Cincinnati artists delivered an unforgettable year of music, and this playlist captures some of the tracks that defined 2025. There’s no ranking here — just a curated flow of songs that showcase the range, creativity and spirit of the city’s ever-evolving music community.

These are the sounds you heard in local record stores, in venues across the city and in headphones everywhere. From our musicians to you: crank it up and carry these songs with you into 2026.

“Prince” by Maura Weaver

Maura Weaver’s second solo record was released in September, and like her solo debut, I Was Due for a Heartbreak from 2023, Strange Devotion features her striking songwriting and voice backed by a cast of talented friends forming a refreshingly varied and dynamic collection. “Prince” is as catchy as anything else you’ll hear this year with a chorus so sugar-sweet and infectious that you’ll keep going back for more pure pop bliss. The record is great all the way through, with touches of country and western, pop experimentation and the directness of some of the great singer-songwriters, all with a fearlessness and attitude of punk ethos. The album was also the first local release picked to explore for the inaugural CityBeat Music Club in November, where we discussed the record with Weaver before she gave an intimate performance of songs from the album.

“Afraid of Guns” by Motorbike

Local supergroup Motorbike released Kick It Over on Feel It Records this past March. The album continues where their 2023 debut left off, featuring driving and revved-up blasts of power that finds a perfect combination of classic guitar rock and in-your-face punk like this track that is pure, raw rock and roll, as potent as it should be.

“Over My Head” by Brianna Kelly

Local artist Brianna Kelly released a stellar collection of songs featuring beautiful and orchestrated arrangements entitled Cloud of Nothingness in November. The record features Kelly’s tender and compelling songs put together, often refreshingly, free of typical structure and featuring lush string parts and impressive instrumentation, making for a stunning piece of chamber pop.

“Hourglass” by Knotts

From Knotts’ SLAP (Silly Little Art Projects) Will Save the World EP released early in the summer, “Hourglass” is a piece of effervescent synth pop that creates an atmosphere of optimism. Another Knotts release from earlier this year, “Springtime,” was featured in CityBeat’s Summer Playlist in the Summer Guide issue in June, and KNOTTS, aka Adalia Powell-Boehne, also appeared on the cover for the Music Roundup issue later in July. If “Hourglass” is about a moment, Knotts seems to be having one and seizing it.

“Hallelujah 2026” by Turich Benjy

This unhinged track off hip-hop artist Turich Benjy’s May release from earlier this year, When Life is Divine, features a laidback groove acting as a foundation for Benjy’s singular, rapid-fire vocals featuring biblical references. The fearless and frenetic touches in the song, like much of his work, sets it apart.

“Dog” by Mol Sullivan

Released at the end of summer, “Dog” features all the hallmarks of what make local singer-songwriter Mol Sullivan stand out. Her lush arrangements, delicate but powerful voice and singular touch make this ode to finding a true friend and saving each other a thing of beauty.

“If You Say So” by Isabelle Helle and Hell’s Bells

This catchy, fuzzed-out garage pop nugget clocks in at just under 2 minutes, but does the job just fine. Isabelle Helle and Hell’s Bells released Black Cat Rodeo over the summer with a huge release show at Northside Tavern, featuring Motorbike and The Harlequins to celebrate the occasion. There are plenty more songs off the album that are as infectious and hard-hitting as “If You Say So.”

“The InFluencers” by Bootsy Collins (feat. Snoop Dogg, Fantaazma, Dave Stewart and Wiz Khalifa)

Funk legend and Cincinnati’s favorite son Bootsy Collins made a little extra noise this year, releasing his newest full-length record, Album of the Year #1 Funkateer, that encapsulates his aim of creating an atmosphere of fun and collaboration. This track is a perfect example of that exuberance. “The InFluencers” features Snoop Dogg throwing in a Cincinnati mention, a verse from Wiz Khalifa and contributions from the Eurhythmics’ Dave Stewart and dynamic vocalist Fantaazma — all helping Bootsy rev up the funk to 11 and bring it on home.

“Swans” by Billy Fortune

Billy Fortune is one of the newest (and youngest) artists on this list. Fortune also plays traditional bluegrass with his group the Billy Fortune Unit and continues some other fine traditions in his solo work as exemplified in this song, the title track from his album Swans released in October. “Swans” pulls from the traditions of folk music, classic singer-songwriters and lo-fi pop resulting in a melodic, sweeping ballad with a timeless touch.

“Bus” by BPA

The anticipated second edition of Cincinnati punk history compiled by writer and musician Peter Aaron, We Were Living In Cincinnati Vol. 2 (1982-1988), came out earlier this year and again featured a packed collection of Cincinnati artists who created innovative and freewheeling explorations of the fringes of rock and roll. Released as a joint effort between Chicago’s Hozac Records and local label/record store Shake It Records, the collection features standout tracks like SS-20’s “More Government Now” and “I.C.U. by The Reduced, alongside this wild art-punk mastery from 1983. We Were Living In Cincinnati Vol. 2 (1982-1988) also featuresother tracks from significant Cincinnati bands of the era, like The Auburnaires, Sluggo and The Wolverton Brothers, among over a dozen more that represent an important era of the city’s music history.

“Appendicitis” by Fruit LoOops

Experimental noise-punk band Fruit LoOops is as explosive and unhinged as ever on this track off their June release Everything is Clear to Me Now. The song is a frantic sound collage barely held together by compressed percussion, electronic squalls and effect-soaked vocals that all combine to help build the tension.

“Clown Car” by Lung

Off the duo’s fifth full-length album Swankeeper, released in May on local label Feel It Records, “Clown Car” kicks right into a frenetic pushing and pulling of rhythm and tension. Drummer Daisy Caplan and vocalist/cellist Kate Wakefield create a fun mix of dynamics with time changes, odd rhythms and altering sections that result in a layered, moody and atmospheric wall of sound.

“Static Vision” by Electric Citizen

Cincinnati’s hard-hitting psych rock favorite Electric Citizen released their latest album EC4 back in June on Italian label Heavy Psych Sounds. The band has performed all over the world, sharing stages with legends like Joan Jett & the Blackhearts and performing at major festivals. This track features soaring vocals from frontwoman Laura Dolan, alongside husband and co-band leader Ross Dolan’s fuzzed-out guitar driving the rhythm between leads that cut straight to the top of the layers of sound that includes what sounds like some nice electric organ work.

“Peace With Our Love (Queen City Sounds)” by Annie D

This huge-sounding and super catchy track is a special one from talented local multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Ann Driscoll, better known as Annie D, working in collaboration with a cast of artists and recording engineers across the city. Driscoll is backed by an all-star lineup of vocalists adding a wall of sound, including local luminaries Jess Lamb, Maya Banatwala, Sappha, Rae Fisher, Victoria Lekson, Freedom Nicole Moore, Tiffany Sullivan, Jessie Hicks, Sharon Leever, Kaitrin McCoy, Ash Roper and Hannah Simon Goldman. The track was recorded across multiple sessions with several engineers in different studios, underscoring its collaborative spirit. It includes work done at Cincinnati Public Radio’s new studio with Brian Niesz, additional recording with Aaron Madrigal at local studio The Tone Shoppe, and mixing by Mike Montgomery at Candyland — with celebrated saxophonist Zaire Trinidad Sherman engineering his own contribution.

“Patience, My Love” by Maria, etc.

Singer-songwriter Maria Keck, aka Maria, etc., released a collection of introspective and poignant songs titled Maybe Time’s Not in a Bottle Anymore in May, featuring laidback, jazzy arrangements with some of the delightfully unconventional subtleties that have made her work standout. This track features a lustre of slowly-syncopated ethereal instrumentation that feels like a cool breeze blowing over a pool of water reflecting the moon, with saxophonist Ziaire Trinidad Sherman guesting and a fadeout of a choir of children driving the song’s point home. The song’s mantra of being in the moment seems like a good way to end the playlist, not letting time go too fast, and as Keck sings, “slip into the past.”

Listen to the full playlist of songs here.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Dec. 24 print edition.

The post Cincinnati Wrapped 2025: Top 15 Songs Released by Cincinnati Artists this Year appeared first on Cincinnati CityBeat.

Celebrated local concert pianist Dr. Polina Bespalko will explore her cultural past in Projected Heritage: The Seasons/The Exhibition, a performance and multimedia exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center downtown on Thursday, Dec. 4 at 7:30 p.m.

The event explores Russian cultural heritage and folklore through a pairing of classical and contemporary art forms in a collaboration between Bespalko and visual artists Ian Hayes and Joe Humbert. 

The performance will feature Tchaikovsky’s “The Seasons,” a 12-movement exploration of each month of the year paired with Russian folk art interpreted through holographic 3D sculptures and projected images created by Hayes. The program will conclude with Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” also enhanced by Hayes’ visual designs. The press release describes it as “a culminating reflection, connecting 19th-century artistic imagination with contemporary digital storytelling.” 

Bespalko is an accomplished musician who began her career at 8 years old in her native Russia, quickly becoming a name in the classical community. She spent time as a soloist for the Moscow Philharmonic Society and has given performances in Sweden, Brazil and Italy, where she won a Gold Medal in the Rachmaninoff Concerto Competition. Bespalko made her American debut as part of the Russian-U.S. cultural music exchange where she performed in Washington D.C. and, eventually, twice as part of the 2002 Winter Olympics. 

