The Felice Brothers
2024-07-25 19:00 - 23:30 (America/New_York)
Doors 7 p.m. | Show 8 p.m.
All Ages; + $3 at the door if under 21

The Felice Brothers first emerged from the Hudson Valley nearly two decades ago with a gloriously ramshackle sound that drew on everything from Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan to Walt Whitman and Flannery O’Connor. In just a few short years, the group went from busking in the subway to playing Radio City Music Hall with Bright Eyes and appearing everywhere from the Newport Folk Festival to Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble. Beginning with 2007’s Tonight At The Arizona, the band helped pave the way for the modern folk revival, while at the same time challenging its boundaries and conventions with bold sonic experimentation and unyielding integrity. The New York Times likened their music to “the rootsy mysticism of the Band,” while Rolling Stone praised the “scrappiness” of their “folk-rock noir,” and The Guardian hailed their songs as “impeccably crafted, with literary-minded lyrics that are both playful and profound.”
The band’s newest record, Valley of Abandoned Songs, marks The Felice Brothers’ debut for Conor Oberst’s new Million Stars label and showcases the group at their most intimate and unvarnished. Balancing hope and despair in equal measure, the album explores the search for meaning and connection through the eyes of a wide-ranging cast of misfits and outcasts, and though the recordings here span several years of almost-lost tunes, the result is a thoroughly cohesive collection that manages to feel both utterly timeless and particularly attuned to the present all at once.

The Mountain Goats w/ Field Medic
2024-07-26 19:00 - 23:00 | The Agora, 5000 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, OH, 44103, United States
Doors 7 p.m. | Show 8 p.m.
All Ages

Maybe you are just like John Darnielle: In the depths of the pandemic winter at the end of 2020, the Mountain Goatsfrontman passed the time trapped at home in North Carolina watching pulpy action movies, finding comfort in familiar tropes and sofabound escapism. But you are not really like John Darnielle, unless the action movies you found comfort in included French thrillers like 2008’s Mesrine, vintage Italianpoliziotteschi,or the 1974 Donald Pleasence mad-scientist vehicle The Freakmaker. Or unless watching them brought you back to your formative days as an artist, when watching films fueled and soundtracked your songwriting jags and bare-bones home recordings and in turn inspired your 20th album to be a song cycle about the allure—and futility—of vengeance. But there’s no shame in not being like John Darnielle; few people are.“On earlier tapes you’ll find these sound samples,” Darnielle says. “‘Oh, where’s this sample from?’ It’s from whatever movie I was watching while I was sitting around on the couch with a guitar. I watch a movie, somebody’d say something that I like the sound of and I’ll write that phrase down. And then I would pause the VHS, write the song, record the song on a boombox, and go back to watching my movie. I got into doing that again; I just kept watching action movies and taking notes on what they’re about and on what the governing plots and tropes and styles are. It was very much like an immersion method acting technique.”The resulting performance is Bleed Out,a cinematic experience unto itself. One song about preparing to exact bloody revenge begat another song about the act of exacting bloody revenge and then more songs about and the causes and the aftermath of being driven to exact bloody revenge, each delivered with the urgency and desperation deserving of their narrators and circumstances.Just as Getting Into Knives and Dark in Here—recorded in Memphis and Muscle Shoals, respectively, in the first two weeks of March 2020, just before such a thing would become impossible—were heavily informed and influenced by their historic settings, Bleed Out is all pent-up energy and explosion, executed by a bunch of friends who were mainly happy to be in a room together making loud noises. In January 2021, just weeks after Darnielle had started writing, his bandmates Peter Hughes, Matt Douglas, and Jon Wurster joined him at a studio in the woods near his home in Chapel Hill. Everything was finished inside a week.“We often make a record and then bring in some guests who flesh out the textures,” Darnielle says. “And for this one, it was very much like a pack mentality. That sort of seemed to proceed from the songs.” One new face was that of Bully’s Alicia Bognanno, recommended to Darnielle by his manager as a producer who could help nurture the rougher-edged sound these songs requested. “We met up and hit it off. She’s a great guitarist. It was kind of just a lark, to see what would happen, and it was totally great.”That abandon is on full display from the opening track, “Training Montage,” which lovingly documents the getting-ready-for-battle scene in any action movie regardless of provenance and loudly declares its intentions: “I’m doing this for revenge.” This and the next song, “Mark on You,” were the first two Darnielle wrote, and they set the tone for everything that follows on Bleed Out.
Running narrative themes are not new to Mountain Goats projects, especially in recent years, be it the pro wrestlers of 2015’s Beat the Champor the goths of 2017’s Goths. Darnielle was drawn to the antiheroes of the hard-boiled action flicks he was bingeing, particularly the ways in which their quests for justice were almost all inevitably doomed.“In these movies and elsewhere, it’s such a dearly held trope, when in fact, I don’t think anybody really exacts much revenge in this life at all,” he says. “Because we all know that revenge is bullshit, right? The Greeks knew this. It’s never a zero-sum game. And yet the idea is so delicious, you can’t get enough of it. It’s more of a grail—because you can’t have it, it starts to seem really appealing. That’s why you want to get revenge, because you know you’re never going to get revenge.”Bleed Out could be all one movie, from the opening training montage to the demise in the elegiac closing title track. Songs like “Make You Suffer,” “First Blood,” “Hostages,” and “Need More Bandages” do what they say on the tin, telling typically vivid, deliberately recognizable vignettes of desperate characters in no-win situations who plan on taking as many people down with them as they have to. But Darnielle sees these as unconnected stories that feel universal in their desire for justice, if not in their wanton bloodshed. Anthems don’t get more straightforward or anthem-y than “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome,” tapping into an anger that’s easy to reach in 2022, even if the solutions aren’t.Few people think as much, or as well, about violence and its portrayal as John Darnielle. His recent bestselling novel Devil House(his third) is all about the relationship between tragedy and entertainment, though he is careful to downplay any parallels to Bleed Out beyond a natural attraction to terrible things as a coping mechanism.“That’s what catharsis is,” he says. “When you are able to experience something that is frightening to you but you don’t have to be harmed by it—that experience is really valuable. I think we’re reflecting on the nature of what we consume and of what it says about us.”

