MANSFIELD — There will be something for everyone come Friday during Richland Source’s second Newsroom After Hours show.
The free music concert, hosted at Idea Works in Mansfield, will feature original songs by Madison Lang, Oddepoxy and Confusions.
Friday’s show is the second of this season, the others scheduled for June 17, Aug. 19 and Oct. 21.
Madison Lang
Lang will open the show with originals from her latest album, The Feather Bed.
Friday will be the first time she’s performed the songs, which were recorded on her phone “in one shot 04-08-2022 while babies slept,” she wrote on her Bandcamp profile.
“It’s just noisy all the time, I barely get a moment,” she said, adding her children are 2 years-old and 6 months-old.
But motherhood an occupation she loves, and it inspires her writing and producing style.
“It definitely changes the way I look at life, just the meaning and purpose in life,” she said. “My desire to write music is entirely different. Before, I just wanted to party, hang out with people, do shows. Now, I’m just doing it for myself, I’m doing it because I have something within me to share.”
Lang’s lulling electric guitar and crooning voice sounds raw, almost eerie.
“I enjoy the lo-fi sound. It’s like, whatever comes out is like an art piece, any mistakes I make are a part of it,” she said.
Lang has played the guitar for around a decade and started singing around seven years ago. She played in the bands Rico Ché and Trash World before becoming a mother.
She misses playing in a band, but has enjoyed the freedom from just putting headphones over her ears, picking up the electric guitar and hitting record on her phone.
“I just hope that when people hear my music that there’s a sense of peace and a moment of stillness in their own lives — and appreciate the art of being in the moment,” Lang said.
For a sampling of her music, click here.
FRIDAY NIGHT SET LIST:
– amsterdam-noord
– meridian
– space
– it’s all a mirage
Confusions
Confusions, a band hailing from Columbus, takes on a sound described by record label Earth Libraries as “lo-fi garage aesthetic with poppy melodies, funk rhythms and enticing harmony.”
Ben Turner, the band’s frontman who is an Elyria native, said he uses music as a coping skill and making music with other people (as a music therapist at work, or in his band) generates ideas for creative processes.
“I work with people trying to feel more human and comfortable in a really alienating, distressing situation or environment. And I’m trying to bring humanity into a tough situation through music,” he said of his job.
That’s why many of Turner’s song lyrics include messages of hope, grief, healing and a call to arms for justice.
Take “I’ve Seen,” for example. The song, paired with a video, was released Nov. 2, 2020, just one day before the presidential election to “capture the sense of urgency felt in this country for positive change.”
“I’ve seen protectors/hurt the ones they prize. I’ve seen these cloth cuts/draped on some old lies. I’ve seen racist killers in the news/end the black life, but you like the blues/Lock the border, but you eat the food.”
Turner writes all the music. He works with a variety of musicians for nearly every show, making for unique variations to established tunes.
“Sometimes we have a live drummer and sometimes we don’t,” he said. “I’m interested in taking sound sources, whether it be generated by a sample, an instrument or combining generative elements together in a piece.”
The process contains a lot of surprise, he said.
“And there’s joy in playing together. We work with a loose structure in that sense and that takes the pressure off that can, honestly, take the fun out of music,” Turner said.
Expect to see Turner and one other musician with him on Friday night performing two tracks off Confusions’ latest album, “Grounds.” The other four tunes are new, he said.
Listen: Bandcamp
FRIDAY NIGHT SET LIST:
– We Were Programmed to Fall in Love
– No Praise
– Paper Thin
– Real Long Sleeves
– Supernatural Favorites
– Grounds
Oddepoxy
Dance, metal, pop/power punk, alternative a little bit of math rock — Oddepoxy’s sound takes whatever form its music creators are feeling.
“We’re both pretty … well, we have some ADD tendencies. And we like a lot of different music,” said Orie Rush, the band’s frontman.
Rush and Lee McIntosh started the band while students at Mansfield Christian High School. They were known as The Brain Brothers back then, and Rush said the duo pursued a more progressive rock style in the early days.
That was around 14 years ago. Through the years, a bassist — Alex Montgomery — came and went, changed its name to capture something that more aptly describes their evolving sound and put out a full album and multiple singles.
Oddepoxy’s first album, which adopted the band’s new moniker, took a progressive rock sound, even though its creators weren’t all that into the form.
“Lee or I don’t really like prog rock in its classic form,” Rush said. “But it was a lot of fun, it allowed us to explore a lot of styles. As it’s gone on, we have more fun with it.”
And that pretty much sums up Oddepoxy’s existence.
“That’s the main reason to do music, just to have fun and enjoy it — not to get too serious with it,” Rush said, adding the band pursues challenges in making sounds they love hearing.
Visit the band’s Bandcamp page and you’ll hear songs that capture totally different — but equally enjoyable — vibes.
Take Oddepoxy’s hardcore metal song: Meat, a track released in November 2020 about a sinister fictional family who lives in the woods and hunts turkeys.
It features aggressive rhythmic guitar, layered growling vocals and a breakdown featuring Rush’s low-end scream about cutting the meat from the body of a turkey’s corpse.
“It’s always been a joke,” Rush said, laughing about the song he and McIntosh wrote while still in high school in an earlier iteration of the band. “We always say we’ve been a metal band, but that we haven’t come out yet. Like a closet medal band.”
Find more about Oddepoxy here.
FRIDAY NIGHT SET LIST:
– Fickle Author
– Third Lung
– To the Arch
– Cicadas
– Who’s Got the Money?
– Feel the Way I Do
– Feel the Way You Do
– Algebra
Show details
Newsroom After Hours is hosted at Idea Works, 40 W. 4th St. in Mansfield. Admission to the show is free and includes complimentary beer and food. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. with performances starting around 7 p.m.
The concert is made possible through sponsors, including Mechanics Bank (presenting sponsor), Doc’s Deli (food), Phoenix Brewing Company (beer) and Potent Studios (lights and visual production).