She has since earned her Doctorate of Musical Arts and continues to perform while serving as Professor of Piano and Keyboard at Xavier University, where she also directs the Xavier University Music Series. She also teaches at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music.

Admission to the music exhibition is free but space is limited and registration is required. You can register here. 

A reception will follow the exhibition, featuring Pelmeni Boy, the Russian-style pop-up from beloved Walnut Hills restaurant The Pickled Pig, which was recently featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. Guests are encouraged to stay and enjoy the artwork and discuss the program with the performer and artist.

Projected Heritage: The Seasons/The Exhibition will take place at the CAC, located at 44 E. 6th St., Downtown, on Thursday, Dec. 4 at 7:30 p.m. More info: xavier.edu/musicseries.

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Togetherness: An Exhibition of 100 Postcards by Cincinnati-area artists Bailey Elder and Mark Neeley will open for one night only on Friday, Nov. 21 at Elliott Coffee, the cafe recently opened in the revamped 100-year-old gas station and auto garage in Dayton, Kentucky. Elder and Neeley formed the idea over coffee at Elliot Coffee and decided it would be the perfect venue, inspired by the space’s warmth and openness to community. 

Each artist made 50 hand-painted and inked postcards with a theme of “togetherness” in mind, each using their own unique style.

Elder is the former art director for independent Brooklyn record label Mexican Summer, where she used her unique color palette and sensibilities for album covers for artists like Cate Le Bon, Allah-Las and Pharoah Sanders, among others. She’s also a painter and illustrator whose work has been shown in galleries between New York and California. She has also done graphic design work in campaigns for companies like Madewell and Gap.

Neeley is an artist, animator and writer who is a regular contributor to the music and art publication Aquarium Drunkard. He recently collaborated with Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh on the 2024 short film Pure Animation for Now People, which showcases Neeley’s hands-on style — painting, inking and photographing each frame on paper to create work that carries the unmistakable weight of something made directly from head and heart to hand. His work has also been featured in the New York Times, in a collaboration with Madewell and in music videos created for artists like Michael Rault and Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats, among others.

Elder and Neeley’s work and paths share a handful of parallels, making the collaboration a natural one. The press release reads: “This exhibition is a collaboration that came together via two artists moving in adjacent yet differing circles (with design, illustration & animation frequently centered around the world of underground music and beyond), and coming together through a mutual admiration and solidarity in their personal lives as artists and parents.”

The event will feature music curated by the artists to accompany the work with refreshments available from American Water, in addition to the Elliott Coffee menu. Original artwork will be available to purchase.

Togetherness: An Exhibition of 100 Postcards will take place at Elliott Coffee, located at 825 Sixth Ave. in Dayton, Kentucky, on Friday, Nov. 21. More info: markneeley.com.

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Paul McCartney took the stage at Columbus’ Nationwide Arena on Nov. 8 and turned a monumental two-hour-and-45-minute set into an unforgettable memory for nearly 20,000 fans.

McCartney and his longtime band performed a career-spanning set for his stop on the “Got Back Tour,” moving seamlessly between classics from different periods of the Beatles, Wings and his solo work.

The scale of the stage and production match the catalog and music they help present. Leading up to the show, the two floor-to-ceiling arena screens on both sides of the stage show a scroll of artwork interwoven with photos of McCartney’s larger-than-life past and present, like a surreal timeline leading up to showtime. Once the scroll of images comes to an end with McCartney’s iconic Hofner bass as the final image, the lights go down. The crowd fills the arena with cheers as McCartney leads the band onto the dimly-lit stage with the same Hofner bass in hand.

They opened with Beatles classic “Help,” before launching into the effervescent 1980 disco-funk solo hit, “Coming Up,” which incorporates the stage-length, ceiling-high screen behind the stage for the first time that night, with the song’s iconic video blending perfectly into the performance onstage. 

The band is spread across the large plane of the stage with McCartney’s grand piano at the top right, opposite a backlit trio of horn players, the Hot City Horns, dancing in unison between brass sections of Beatles classics like “Got to Get You Into My Life” and the high-drama Wings barn burner “Letting Go.”

There are certain things you notice seeing someone like Paul McCartney, from the obvious, like the immediately identifiable, fun-loving smile on his face, to more minute details, like gestures, movements and stances that call back to footage of The Beatles at the height of Beatlemania, when McCartney’s knees go together at one point when he’s really digging into a song or even how his tailored pants fit the same. They could be the ones he wore on Ed Sullivan or in the promo video for “Paperback Writer.” During Wings hits like “Let Me Roll It” and “Jet,” you’re reminded of the band’s arena shows that helped define the rock and roll show at that level.

The production is as grand as any on the road now while maintaining a certain refinement, serving the performance and music almost perfectly. The two crane cameras that provide sweeping cinematic shots of the stage and crowd at key moments catch fans dressed as McCartney in different eras, adding to the fun. You also notice the range of ages in the arena. There’s a mix of old and young in the audience and even some very young fans, like the little boy dancing and shaking his head the whole night just across the aisle from me. 

After giving the crowd a taste of the classics they were in for, McCartney pivoted to the 2018 single “Come On to Me,” showing his still-more-than-impressive range on the microphone. He moves to electric guitar to play the incendiary riff for Wings hit “Let Me Roll It” and he and the band soar in the chorus.

There’s an emotional weight to seeing McCartney perform. This guy met Elvis, played shows with Little Richard and is an influence on nearly every musician that has come after him. He’s one of the most identifiable people on the planet — the voice and mind behind some of the most timeless, beautiful music of the modern era. To get to be there and have the opportunity to see him demonstrate song by song just why means so much.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band classic “Getting Better” elevates the arena even higher with visuals and music working hand in hand. The large screen on stage shows flowers sprouting from the ground in scenes of ruins and, later, a zoomed-in time-lapse video of vibrant, technicolor budding flowers that recall the vibrancy of the record cover for the “getting better all the time” chorus.

McCartney then moved to the grand piano for a string of dynamic performances, including one of the most gritty versions of Band on the Run track “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five” I’ve seen, with laser light driving the building crescendo and emotion higher and higher. The audience gets just enough time to catch its breath before McCartney plays the immediately recognizable piano intro to one of his biggest solo releases, ”Maybe I’m Amazed” — a performance that’s so powerful and perfect that it’s overwhelming, in the best way. It’s one of the greatest performances I’ve seen with his voice still filled with so much emotion, passion and grit at 83, and the band pulling off every turn and highlight of the radio classic to perfection.    

Then, McCartney moves back down front, this time on acoustic guitar, and leads the band through “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” off Help, with what seems like the whole building singing along, unprompted, creating another poignant moment. 

After the song, McCartney points out some of the many signs in the crowd, including one that says it’s their 143rd time seeing him. When the camera catches the person next to him whose sign says it’s their first time seeing McCartney, there’s a wave of laughter in the crowd. He adds levity at times throughout the show as he has since the beginning when the four Beatles would goof around onstage. The sense of fun, alongside the beauty of the songs and weight of the moment, brings another thought to mind that this might be the biggest gathering of people experiencing joy I’ve ever seen.

A pared-down version of the group then gathered centerstage, standing around McCartney, and performed a handful of songs with basic arrangements that acted as a refreshing and impressive segment of the varied show. They started with “In Spite of All the Danger,” the first song Lennon, McCartney and Harrison ever recorded when they were still The Quarrymen in 1958, still a few years before fellow Liverpool musician Ringo Starr joined. Another highlight is a performance of “Love Me Do” that this configuration of the group does picture-perfect to the Beatlemania-inducing record from 1963. McCartney introduced the song, referencing working in Abbey Road and with a tribute to George Martin, recalling him as a “beautiful individual” that they were “privileged to run into.” 

This portion of the set ends with a late career standout track from 2007’s Memory Almost Full, the upbeat and kinetic “Dance Tonight.” Longtime drummer Abe Laboriel Jr.’s dancing is infectious, causing McCartney to crack a smile anytime he caught a glimpse. This was just as I caught my own glimpse of a beaming, bespectacled woman, close to McCartney’s age, dancing down the aisle beside me, her yellow sweater as bright as the look of joy on her face.

The band left the stage and McCartney stepped onto a platform at the front of the now bare stage before delivering a moving performance of “Blackbird,” as it lifted him slowly up into the air. Later, he defined the song’s intent to inspire those dealing with injustice during the ‘60s Civil Rights Movement. 

Now high above the crowd, he paid tribute to Lennon with the song written after his death, “Here Today,” and recalled how he wanted to write a song that said the “I love you” featured in the song’s lyrics. 

The tribute continued with McCartney, now on piano, backed by the band for the newest Beatles release “Now and Then,” finished in 2023 from a Lennon demo, for another emotional performance that McCartney concluded by saying, “Thank you, John, for writing that beautiful song.”

The pace then picks back up with the driving 1968 piano rocker “Lady Madonna,” before going into soaring Wings favorite, “Jet,” all followed by psychedelic masterpiece “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.”

By the time McCarney reaches for his ukulele to pay tribute to Harrison, who he explains had given him the instrument, the feeling in the air is on another level. 

He begins to play a simple solo version of the Harrison-penned “Something,” backed only by the roar of the audience singing along before the band gradually joins in and McCartney grabs a guitar for a full-scale rendition of one of the most covered songs of all time while images of McCartney and Harrison play onscreen.