Jerry Harrison & Adrian Belew: Remain In Light w/ Cool Cool Cool
2024-07-28 18:30 - 23:00 | The Agora, 5000 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, OH, 44103, United States
Doors 6:30 p.m. | Show 7:30 p.m.
ALL AGES
For those hoping that Talking Heads would announce a reunion tour since they started being able to be in the same room together again, there’s been no word of that. However, Heads guitarist/keyboardist Jerry Harrison and ancillary member Adrian Belew have announced more dates of their Remain in Light tour where they’re playing the band’s classic fourth album in full. Cool Cool Cool opens.

City Stages 2024: Bia Ferreira
2024-07-31 19:30 - 21:00 | Transformer Station, 2811 Church Ave, Clevland, OH, 44113, United States
City Stages, the Cleveland Museum of Art’s acclaimed free outdoor summer concert series featuring the best in global music, returns to Hingetown with three dynamic performances in July. These block parties take place in front of Transformer Station. Each begins at 7:30 p.m.
Bia Ferreira, a Brazilian singer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist, stands out for her innovative approach to combining Afrodiasporic rhythms—like soul, R & B, reggae, and rap—with Brazilian music—such as samba and repente. She is known for her lyrics addressing racism, women’s rights, and LGBTQIAP+ rights. She broke into public consciousness in 2017 with the track “Cota Não é Esmola,” which highlights the importance of the quota system for the black Brazilian population’s access to the country’s universities. In addition to the 13 million views on YouTube and several million Spotify plays, the song became mandatory reading for the University of Brasília’s entrance exam. Ferreira was nominated for the 2018 Women in Music Awards. This evening, she performs with her trio.
Seating is limited—bring camp chairs and enjoy an evening of music and dancing in the street. Free parking is available in the Lutheran Hospital lot located at West 28th Street and Franklin Boulevard. Transformer Station is located at 1460 West 29th Street (at the corner of Church Avenue), Cleveland, OH 44113. Transformer Station remains open until 9:00 p.m. during City Stages.

