Mammoth, carries on their forever and staple status as one of Murfreesboro’s long-running Metal acts releasing year-to-year EP’s. 2026’s Universe, carries the torch that’s fueled and relit every year in Murfreesboro’s ongoing and oscillating Punk/Metal scene.

With frontman, Micah Loyed, drummer Phil Stem, and original bassist, Brian Williams, Aye Mammoth’s are of a more stern, parable-heavy dissent, controlling when and what they put out based on it, discussing our view from where we stand in such vastness, up into the Universe in which they speak, over time (with Stem’s backing vocals?) Surely there’s a cool explanation of the oscillating, fading vocal effects ending to Aye Mammoth’s wholly, latest/2026 parabolic, anti-doom homage in Iommi and Geezer, heavy D-fashion, but it sounds like John McTiernan’s Predator’s clicking vocals in the jungle, perhaps foreshadowing the vantage point for next year’s offering to the annals of Murfreesboro always-metal, released January 16, 2026. [MAYBE To end?]

Much like the scene rivals itself with indie rock coming in from new generations of MTSU kids to replace the natural oscillation of natural-occurring, local metal, until the indie kids phase out, Micah Loyed, Phil Stem, with their original bassist from 2013, this round, have consistently re-found the loop and oscillation, making themselves Murfreesboro’s true staple of such a natural, as well as traditional, local art.

Music | Aye Mammoth

“Connected to the highest, purest realm of the sky,” the opening Tool-esque, “Empyreum,” jumps into lead vocalist Micah Loyed’s somewhat Layne Staley-nasaled, but metal’d pitch lyricizing the divine genesis of all and is, calling out in homage to the Universe, itself, before Loyed’s guitar work/rhythm thrash starts fckn tap-sherdding faces, bringing life, in ascending D scale, to Aye Mammoth’s Universe.

“Spawn from nothingness
Deep interstellar space
Collapsing gravity
Subluminary race
Breach the abstract
Maw of emptiness
Empyrean fire light
The divine genesis
Incorporeal mass
Protoplanetary disk
Molecular clouds spin
Atoms burn to exist.”

But from which an organism lives, grows, and nourishes, “Aetherium,” takes it down into a groovier notch with emphasis on original Aye bassist, Brian Williams (2013, 2026) thumping around under Loyed’s opening taps, and god-knows-which of the sixty crash cymbals Phil Stem carries us, and around with him, recognizing the existence of luminiferous celestialim and planet awakening, at this point in the album. There are some distant tap bell chime guitar effects in bridge, as well as a Roger Waters scream from Live at Pompeii, adding to the starriness of such a brutal respect and admiration.

“Entity bear the world soul
Divine cognition’s cerebral
Beyond the light and shade
Planet awakening
With connecting energy
An otherworldly reckoning
Permeate the bleed through, intangible
Luminiferous celestial”

“Elemetare,” a fun one, more like anti-doom metal for life and earth, with one of the sickest instrumental bridge and song outro portions of the album can actually exist as the bridge to such a short-numbered, or shortly-tracked EP, as if the whole album were one long song, itself, as Aye lyricizes of our tiny blue dot’s elemetal nature.

“Promethean gift
Rising to the sky
Bestowing breath
Atmosphere open wide
Elemental nature
Universe holds sway
Life can flow or crash
Take any given shape
Heaviest element
Matter of gravest weight”

“Great and Lesser Lights,” as if Arena metaling out before Micah’s vocals bring us back to the points at hand and heavens -in almost pop-metal (not nu, but like a poppy-sounding metal), forging the primordial and molding the corporeal.

“Forge primordial
In the mortal coil
Mold corporeal
Part water and soil
From formless nights to star lit sky
Illuminated by great and lesser lights
Shape flesh and bone
Seeds of life are sown
Upon earth and stone
Behold the unknown.”

Behold the unknown, as Aye Mammoth’s Universe in the liveliest and most necessary sense in order for us to exist, above and beyond, cheering, in order to exist, the atoms from which we exist.

“BURN!”

Again, they’ve got material ready to record up until 2030, according to frontman Micah Loyed and drummer Phil Stem, either at CXR, when discussing they use the sound of machine press printers to open a couple of albums ago, or at The Boro, when catching them outside of a set with former bassist, PJ & The Bear’s PatrickJohnson.

Since then, “[it’s been] Aaaron Belknap [Micah’s neighbor]. He left middle of last year before tracking Universe started. [Micah] covered bass on Hellfire, but Brian Williams, [Aye Mammoth’s] original bass player, is on Universe.

Universe can be found on Aye Mammoth’s bandcamp page, Universe | Aye Mammoth, as well as the rest of their albums, up to date, at Music | Aye Mammoth.

The first-responding, AI section that pops up at the top when searching Google was used when looking up the definitions for the titles of the first two songs.

B. E. Harmon – YouTube

(Eye on the Sky, Folk & Proper Honorable Mention, for being another area, long-game Metal band, just [out of Clarksville? Maybe Murf]. Writes albums about green moon men coming down, taking over Earth, and doing some sick sht.
Music | Eye On The Sky).