The momentum is building even more now as they go into the White Album-era song “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” a well-documented song that the other Beatles didn’t love. 

With applause still going, the iconic title track “Band on the Run” starts up. McCartney band veteran Paul “Wix” Wickens plays its recognizable synthesizer line that flows through the arena like a breeze. When they get around to the wash of the “As the rain exploded with a mighty crash and they fell into the sun/The first one said to the second there” bridge, McCartney gestures to the crowd as he sings the next line, “I hope you’re having fun,” as if he even had to ask.

“Get Back,” featuring newly-restored footage from the recent The Beatles: Get Back documentary, is followed by the tender and beautiful “Let It Be,” possibly the best pop song of all time, for another highlight of the night. This is a recurring theme, where a majority of the songs that make up the setlist could close out any other show on a high note, but because of his unprecedented catalog, things keep on going.

With McCartney still at the piano, the lights go down and guitar players Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray vamp on a riff before McCartney sings the opening line to 1973 hit “Live and Let Die.” An explosion of flames, fireworks and lights accent the unbridled energy of the song that is as cinematic as the 1973 Bond movie it was written for.

With confetti shaken loose from the rafters still floating in the air, McCartney moves to his piano facing the audience and sings the line, “Hey Jude,” the start of the timeless ballad. When he reaches the chorus, the people selling hot dogs and beer must be singing along because the crowd is louder than ever, with an atmosphere of pure joy floating in the air. The band takes a bow and walks off. 

McCartney returns to the stage within seconds to introduce the next song, saying “it’s very special to me and you’ll see why” before launching into the seamless Lennon-McCartney collaboration, “I’ve Got a Feeling.” When Lennon’s part comes around, he appears crystal clear onscreen in footage from the legendary rooftop performance with his vocal coming through like he’s in the room. McCartney is turned, watching Lennon before stepping back to the microphone to blend their voices, in real time.

After a quick run through of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Reprise,” McCartney is inspiring in a sweltering performance of “Helter Skelter” that is juxtaposed by the beauty of pieces from the Abbey Road medley, “Golden Slumbers” and “Carry That Weight.” 

As the night proves, McCartney has been carrying the weight of one of the biggest legacies in music history now for over 50 years with grace, while continually moving forward.

As Laboriel plays the lone drum solo Starr put on record, McCartney moves down to centerstage to trade guitar solos with Anderson and Ray just as he did with Harrison and Lennon in their final recording session together, followed by McCartney’s famous line, “And in the end/The Love you take/Is equal to the love you make.”

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Local musicians and partygoers showed up in the spirit of a good time, dressed in their Halloween best over the weekend for the annual Halloween extravaganza thrown by Adam Stone at the Northside Tavern. Attendees packed the venue, spilling out into the front room bar and patio for two nights in a row. They dressed in costumes of every type, showing their unique style and creativity along with some pop culture favorites, to catch one-time-only cover sets put together for the occasion by some of the city’s top musicians. 

Musicians came together to perform the music of classic acts like The Ramones, Fleetwood Mac and Jim Croce for the Northside Tavern Halloween Show, along with favorites like Blonde Redhead and The Jesus Lizard.

This year’s theme was Virtual Insanity, after the hit by funk pop star Jamiroquai, who was covered by night two closer Coochie Fade. The event makes for fun possibilities and rare musical moments like a weekend highlight when local rapper Jay Hill, backed by members of Obsidian Mind, Lo and the Loyal Conscripts, played an explosive set of Rage Against the Machine covers to one of the biggest Northside Tavern crowds in recent memory. 

Northside Tavern once again went all in on the décor, bathing the main room in black light that made colorful yarn installations pop and fluorescent slinkies sway from the ceiling. A mixed-media sculpture wall pulsed with projected images and glowing screens, rounding out a scene that felt more like an art installation than a Halloween party. 

Stone started the tradition of the Northside Tavern Halloween Show over a decade ago, but didn’t throw the next level soiree alone. Kristen and Jeff Iker, Luke Stone, Brooklyn Huerkamp, Matt Lundberg, Terri Hughes and Jacob Tippey all helped create the space and setting for what turned out to be one of the most unique and epic Halloween parties in Cincinnati this year.

Full list of performers:

Friday: 

Blood Redhead [Blonde Redhead], featuring Strobobean, Pop Empire, Rae Fisher and Pomme Pom

Frank Potion [Frank Ocean], featuring Tiffee, Jess Lamb and The Factory, Annie D, Rae Fisher, Naked Karate Girls and pity xerox

In/Tavern/Out [At the Drive-In], featuring Soften, Hummingbird, Heist, Frontier Folk Nebraska, Dustbin, Secondhand Smoke and up+dn

Fleetblood Mac [Fleetwood Mac], featuring Anna & the Alibi, Young Heirlooms, Annie D, MADQUEEN and Jess Lamb & the Factory

Bullshit on Parade [Rage Against the Machine], featuring Jay Hill, Patterns of Chaos, Heist, Obsidian Mind, Lo and The Loyal Conscripts

Saturday:  

RAH-RAH-RAH-Ramones! [The Ramones], featuring Sharp Toys, The Dolly Daredevils and Pretty Mean

Local Lebowski [Local H], featuring Modern Paine

Teenjus Lizard [The Jesus Lizard], featuring Disaster Class, Siren Suit, The Strongest Proof and Old City

Jim Roachy [Jim Croce], featuring Hello Sapien, The Harmed Brothers, The David Faul Band, Joe’s Truck Stop, Honey & Houston, Krystal Peterson and Terror at Midnight

Coochie Fade [Jamiroquai], featuring Ernie Johnson From Detroit, Freekbass, Leroi Conroy, Marsha, All The Things and Captain of Industry

Keep scrolling for everything we saw at this year’s annual Halloween Show at Northside Tavern.

Photos by Brent Stroud

The post [PHOTOS] Northside Tavern’s Annual Halloween Show Brought Out Cincinnati’s Wildest Costumes and Cover Bands appeared first on Cincinnati CityBeat.

The Yellow Springs Film Festival was back for its third year over the weekend, bringing stars, filmmakers and film lovers together in Yellow Springs to celebrate great storytelling, filmmaking and a collective appreciation of all that goes into it. From the kickoff party featuring a masterful standup set by Saturday Night Live alum Kevin Nealon to a sold-out appearance from writer/director Kevin Smith for a 25th anniversary showing of his cult classic Dogma and panel discussions with creatives like Academy Award-winning production designer Hannah Beachler, the festival featured programming and special guests that rendered the pass from Sundance old news while continuing to establish itself as an event to look forward to year after year.

Keep scrolling for everything we saw during the 2025 Yellow Springs Film Festival.

Photos by Brent Stroud

The post [PHOTOS] Everything We Saw During the 2025 Yellow Springs Film Festival appeared first on Cincinnati CityBeat.

Since the fall of 2023, the Yellow Springs Film Festival has turned the idyllic and bohemian village of Yellow Springs into a hub of culture and entertainment, showing films fresh out of the world’s major festivals. The festival often features the filmmakers and actors involved, combined with curated live performances from comedians like Fred Armisen and Reggie Watts and musicians like Raekwon and RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan. The festival ties the mediums together expertly with varied and noteworthy programming on the level of long-running festivals in much bigger cities. 

The festival, which also features a mid-year mini-fest in the spring, has hosted guests like legendary writer/director Jim Jarmusch, director and pop culture icon John Waters, actor/director Steve Zahn and comedian Dave Hill, to name a few.

This year continues the work of previous festivals with appearances from fan favorite writer/director Kevin Smith for a 25th anniversary screening of Dogma, a live performance from actor/comedian and Saturday Night Live alum Kevin Nealon, a talk with Academy Award-winning production designer Hannah Beachler and a Q&A with The National’s Matt and Tom Berninger, among others.

There are also some fun additions this year. “I think we’re trying to scale this in a very measured way, but year three feels like we’re definitely adding some things into the mix,” Mahoney told CityBeat.

Festivities kick off a day early on Thursday, Oct. 2, with a celebration of The Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling at Antioch College — where he once studied and later taught. The day includes a marker dedication ceremony on campus, followed by a festival-hosted evening event featuring a live performance of a Serling radio play, a screening of a classic Twilight Zone episode, a talk by author and Serling’s daughter, Anne Serling, and a panel of experts. The celebration doesn’t stop there. On Friday, festivalgoers can catch an outdoor screening of a selection of Twilight Zone episodes on Short Street, another festival first. 

Other new additions this year include a live recording of Cincinnati Public Radio distributed podcast The Novelizers, created by former Jimmy Fallon-era Tonight Show writer and Dayton native Stephen Levinson. The live recording will feature actor/comedian Michael Ian Black (Wet Hot American Summer, The State, Stella) as the special guest to perform a reworked and “Novelized” version of The Matrix.

This year’s festival also offers a family-friendly event featuring a performance from the Beavercreek chapter of the School of Rock paired with a showing of the 2003 comedy of the same name, School of Rock, that is free and open to the public.

The festival’s official kickoff is at 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 3, with a performance from Nealon for what has become a tradition of sorts for the festival — having a comic start things off and set the tone for the weekend. 