Lambrini Girls w/ Blossom Park
2024-08-02 19:00 - 23:30 | Beachland Ballroom, 15711 Waterloo Rd., Cleveland, OH, 44110, United States
Doors 7 p.m. | Show 8 p.m.
ALL AGES
Flying the nest with a dream to curate slut vibes nationwide, Lambrini Girls became the gayest band to ever win 50 consecutive Eurovision contests in a row. With inspirations drawn from shit punk to noise rock ; not only do Lambrini Girls plan on setting your bin on firethey want to create spaces at shows for anyone who feels like there isn’t a place for them there already. No one deserves to feel uncomfortable, no one deserves to feel invisible, start conversations with your mates, never let anyone stop you existing authentically and most importantly: Gays to the front!

Together Pangea Celebrates 10 Years of Badillac w/ Liily
2024-08-13 19:00 - 23:30 | Grog Shop, 2785 Euclid Heights Boulevard, Cleveland Heights, OH, 44106, United States
Doors 7 p.m. | Show 8 p.m.
All Ages; + $3 at the door if under 21
Since they began jamming back in William’s Santa Clarita bedroom, Los Angeles indie band Together Pangea have continually challenged themselves with each subsequent offering. Jelly Jam [2010] poured the gasoline, Living Dummy [2011] struck the match, and Badillac [2014] lit the fire with its revved-up nineties rock-inspired flames. Along the way, fan favorites like “Sick Shit,” “Badillac,” and “Offer” would rack up millions of Spotify streams, while the group received support from Consequence of Sound, Pitchfork, MTV, Stereogum, and more. Following the 2015 release of The Phage EP, produced by The Replacements’ Tommy Stinson, these working class boys embarked on the journey to what would become 2017’s Bulls and Roosters, which evidenced their growth as a tried-and-true rock band with just the right amount of “brattiness,” as they like to say.
Together Pangea— William Keegan, Danny Bengston, and Erik Jimenez— return in 2021 having made the most of 2020’s turbulence by writing and recording DYE, an upbeat, undeniable collection of hooks, anthems, and power-pop garage-rock catchiness that isunmistakably the album of their career.
DYE is an amalgam of the band’s last three records: theinward looking and self-pleasing experimentation of 2017’s Bulls and Roosters, the frantic and scream-y Badillac with its inspiration from emotionally raw grunge, and the 50’s pop heavy 2011 album Living Dummy. After more than a decade as Together Pangea, the band know how their bread is buttered and made an effort to focus on what they know they do best.

Angie McMahon w/ Mimi Gilbert
2024-08-17 19:30 - 23:30 | Grog Shop, 2785 Euclid Heights Boulevard, Cleveland Heights, OH, 44106, United States
Doors 7:30 p.m. | Show 8:30 p.m.
All Ages; + $3 at the door if under 21
To make her new album, Light, Dark, Light Again, Angie McMahon had to walk through the fire. The Melbourne singer-songwriter’s second LP was written from the ashes of a tough but transformative few years of relationship changes, private breakdowns and core-shaking revelations about self. At times, McMahon felt like falling apart. But instead, she pushed through and found that hope, joy and relief lies on the other side of pain.
The inevitability of change, the push and pull and between light and dark, and the natural cycles of the world are all over Light, Dark, Light Again, which marks McMahon’s step into a bolder, bigger, brighter expanse of sound than she has utilised before. Whether she is documenting her own metamorphosis on Saturn Returning, rumbling with rage, power and reverence for the earth on Mother Nature, celebrating release on Letting Go or pledging to step into the bravest version of herself on Exploding, McMahon’s songs feel like a triumph; music that buoys and cradles you.
Light, Dark, Light Again is a record about facing the fear and learning it can be a portal to something bigger and better. It finds that the only certainty in life is that everything ends, and everything begins again – that there is life and death and life again, that there is light and dark and light again.