“That kickoff party, year one, was sort of a happy accident,” Mahoney said. “We had booked Fred Armisen to do an in-conversation and late in the game, he said he was going to do a little tour starting after our thing and wanted to know if he could do a performance and, so, we figured out that we could put him on a Friday matinee and call it kickoff party and it went over so well, last year we were like, ‘We’ve got to do that again.’ So, we got Reggie Watts to do it last year. That was awesome. Now, it just seems like it’s part of our thing, where we just kick off the festival with a comic and I just love Kevin Nealon.”

Following Nealon’s set, and a little break to enjoy the town, is the opening night screening. The film is She Dances, which debuted at Tribeca this year and stars Ethan Hawke, Zahn and Zahn’s daughter, Audrey Zahn, as the lead. The showing will feature a Q&A with Audrey Zahn afterward. Mahoney is enthusiastic about the screening. “It’s a great film. I’m really excited about that. I think Audrey Zahn is definitely somebody to keep an eye on. It’s good to have someone who’s just getting started and kind of shine a light on them. So, I’m really excited to have her.”

There will also be an afterparty at the Foundry Theater both Friday and Saturday night to keep the celebration going.

Saturday programming starts at 10:30 a.m. with Yellow Springs resident and friend of the festival, filmmaker Steven Bognar’s Film Seminar, along with the start of a full day of events at the picturesque and historic downtown theater, the Little Art Theatre. As it has in previous years, the festival will pay tribute to Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and Yellow Springs resident Julia Reichert, who passed away in 2022. This year, they will honor her with an awards ceremony in her name to honor female filmmakers. 

Saturday’s headline event and the fastest to sell out in festival history, is a 25th anniversary screening of the cult classic comedy Dogma, featuring the movie’s writer and director, Kevin Smith. Smith is a fan favorite who has had a loyal following since his debut film Clerks was released in 1993. Mahoney tells CityBeat the booking came about through a mutual friend and Smith’s interest in helping support the festival. “He’s such a champion of independent cinema and independent film and gatherings. I think this was up his alley and it worked out. I’m a huge fan. I love Dogma and we were thrilled to have that as our Saturday night headlining piece this year, to have him come and speak and show that movie.”

The other Saturday night main attraction is a screening of music history documentary We Want the Funk across town at the Little Art Theatre. The screening is in collaboration with WYSO and features a Q&A with directors Stanley Nelson and Nicole London. “It’s a great film, just tracing all of the history of funk music and all of its influence on other types of genres. It’s a really fun ride, it’s a cool, cool film and we’re gonna have an afterparty afterwards where we’re spinning funk music at the Foundry to coincide with that. So, that’ll be super fun,” Mahoney told CityBeat.

YSFF ties in local connections when possible to highlight talent from Southern Ohio, and the 1:15 p.m. talk on Sunday with Beachler is a perfect example. Mahoney talks about what to expect. “Her career and her credits are insane. She does all of Ryan Coogler’s films, from Sinners to the Black Panther series. She worked on Moonlight, she did Miles Ahead, she did all of Beyonce’s Lemonade videos. She’s like a powerhouse creator and went to Wright State film school, so has this really nice local connection and she’s an event I’m really excited about and I think people are gonna be blown away to hear her talk. We’re going to be able to show some of her work on-screen and dig into her process a little bit.” 

Keeping with Mahoney’s varied sensibilities and the festival’s connection to music and local artists, there will also be a screening of the 2013 documentary Mistaken for Strangers about Cincinnati band The National’s Matt and Tom Berninger, who will also be on hand for a talk. Mahoney says he came across the film while doing research to direct 2019’s Brainiac: Transmissions After Zero. “I watched that one and absolutely fell in love with it. It’s not really even a music doc; it’s about two brothers’ relationship, really. But, I love the film so much and, ironically, during the Brainiac production, I was connected with Matt (Berninger), who was a huge fan, which I wasn’t aware of, and we ended up interviewing him for the movie. That’s how I initially met him and then he was on my podcast (Kon-tiki) a couple years later.”

Mahoney also talked about using the festival’s platform to highlight films that deserve more attention. “We were just kind of thinking about, ‘What’s a movie that we just really, really love that feels like it’s just kind of flown under the radar?’ I would call people that I know that are fans of The National and I feel like 90% of them had not seen that film. So, I just felt like it’d be a good second opportunity for us to kind of shine a light on something that I thought was such a great piece of work and to have the two guys that made it come to speak.”

The Yellow Springs Film Festival takes place Oct. 2-5 at various locations in Yellow Springs. For a full list of events, visit the YSFF website.

The post The Yellow Springs Film Festival is Back for Possibly its Biggest Year Yet appeared first on Cincinnati CityBeat.

The compilation We Were Living in Cincinnati: Punk and Underground Sounds from Ohio’s Queen City (1975-1982), released in 2019, broke open a window to a technicolor mosaic of wild expression coming from the underground in the city’s small but thriving creative communities and punk scene at the forefront of a new sound. 

A second edition, We Were Living in Cincinnati Vol. 2: Punk and Underground Sounds from Ohio’s Queen City (1982-1988) was released over the summer, again compiled by musician, writer and former Cincinnatian Peter Aaron. It was released by respected Chicago label HoZac Records and Cincinnati’s own Shake It Records as part of the label’s Music from Ohio series. The second installment continues the nearly cultural anthropology-like study, digging into the next decade of the freewheeling, expressive mutations of rock and roll from the minds of Cincinnati’s underground.

Though the city is known for things like the legacy of King Records, Iggy Pop’s performance at the 1970 Pop Festival with The Stooges, and a handful of bands like the Afghan Whigs and The Greenhornes, and for good reason, Aaron’s compilations focus is on a lesser-known part of the Queen City’s music history, bringing attention to the wildly expressive and varied music produced in the early years of Cincinnati’s still thriving underground music scene.

Like the first volume, the 19 tracks on Vol. 2 — along with 27 bonus tracks — come from rare cassettes and vinyl records originally released in small runs decades ago, as well as from demos and material sourced from the locals who made it. Collected by Aaron, the set presents a record of a culture as inventive as anything on sought-after collections like Soul Jazz Records’ Punk 45 series or the garage and psychedelic rock compilations, Nuggets.

Aaron became a part of that culture after arriving in Cincinnati as a teenager in the early ‘80s, soon finding his way into that world, hosting radio shows on local stations like WAIF and booking for venues like the legendary Jockey Club, Bogart’s and Murphy’s Pub, where he would book early appearances by bands like Nirvana and The Flaming Lips (who mentioned Aaron in a recent CityBeat interview). He also became the lead singer of influential Cincinnati/New York garage punk band The Chrome Cranks. 

Now based in upstate New York, Aaron works as a writer and editor, DJs at local clubs and hosts the exploratory radio show Go Go Kitty on Radio Kingston between making music. With the We Were Living in Cincinnati collections, he’s exploring both his roots and the city’s punk past — and CityBeat caught up with him to talk about the new release.

CityBeat: This volume picks up around the time you moved to Cincinnati as a kid — what brought you to town and what were your impressions?  

Peter Aaron: My family moved from Morris County, New Jersey, to Cincinnati in the summer of 1982, right before my senior year of high school. My dad had taken a new job at Campbell Hausfeld, a company in Harrison that makes air compressors, and my folks bought a newly-built house in Montgomery. Moving at that age is tough for most kids; that’s the time when you’re really beginning to figure out who you are and find your feet, with the big finale of high school graduation looming. I’d gotten into punk a few years earlier and, being a short bus ride away from Manhattan, was just beginning to find my way around America’s most famous mecca. Plus, I was in my first band, and we were beginning to play out and make our name on the early New Jersey/New York hardcore scene. So to be ripped away from all of that right at that time was jarring. But my dad had already started at Campbell Hausfeld before we moved, and he’d been going back and forth from New Jersey to Ohio for a few months before we actually moved, and, at one point, the rest of the family came out to visit him. He gave us a tour of Cincinnati, which included a stop at Short Vine, where we had dinner. After we ate, we walked around a bit, and we passed by Bogart’s, which was then still undergoing its 1980-1982 renovation, and Mole’s Records. Mole’s was closed for the night, but there were fliers in the windows for gigs: “Hardcore! Skank and slam with the Repellents at the Brew House!” All of a sudden, I felt a sense of calm, that things for me were going to be okay. I also picked up copies of local fanzine Obzene and WAIF’s monthly paper/programming guide, where I learned about “Handsome” Clem Carpenter’s hardcore show, “Search and Destroy,” and the station’s other punk/alternative shows. 

CB: What was your experience in the Cincinnati music scene?

PA: The first local gig I went to was a WAIF benefit that summer at the station’s original studio at the Hotel Alms. AK-47 (with Jughead and Peter Sturdevant and Martin O’Connor, later of SS-20) and the Rituals (with Walter Hodge and Jimmy Davidson, later of the Libertines) played, and Bill “Billy Blank” Leist (of the Reduced and the eventual booking magnate of the Jockey Club) was selling beer from a keg. So I met a bunch of people there and was already listening to WAIF. Then I went to my first Brew House show, Toxic Reasons with Dream 286 opening up (I was still underage, so I went really early and kind of snuck in). And then Bill and his crew started booking the Jockey Club, so that became the center of everything and I just started meeting more people from there, widening the circle more and more. A large part of my outlook on life was shaped during that amazing time, in that amazing scene; I forged so many strong, tight friendships that I still have and treasure. I doubt that I would have had anything like this happen had I stayed in what was a bedroom community of New York City. Would I even still be into punk, or music and art in general? I like to think so, but it’s hard to say. But from what I can tell, more of my old friends in Jersey have moved on and took their places in the straight world. Like I often say, being a punk in Cincinnati meant more than it did if you were a punk in the New York Metro area. Being in Cincinnati, you weren’t able to easily escape suburbia and safely settle in the Big Smoke of the punk epicenter of New York, where there were already thousands of people who shared your sensibilities. In Cincinnati, you had to be all-in. You had to make your own fun. There was some occasional drama, like there is with any social scene, but I think that we all understood that as comrades, we really had to stick together. When I eventually got into booking local clubs and doing radio shows myself, on WAIF and WVXU, I already knew many of the people I would work with in those environments. So overall the experience was amazing, and I feel so blessed to have had it — and that, in a way, it’s still going on.

CB: You mention in the liner notes for the record that the idea for a compilation was brought up in a conversation years ago at Highland Coffee House.

PA: Well, sort of. I can’t remember which came first, to be honest. I definitely remember talking to Tim Schwallie of B.P.A. and the Wolverton Brothers once when he was working at the Highland and we were listening to a tape he had of some of the bands that were on the Nuggets album, and the idea of there someday being albums of the underground bands of our generation popped into my head. I asked Tim if he thought that might ever happen, and he said, “Sure, yeah, that’s what we’re doing this for.” This was before the whole alternative rock breakthrough with Nirvana and all of that happened, so by that Tim was saying that no one in any of these bands then had any expectations of actually making money from their art; they just wanted to be able to leave something behind. That was the most any of them could conceive of aspiring to. Breaking through to the mainstream wasn’t even a consideration, so the only hope was that at least people in the outside world, as it were, might find out about their existence years after the fact, when the history books, aka a new series of Nuggets-style compilations that rounded up and contextualized tracks by these then-contemporary bands, arrived. After that conversation, whenever I saw the Wolvertons play and they were about to do “Love City” (from their 1985 debut single), Tim would introduce the song as being on a future volume of Nuggets and give me a wink. But, really, I was thinking of a series with more of a national angle than a regionally specific one, kind of like what happened with the Killed By Death comps of early punk, which would start coming out a little after I’d had that talk with Tim. 

CB: How did this project begin and when did you decide to start documenting Cincinnati’s punk history? 

PA: I think I’d had the idea for a cassette of early Cincinnati punk stuff before then, mostly because I’d wanted to hear the bands that I’d missed out on by being a newcomer. That’s why I started tracking down the Customs, the Ed Davis Band, and Dennis the Menace singles and hitting up folks like Doug Hallett for tapes of the Dents and the guys in the Hospital Records bands for their older stuff. But, eventually, I just got really busy with booking shows and doing my radio shows, and then I moved to New York to do the Chrome Cranks as a more serious thing, so the whole idea got shelved for a long time.

CB: Who else was involved?

PA: The We Were Living in Cincinnati series came about of my own volition. It really seemed like no one else was going to do something like this, which I feel is something important, if I didn’t do it. Not long after I’d worked with HoZac Records on reissuing the first Chrome Cranks album in 2014, I was conversing on Facebook with HoZac chief Todd Novak about early Cincinnati punk obscurities and he asked if I’d be into putting together a comp of that stuff for the label. Of course, I said hell yes, that would be a dream come true, and things took off from there. 

CB: How did Shake It Records and Cincinnati musicians help the project?

PA: Not long after I had begun reaching out to ex-band members about the project to gather material, James Cole from the Customs told me that Darren Blase from Shake It Records had been talking about doing something similar by putting together a Bloodstains Across Cincinnati comp for the bootleg Bloodstains series. He and I talked and I think he felt like the concept was in good hands with me and he liked the way I planned to contextualize things. And it worked out great because we were able to collaborate on it and make the comps joint releases by Hozac and Shake It, as part of the latter’s Music from Ohio series. Finding Doug Hallett’s “Cincy Wave Family Tree” in one of those early issues of Obzene when I first moved to town in 1982 was key, though. It let me know that there was this whole deep, secret history of punk/new wave that had already been going on locally and it connected me to so many of the progenitors by name. The insights of my musicological mentor Uncle Dave Lewis (Cointelpro, 11,000 Switches, Manwich, etc., etc.) have been indispensable. If anyone in Cincinnati punk—or Cincinnati music, period—deserves a monument, it’s David. Time does nothing if not reveal how important he has been to the scene as a whole, how advanced his own music and musical curation has been, and how inspirational a font of musical knowledge he continues to be. And, of course, the bands, who have been generous with lending their tracks and forthcoming with rare ephemera for the graphics, deserve the overriding credit for making the music in the first place.

CB: Both releases feel incredibly thorough — with an introductory essay, track-by-track liner notes that add history and context, original cover art, vintage flyers and photos, even a kind of “family tree” of the scene’s musicians, plus a full album’s worth of downloadable bonus songs. It’s a lot of material that makes for a truly comprehensive document of the era — could you talk about how you pulled all of that together?

PA: Thanks. We really tried to put together good packages. On the production side of things, I worked closely with Todd from HoZac and Darren from Shake It, and with Dave Eck from Lucky Mastering in Washington state and graphic designer Andrew Nelson in my current hometown of Kingston, New York. I got into the whole idea simply because I wanted to know more about the bands that appear on the first volume, and with the second volume, it was a matter of my being around when that era was happening and feeling like I had a reasonable grip on being able to tell that particular story. Big thanks to Doug Hallett for the use of his first-wave band family tree for volume 1 and the new family trees that he put together for volume 2 (the insert with the second volume has a chart that focuses on the bands that appear on the vinyl release, while the download package contains an expanded version).

CB: Did you plan to have a second volume from the start and will there be future installments?

PA: My first thought was to maybe do a double album that included the tracks on volume 1 and its bonus downloads and some that appear on volume 2, but HoZac suggested trying two volumes, which I agreed was a better idea — and that seems to have been the case. We’ll see how it goes, I guess, but, yes, I would like to do at least one more volume. This one would fold back to the era covered during volume 1. There’s some really cool, obscure material from that period that has come to light in the wake of WWLIC Vol. 1‘s release and I’d like to chronicle that stuff. That’s the period that I find most fascinating, and it’s the one that’s least documented, so I feel like it would be great to cover it. Punk rock (and its variations) is the folk music of our time, important stuff that needs to be enshrined in the system of knowledge. I love being able to put something out into the world that says, “Hey, you most likely missed it, but this is what was happening in our town. This is what we did. Check it out and see how it compares to what you were doing where you lived. And see how it led to what we’re all doing now.” For the post-1982-1988 timespan of volume 2, there’s already Ricky Adams’s Pay No Attention double album of 1990s local punk, and I believe he’s planning another volume of that series, so I feel like the more recent period is already getting good coverage.

CB: How do you feel about the music scene in the city today?

PA: Every time I come back to Cincinnati to visit, I’m blown away by how great and healthy the music scene is there now. Cincinnati will always be my real hometown and I miss it. The scene was modest but great in the 1970s and ’80s, given its size and remoteness, and the scenesters did a truly heroic job of working with what they had to work with. The infrastructure of the music scene there today is the envy of many cities twice the size of Cincinnati. It’s robust and full of great bands and home to so many incredible music venues, record stores and other amenities. But some people may not realize the degree to which that infrastructure is built on the scenes that lived and thrived right there in the ’70s and ’80s. A big part of what I hope for with the We Were Living in Cincinnati series is that those people find out about what came before them and are inspired by it enough to take the collective spirit of the Queen City’s punk pioneers into their own lives and art.

We Were Living in Cincinnati Vol. 2: Punk and Underground Sounds from Ohio’s Queen City (1982-1988) is available now online through HoZac Records, Shake It Records and at local record stores.

The post New Compilation Documents Cincinnati’s Punk and Underground Sound appeared first on Cincinnati CityBeat.

Editor’s note: Mark Volman, who had become ill just before the start of this year’s tour, passed away just before publication on Sept. 5 at the age of 78.

One of the highlights of summer, the “Happy Together Tour,” came to Kettering’s Fraze Pavilion on Aug. 28, just in time to wrap up the sunny season. The lineup changes year to year, but the staples remain — this year’s lineup included The Turtles, featuring Flo and Eddie, who started the Happy Together concerts back in 1984 and revived the idea in 2010. 

CityBeat spoke with two of the show’s stars, Ron Dante, who takes over vocal duties for The Turtles and has a story all his own, and Bob Cowsill, who is a founding member of the hit-making family band The Cowsills that inspired The Partridge Family TV show.

The Happy Together shows are similar to the packaged tours of the ‘50s and ‘60s that featured a handful of acts on the same bill, like Alan Freed’s Summer Festival or many of the tours that featured pop music’s biggest acts throughout the first decade of rock and roll with back-to-back-to-back performances of now-legendary songs.  

Bob Cowsill recalls one of these kinds of shows early in the band’s career. “We did play Yankee Stadium with Stevie Wonder and The Beach Boys in 1966 in a show called ‘Sound Blast! ‘66’ (which also featured Ray Charles, The Byrds, The McCoys and others) and The Cowsills are on the poster that says ‘The Cowsills who?’” he says with a laugh.