The Linda Lindas
2024-09-03 18:00 - 23:30 | Beachland Ballroom, 15711 Waterloo Rd., Cleveland, OH, 44110, United States
Doors 6 p.m. | Show 7 p.m.
ALL AGES
The Linda Lindas debut album, Growing Up was released in 2022 to wide critical praise with The New York Times calling it “a combination of wholesome and fierce” and Pitchfork hailing it as “the most heartwarming record of the year.” Since its release they’ve performed on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, CBS Mornings, Tiny Desk, James Corden and appeared in the pages of Vogue, W Mag, The New York Times and in fashion campaigns for Opening Ceremony and Rodarte. The Linda Lindas spent most of 2022 and 2023 on a world tour including playing shows with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Japanese Breakfast and Paramore and will spend the summer of 2024 opening for Green Day.

WRUW Telethon 2025
2025-04-07 00:00 - 2025-04-13 23:59 | WRUW-FM 91.1 Cleveland, 11220 Bellflower Rd, Cleveland, OH, 44106, United States
Telethon is coming! This is the one time a year we ask for your help to grow and improve WRUW-FM. Support us by donating online NOW or make a donation by calling in during Telethon week! Visit telethon.wruw.org now to donate to your favorite shows and check out the awesome new premiums we’re offering as gifts for your donation. You’ll be hearing our DJs pitch to you all this week so please excuse any change in our normal 24/7, 365 days a week, programming. Which happens, by the way, because of support from listeners like you.
About 60% of our annual operating budget comes from Telethon. Past telethons have paid for our increase to 15,000 watts, our web streaming, our archives, our digital signal, new studios, and last year a brand new transmitter! This year, it’s our goal to raise another $91k to pay for the installation of this massive piece of metal!
From April 7 at 12 a.m. though April 13 at 11:59 p.m., listeners can donate online at telethon.wruw.org or by calling 216.368.2208 from 8 a.m. until 10 p.m. each day.

2025 Premium Pick-Up Party!
2025-05-10 12:00 - 17:00 | Jolly Scholar, 11111 Euclid Ave, Cleveland, OH, 44106, United States
It’s back for our fifth year!
It’s our annual Premium Pick-Up Party! Come meet your favorite station members, tour the station, and get your premiums before anyone else. Free food and a free drink (any draft beer, well drink, or milkshake) for everyone that donates at least $25. We’ll send an email to everyone who donated and of course announce it over the Cleveland airwaves. Come on down and party with your favorite college radio station in Cleveland Ohio that has the frequency 91.1 MHz. Stay tuned to WRUW for the latest updates!

What: Our fifth annual pick-up party
When: May 10, 2025 from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Where: Jolly Scholar, 11111 Euclid Ave, Cleveland, OH 44106
What do I get: Everyone who donated at least $25 will get a free drink ticket for a beer, well drink, or soft drink as well as a wristband for free food, including boneless wings, pizza, and pretzel bites
Do I have to donate to attend: Nope! Though you will not receive a free drink or free food.
Can I donate there: Yes! We will have a limited number of premiums still available on site. Or you can just donate and not receive a premium.
Where can I park: Street parking (free on weekends!) is available along Bellflower Rd. and East Blvd. and garage parking is available in Lot 29 ($2.00/hour). You can also take the RTA HealthLine, which will drop you off right in front, or Red Line to Little Italy and walk a short distance.
Will there be more music and fewer hits: Yes! Some of your favorite WRUW DJ’s will be spinning tunes throughout the party
What if I can’t make it: We will begin shipping out remaining premiums the following day. You will receive an email when it ships. Keep in mind we had a very successful year and may take some time for our volunteer staff to get everything out the door.
How did the platypus get its name: The common name “platypus” literally means ‘flat-foot’, deriving from the Greek word platúpous (πλατύπους), from platús (πλατύς ‘broad, wide, flat’) and poús (πούς ‘foot’).

Studio-A-Rama 2025
2025-09-06 13:00 - 23:00 | WRUW-FM 91.1 Cleveland, 11220 Bellflower Rd, Cleveland, OH, 44106, United States