The Happy Together tour seems more precious with time. It’s packed with historic figures of pop music history and features some of the most beloved songs of the medium. Maybe it’s that there’s something special about hearing songs live that have been played on transistor radios, records, cassettes, CDs and MP3s — decades worth of memories made over car stereos.

There’s also a timelessness to seeing this music in person. It’s something that feels bigger than yourself, making any problems in the world or life feel small in comparison.

The night starts with one of the cornerstones of the tour, The Cowsills, who start things off on a high note with a kick of energy and one of the most recognizable, dreamy and perfect pop songs of all time, “The Rain, The Park and Other Things.” The pop symphony with a lush layer of dreamy vocals, strings, sweeping harp and huge production, all juxtaposed by hard-hitting drums and its soaring “I love the flower girl” chorus is the perfect song to set a tone for what’s to come.

The group, made up of siblings Susan, Paul and Bob Cowsill for these shows, is backed by the tour’s tight house band that powers through hits like “Indian Lake” and “Hair” with smiles on their faces, seemingly having the time of their lives.

Bob Cowsill tells CityBeat they’re glad to kick each show. “We love getting to the audience first. We’re kind of nutty and we bounce around. We’re the party group and to get the party going, we open it with a lot of energy.”

Bob Cowsill recalls a time when they played with Paul Revere & the Raiders and The Buckinghams when he was a kid. “We were young and innocent and controlled by our parents and did nothing on the road, and we watched Paul Revere & the Raiders and The Buckinghams have all this fun on the road.” He says that it all worked out and they’re glad to meet everybody these days and have some fun.

The audience is primarily of a certain age and from the same generation as the music, but there are some younger people there as well. Bob Cowsill brings up an interesting point about how current younger generations like older music. “For some reason, you guys had room in your heads for other (stuff), like our stuff, too. We didn’t do that. We just had our stuff — we weren’t headphoning Frank Sinatra,” he said. “All of our kids love these songs and now we’re learning, with the Happy Together tour, the best example of the magic of why all that is and how good those songs still are and will be forever.”

The Cowsills are still a family band. In the winter, they perform full shows around the country and on cruises with the next generation of the family filling out the band. “We’re just all still at it and grateful for it. We get to live the magic of the Happy Together Tour. That audience, it’s a love fest, I gotta tell you. It’s just beautiful and then the challenge of the winter, the cruises and the fun shows we do there, it’s amazing. We’re very grateful we’re still here and having a good time.”

Sixties vocal group The Vogues, known for hits like “Five O’Clock World,” “My Special Angel” and “Turn Around and Look at Me,” come out next. There are no longer any original members in the group, but they deliver the songs with the passion and joy they’re known for, with leader Troy Elich keeping the fun going with humor and levity. 

Gary Puckett, who was on the first Happy Together tour in 1984, closes out the first half of the night with his soaring baritone on hits like “Lady Willpower,” “Woman, Woman” and “This Girl is a Woman Now,” wearing a vibrant green custom jacket reminiscent of the ones he and his band the Union Gap wore in the ‘60s and a reminder of the charming side of show business. 

He made a local connection during his performance, recalling a time when his career moved to another level because of a Cleveland DJ playing his records in the beginning.

Puckett also recalled meeting Priscilla Presley a few years ago, when she told him the next song held special meaning for her and Elvis — just before the band launched into “Young Girl.” By the time Puckett and the band’s performance ends, the sun has gone down and the night’s energy is on a high.

There’s an intermission and time to get out and get a drink and relax by the fountain that marks the entrance, which adds to the serenity of it all.  

The second half of the show starts with a total showstopper, Little Anthony, whose career began in the late ’50s with R&B vocal group Little Anthony and The Imperials. The second he sings the first line of “Tears on My Pillow” in his signature tenor that perfectly matches the record released in August of 1958, the crowd erupts. 

Little Anthony has his stage banter and comedy perfected, and almost comes off like a Redd Foxx, James Brown or some vaudeville performer. He has the crowd laughing and cheering between moments of awe when he breaks into the timeless songs he’s created.

“Going Out of My Head” and “Hurt So Bad” are other highlights of the night and he breaks into a near scream on “Shimmy Shimmy KO KO Bop.” Anthony tells the crowd, “You always give me that energy, it comes out of nowhere.” His performance is chill-inducing and he gets an earned standing ovation.

Jay and the Americans have the impossible job of following Little Anthony, but manage to keep things going. The band features no original members, though the lead singer (they are now on their third) is always actually named Jay. 

They deliver the radio favorites the group was known for, charmingly with a touch of the ‘80s by way of Dirty Dancing movie-era oldies nostalgia. The 1964 hit, “Come a Little Bit Closer,” was featured in a more recent movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, as the current Jay tells the crowd, and it creates a natural sing-along moment.

The Turtles, led by Dante for this tour after original Turtles member Mark Volman couldn’t make it, are next with Dante acting as a master of ceremonies for the show. He’s upbeat and a consummate entertainer dressed in a plush red velvet blazer and black leather pants, and has a feel of classic show business. 

He’s also the voice of one of the most infectious songs of all time, “Sugar, Sugar,” credited to ‘60s cartoon band The Archies, which the band performs between Turtles hits like “Elenore” and “You Baby,” creating another highlight of the night.

Dante tells CityBeat, “It’s the most fun to be on the bill with such legendary artists this summer.

Hearing great singing stars do their major hits beautifully is a real joy each night. Standing in the wings listening to Garry Puckett, Little Anthony, The Vogues and The Cowsills, along with the incredible Jay and the Americans, is a dream come true. The audiences have been singing along with every hit and cheering us on every show. I will forever remember doing the Happy Together tour.”

Everyone comes back out one by one for a medley of the night for the finale before wrapping up with the tour’s namesake, “Happy Together” by The Turtles, and a final bow standing side by side and hand in hand. Bob Cowsill tells CityBeat about the feeling of being on stage for the finale. “It’s historic, in a way. We all hold hands at the end. Sometimes I’m holding Little Anthony’s hand and I’m going, ‘How am I into my life in front of these people holding this man’s hand?’ I never would have predicted an event like that through all the decades before it happened and that’s the magic of life and hanging in long enough and being around to experience it. It is unbelievable, I gotta tell you.” 

The music ends with spirits high for a fitting end to summer.

The post [REVIEW] The ‘Happy Together Tour’ Brings a Summer of Memories to Kettering appeared first on Cincinnati CityBeat.

Continuing the celebration for Bogarts, which turned 50 over the summer, CityBeat asked a few local figures who have been associated with the venue over the years for their stories.

Most likely, every music fan living in Cincinnati and the Tri-State since 1975 has stood in line on Short Vine in Corryville underneath the glow of the Bogart’s marquee to witness something great on the venue’s stage.

Bogart’s was where I saw my first club show, which proved to be a drastic difference compared to the arena concerts I had seen as a kid. I was 14 at the height of a sea change in pop culture and music when the garage rock revival took over. One of the central bands of that movement and a favorite of mine at the time, The Vines, played Bogart’s in December of 2002. It was a life-changing experience waiting in line on Short Vine, then having to run across the street to Sudsy Malone’s, the grungy bar/laundromat/venue that I would later learn about and be glad I got to step into to use the bathroom after too many Coca-Colas. 

We were second in line waiting in the December cold to get in and get a good spot, an experience that was also new to me. As the doors opened and people rushed in, I grabbed a poster for the show off the wall that I still have, and we got a front-row spot right by the stage. The opener was a young British band called The Music that I loved discovering that night, and when their drummer threw a drum stick to the foot of the stage, a suave British photographer working for NME Magazine handed it to me. When The Vines first came out, I was completely hooked and couldn’t stop imagining how my friends and I might become something like them. The band was young, wild and pure rock and roll energy. Seeing lead singer/guitar player Craig Nicholls smash his guitar into pieces — leaving shreds of wood all over the stage at the end — was completely amazing and reinforced my love for rock and roll and all these parts of it that I had only seen in videos from different eras, or older rockstars do at much bigger, more distant and larger concerts. This was right in front of my face and felt like it belonged to me.

Other standouts over the years include a time my dad took me to see The Used when I was 15, and singer Bert McCracken threw a water bottle into the audience that bounced off the wall, hitting my dad in the arm. It didn’t bother him, but I felt a little bad since he brought me to this teeny-bopper rock concert, but it was also instantly funny. Then, after the concert, the guitar player came out and did cartwheels naked to a Prince song as everyone left. I didn’t see that at KISS or Scorpions concerts (and thank god), but it was pretty hilarious.

I got to work at Bogart’s one time for a side job I’ve done over the years, and, not only that, but it was for a tour stop on the MC5 anniversary celebration tour “MC50.” I got to hang around in the venue hours before the show because I didn’t have anything at all to do that early, so someone introduced me to Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty, who was on the tour, and a little later, I met Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil as he left to go get some food before the show. But, by far, the most exciting moment for me was getting to meet MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer when he came to hang out with the fans who paid extra to get in and ask some questions. The show was insanely great and inspiring. Afterward, I ran into some Cincinnati friends and we hung out with openers, garage rock legends The Detroit Cobras, and the band’s co-leader, Mary Ramirez, told me I looked like a “Cincinnati boy,” a badge of honor of sorts.

Another favorite is seeing KISS’ Ace Frehley solo for the first time at maybe the loudest concert I’ve ever been to. 

Jack White played a rare show there last fall, getting ready for his upcoming tour, and I was able to right a wrong from years before when I voluntarily didn’t go see my two favorite bands at the time, The White Stripes and Whirlwind Heat, in 2003 when my high school girlfriend couldn’t go. It was great to set things right and see a lifelong favorite at Bogart’s.

What follows is a collection of local voices sharing memories from over the years, of either performing at Bogart’s, working there, or just unforgettable experiences tied to the venue.

Peter Aaron is a musician, award-winning journalist, writer and radio DJ. He booked several significant shows in Cincinnati throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, including a pre-fame Nirvana at Murphy’s Pub. He’s also the lead singer of legendary Cincinnati/New York garage punk band the Chrome Cranks and singer of current band Stabbing Jabs. One of his most recent projects is putting together the history of Cincinnati punk compilation We Were Living In Cincinnati, which now includes a second volume released in June.

I was a Bogart’s employee from 1985 to 1987, helping with the promotions and doing some of the booking in kind of an advisory capacity. Dan Reed, the club’s main booking agent for what was called alternative music in those days, got me the job because he’d picked up a copy of my fanzine and liked it. I was about 21 when I started there. I’d make posters and fliers. Those postcard mailers they used to send out, with the lists of upcoming shows on them? My idea. Eventually, I got fired for slacking off, which turned out to be a good thing because it got me to start booking shows of my own at other venues. But that’s another story. Here’s this one.

When Cheap Trick came through in ’87, I was there during the day while they were setting up. They were at sort of a low career point then. They hadn’t had any hits in a while, and they’d gone from playing arenas back down to Bogart’s-sized clubs. And as of the afternoon of this show, tickets had been selling very poorly. There was kind of a bleak pall over everything during the load-in. But I was still really excited to see them. The great Tom Petersson had just rejoined the band, who had been total gods to me when I was in high school.

After working in the front office for a bit, I took a break and went out into the main room to catch the sound check. Lo and behold, there was Robin Zander, walking around the floor of the club and absent-mindedly strumming an acoustic guitar. Damn! Looking back, I think maybe he was working on a new song. But whatever he was up to, there he was, one of my musical heroes. Right there. I had to say something to him. Get him to notice me. So I walked right up to him and I did.

“Hey,” I began, with a grin. “Maybe you could go out on the sidewalk and play for people…”

Almost as soon as these words had left my mouth, my heart sank.

I immediately realized how they’d sounded to him. Like a lame, attempted joke coming from some greasy, anonymous kid who worked at the club. With the bummer of lackluster advance ticket sales in his brain, to the golden-maned singer, one of the best in the business, my meant-to-be-funny quip most assuredly came across as: You better get out front and do some busking to drum up business, because you guys are has-beens and your audience turnout is totally tanking.

Not the message I intended, to say the least. Anyway, it was too late now. Open mouth, insert foot.

With my aural faux pas now hanging there in the dead air, Zander, who was wearing a colorful, fringed leather jacket and one of those cool military-style officer’s caps he frequently sports, quit strumming and stopped dead in his tracks.

With a stone face, he tilted his head back. His eyes looked me up and down with a cold, contempt-seething gaze.

Somehow, I managed to respond with a nervous, sheepish smile. There was a painfully long silence.

“Yeah…,” he said, nodding slowly and looking me straight in the eyes. “I could do that.”

And that was it. He turned and walked away, strumming once again.

As a fan, it was beyond humbling and humiliating. I felt like a complete ass.

But it was a learning experience, and it taught me to think a bit about the surrounding situation when I went to make friendly with other icons down the road (my encounter with Johnny Rotten as a show runner that year was more measured but memorable nonetheless; again, another story for another time).

When Cheap Trick finally did hit the stage that night, they totally and utterly rocked, as they always do. And just a few months later, they had their enormous comeback hit with “The Flame,” selling out Bogart’s almost as soon as the tickets went on sale and making their ascent back to the arena level, at least for a while.

And, as far as I know, Zander still hasn’t had to resort to busking.

Steve Schmoll is a veteran musician and live sound engineer who has toured internationally with numerous bands. He is also the former owner of Black Plastic, a beloved local record store.

I worked at Bogart’s starting in the fall of 1987 and through the spring of 1989. There were so many shows back then — shows almost every day of the week. Before that, I had already seen many incredible shows there — The Stranglers, Bad Brains, Devo, Cro-Mags, local metal shows, Sunday hardcore punk matinees, etc.

Probably the most mind-blowing show before I worked there was the Butthole Surfers, I think in 1986. One of the great aspects of the shows back then were the curtains. Curtains would be closed in between bands and open right before they started, so you didn’t see any of the behind-the-scenes action. So you would be up front just waiting for that curtain to open. There was not a lot of media back then, so with underground bands, you would only have a few photos to reference as to what a band actually looked like. Me and my weird high school friend were already really into the Butthole Surfers albums, so we had some idea there was going to be some fun insanity.

So the curtain opens with the band starting and there they are, unkempt, greasy in their tattered clothes, dual drummers to the right of the stage. In the background, an enormous movie screen showing vintage educational films that would change every 15 minutes: a highway safety film including all the gored corpses in their mangled cars, a vasectomy film and another of tropical fish swimming. The band only played one song, a forty-five-minute-long jam, occasionally lighter fluid being poured onto cymbals, then lit, and the flames would shoot upward as the cymbal was hit. Singer Gibby Haynes alternated between shouting through a megaphone and manipulating the digital delay on his vocals, while the stage filled with chaos: men with sideways ponytails, a female drummer, and — on the back-center riser — a naked woman in a hula skirt, her body painted green with red dreadlocks, thrashing under a strobe light as she danced and dribbled a basketball. Seeing this even now would be jaw-dropping, but seeing it forty years ago as a music-obsessed high school misanthrope, it was just unimaginable, just burning through my brain.

I started working there and my main job throughout my time there was the mailing list. I had a clipboard and would start working about an hour before doors opened and collect addresses for the Bogart’s mailing list. We then would send out postcards a few times a month with our show calendar on them. Eventually, other responsibilities of doing the front window displays, working production (many times this would consist of loading the dummy cabs into the elevator, as even the thrash metal bands would have a wall of fake guitar amps behind them and one real one) and working security standing behind the barricade the year they started putting up a barricade.

Here are some brief Bogart’s memories off the top of my head:

• The first show I worked was Public Image Ltd. It was sold out, and I do remember the local TV meteorologist Steve Horstmeyer was in the line for that one.
• The Pogues: I remember working in the office and hearing a few days before the show that Shane MacGowan would not be singing, but they would have a replacement singer with them because MacGowan was in rehab. I worked production that day. Someone says, “The band’s here!” and the backstage door opens and Shane MacGowan comes in wearing sunglasses and passes out on the green room couch where he slept until about half an hour before showtime.
• Peter Murphy: Waiting for the encore as the crowd is demanding one. Purple lights from the cans light up the stage and he walks out and does a cover of “Purple Rain.”
• Seeing Teenage Fanclub on their Bandwagonesque tour
• Jerry Lee Lewis: Still young enough to get up on the stool and hit the high keys with his feet
• Joey Ramone telling me the best rock show he ever saw was The Who in 1969. “Go Lil’ Camaro Go” was on their new album. I said it was my favorite and asked if they were going to do any more like their original sound. “No, we are a rock band now like Motorhead,” he said. 
• The Replacements: I got to work in the barricade and there were no other Replacements fans on the production staff, so I got to be in the front and center spot. Lost my mind when they went into The Only Ones’ “Another Girl, Another Planet” and had to quickly jump out of the way as Paul Westerberg leapt off the stage into the barricade area where I was.
• Agnostic Front: I got to play a few shows at Bogart’s and this was one of them — Agnostic Front at their hardcore punk peak, about 600 punks there, mostly skinheads. One of the openers cancelled last minute and somehow we got put on the bill. I was playing bass in Human Zoo, which was a Stooges/New York Dolls-style band. Songs end and there wasn’t booing, really, but like lots of yelling, “You suck!” “Play faster!” etc., and I look out at the crowd and it’s all dudes with their arms crossed over their chest, angry skins. A few songs in and I had really long hair then as now, so I could not see very well when I was playing, but I felt what was like a very hard raindrop on my head and look up and can’t figure out what it was and then seconds go by and then another one. The song ends, we go into our next one and just this constant rain of being pelted with pennies and was continuously pelted the rest of the set. It was hilarious and at the end of the set as we were packing up, I did grab all the quarters and dimes.
• Buzzcocks: One of my favorite bands and they were amazing. And, not really fitting of their music, they had these color televisions on the stage, like four big ones showing these corny graphics of “digital art.” Pete Shelley, towards the end of the set, goes, “Well, this is the last show of our U.S. tour, so I guess we won’t be needing these anymore”. He takes off the guitar, and swinging it like a baseball bat, starts smashing in the screens of the televisions, sparks and glass flying — so great.
• Legal Weapon: The L.A. glam punk band I had seen before at Jockey Club. It was a really small show. As we were leaving, I noticed a bunch of people were on the top balcony level drinking. I asked the next day, “What were people doing on the balcony level last night?” “Oh, Guns N’ Roses were driving through and had a party to celebrate “Sweet Child O’ Mine” going to number one.”
• One day in the front office — this almost never happened — they asked me, “Hey, we have Circle Jerks coming and have no opener, is there anyone you recommend?” I got one of my favorites who were still pretty unknown Nine Pound Hammer — huge show and the kids loved them. I ran into the guitarist 25 years later and he thanked me again for that show.
• Megadeth: This was right when they were breaking through into the mainstream and Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying? was on MTV every hour. So they booked two nights in a row, both sold out. Some deal was made with someone and we got boxes and boxes of this thrash metal magazine shipped to us. It looked like a magazine but all of the articles and interviews were bands from one label. It was like a Mad Libs-sized mini magazine, about 16 pages or so. So, night of the show, I did mailing list up until doors opened and then had to hand out these free magazines to kids after their I.D. check. There were probably like 500 of them. Most kids would look at them for a minute and then throw them on the floor. So, opening band is done, I have run out of magazines and walk out to the floor, and it’s packed wall to wall with suburban metal kids. And then up front I see this like slow-moving fireball go up in the air and go across the crowd in the front. I am like “What the heck was that?” And then a few moments later, I see another one of these fireballs go up into the air from another part of the crowd and then I could see and realize that kids were lighting the magazines on fire and throwing them through the air. So I go and tell one of the bouncers and he gets another one and the three of us each get trash bags and have to push through the crowd, grabbing as many of these magazines off the floor as we can find. I am glad no one was hurt but I love mischievous teenagers.

Robert Wendel is the operator of the Facebook group page Bogart’s Memories, which has over 6,500 members who share photos, ticket stubs, posters and memories from their time spent at the venue. 

I pretty much have great memories of all Bogart’s shows, but here’s a few that really stand out:

• Motorhead, Dec. 3, 1984: My very first Bogart’s show. The sound was amazing and very loud. Ears rang for days.
• WASP, March 7, 1986 – Incredible stage show, lots of blood and raw meat. 
• Frank Marino and Ronnie Montrose, June 9, 1986: Two of the greatest guitarists playing the same night. A real shred fest.
• Gregg Allman and Dickie Betts, July 19, 1986: Both played an individual set and then came out together to play some Allman Brothers hits. 
• King Diamond and Megadeth, July 27, 1986: Was wanting to see if King could pull off the vocals live and he nailed it. 
• Slayer and Overkill, Nov. 24, 1986: Pure thrash heaven.
• Paul Di’anno’s Battlezone, Dec. 18, 1986: Was great seeing Iron Maiden’s original vocalist doing solo and Maiden tunes
• Anthrax and Metal Church, June 12, 1987: More thrash greatness.
• Frehley’s Comet and White Lion, July 11, 1987: Awesome seeing KISS’ Ace Frehley doing solo and KISS tunes.
• Gary Moore and Hurricane: Aug. 18, 1987: One of my favorite guitarists! Just amazing.
• Manowar and Victory: Aug. 24, 1987: The Loudest show I ever saw at Bogart’s! The hair on my arms was moving!
• Grim Reaper, Armored Saint and Helloween, Oct. 10, 1987: Can’t beat this trio of heavy metal bands
• Savatage and Trouble, July 14, 1990: Savatage never disappoints.   
• Wrathchild America and Pantera, April 10, 1991: Pantera before they were famous! Hell yeah!!
• UFO, Aug. 31, 1995: The reunion tour with Michael Schenker. Great show!
• Dio, Armored Saint and Lynch Mob, Feb. 21, 2001: Three incredible bands in one night! 
• Volbeat, July 26, 2011: Volbeat before they got huge!

Eric Stein is a local musician, formerly of The Griefs and The Greenhornes and currently of the Grotesque Brooms, among others, who played Bogart’s as a member of The Greenhornes in July 2002, opening for Guided By Voices. He recalls a favorite performance as a teen.

Saw a few shows there. The Cramps (might have been the Flamejob tour) were pretty good. Bogart’s had a wire cage-type-thing in front of the stage so the audience couldn’t climb up or throw beer bottles at the performers. And I don’t remember much about the night but I do remember Lux (Interior) saying with a very condescending tone, “I don’t get why there’s a cage separating us here. You don’t seem like a crowd that needs a cage. You don’t seem dangerous at all,“ or something along those lines and I found it very funny. But he seemed like he meant it wholeheartedly. He seemed kinda pissed off a bit.

Daisy Caplan, originally from Louisville, Kentucky, is the drummer of local band Lung, which just released its fourth studio album, The Swankeeper, and tours the country regularly. CityBeat reached out to ask about his experience when Lung opened for Jesus Lizard at Bogart’s last September.

“I’ve not only played there, but I probably wouldn’t live here if it didn’t exist. I used to come up several times a month for shows when I was a youth.” 

On performing at the venue:

“Always really smooth and fun. Great stage with good sound, big without losing the intimacy/immediacy of the audience. They also tend to hire solid folks who are absolute pros.”

Takoda Hortenberry is the vocalist and drummer for local band Beef on Feel It Records. Beef was the local band chosen to open a special appearance from Jack White at Bogart’s in October 2024 for a series of pop-up shows he was doing at smaller venues at the beginning of his last tour. 

I haven’t been able to attend a concert at Bogart’s since moving back to Cincy a few years ago, but I grew up seeing all my favorite bands play there. 

Honestly, I don’t know what to say about that night except that it felt extremely fucking fun. Bogart’s has brought so many bands through that I’ve waited outside the door for hours to get a front row spot to see. It just felt really good to be a part of it on the stage side of the venue. I felt the same kind of stoked playing there as when I first saw one of my favorite bands play there.

Chris Schadler is a local musician in bands like Stallone N’ Roses and Fairmount Girls. He’s also the co-founder and owner of MOTR Pub and the Woodward Theater. 

As teenagers, we all loved going there to see Chastia /Leather/CJSS.

Brian Powers is a reference librarian in the local history department of the Cincinnati Public Library, a music fan and author. 

“The first time I went to Bogart’s was three days after I arrived to live in Cincinnati. This was late January 1995, and it was a Sunday night with Nick Lowe and Jim Lauderdale opening. Such a great show! I appreciated that Bogart’s allowed people who were under 21 years old to stand with the older concertgoers. For years, I went to the Boathouse in Norfolk, Virginia, and saw lots of great shows. But they kept the teenagers in a separate section and usually the younger crowd couldn’t stand in front of the stage, even though they paid the same ticket price. I liked that anyone of any age had the opportunity to see their band in front of the stage. Saw so many great shows – Flaming Lips come to mind. Another concert that I thought was incredible was Patti Smith, a performer who I know more about her legend than her music, but she put on an amazing show when she was in her fifties. Such intensity – much respect to her!

Chris Smith is a reference librarian in the local history department of the Cincinnati Public Library, as well as a punk historian who has attended several shows at Bogart’s. Here are some of his memories.

You had to be 18 to enter at a time.

Some shows of note:

Adam Vorobok is a reference librarian in the local history department of the Cincinnati Public Library who has frequented Bogart’s over the years.

In January of 2002, I was a college student at Ohio University and deeply in love. I had a perfect weekend set up: my parents, who were living in Cincy at the time, were out of town. I was going to take my crush to The Suicide Machines show at Bogart’s and we were going to stay at their house. The problem was I didn’t drive and needed my older brother to drive me home and he wanted to stay for the Mitch Hedberg comedy show. (Oh, how I regret this now, especially after learning the tickets were only $3). When she decided not to come with me, I still insisted on my brother taking me so I could buy her a shirt and get it autographed. Which I did. When I gave her the shirt, she looked mortified. And when I asked her out a few days later, she rejected me by shoving me to the ground. Oh, punk rock love.

Elliott Ruther is a musician and co-founder of the Cincinnati USA Music Heritage Foundation.

Bogart’s has been such a vitally important venue for the Cincinnati music scene for decades, in all its various names and iterations. Whether as a venue for touring acts, or for local bands, its history is unique and deserving of a historic marker, along with other music history happenings with its Short Vine neighbors. For me personally, my first memories were seeing friends in high school band competitions in the 1980s and metal festivals, along with Bo Diddley and George Thorogood (which I still think is the loudest concert I ever saw). Later, I enjoyed seeing local friends who had some real traction nationwide, like Bobby Gayol of Moth, headline Bogart’s shows. It is also a venue to experience pop-up shows of major acts in an intimate venue, like Bob Dylan in the late ‘90s or Jack White last year. Incidentally, if you find a bootleg of the Dylan show, you will get to hear Dylan deliver a stand-up comedy joke, as well as an enthusiastic fan in the mayor-to-be, John Cranley, with whom I went to that show. Otherwise, I have loved learning about all the shows and happenings from others who have shared their stories, like how often James Brown was there, to include developing bands from musicians playing there. Or, how Prince did a “secret show” there, which was in part a purposeful following in the footsteps of Mr. Brown. It is one of the real gems of our community, despite, or as demonstrated in, the debates about the venue and its changes. May it live on for another 50 years.

The post Bogart’s at 50: Musicians, Fans and Insiders Share Their Stories appeared first on Cincinnati CityBeat.