Weirs, Hour & Channel Marker
Tuesday, December 9, 2025 | 7:30pm
The Perch
(2321 Emerald St,, Philadelphia, PA. 19125)
$10-20 sliding scale
Weirs is an experimental/traditional music collective from central North Carolina. Non-hierarchical in form, past Weirs performances have included anywhere from two to twelve people. This Weirs lineup—neither definitive nor precious—includes Oliver Child-Lanning; Justin Morris and Libby Rodenbough (his collaborators in Sluice); Evan Morgan, Courtney Werner, and Mike DeVito of Magic Tuber Stringband; and stalwarts Andy McLeod, Alli Rogers, and Oriana Messer.
The Weirs project began as tape experiments on traditional tunes Child-Lanning made under the name Pluviôse in winter 2019. This evolved into the first Weirs record, Prepare to Meet God, which was self-released in July 2020 and was a collaboration between Child-Lanning and Morris during COVID. The strange conditions of that debut—a communal tradition of live songs recorded apart in isolation—are undone by Diamond Grove, a record rooted in the unrepeatable convergence of people, place, and time. On the new record, Weirs continue their search for how best to forward, uphold, and unshackle so-called “traditional” music. They are songcatchers, gathering tunes on the verge of obscure death. Their wild, centuries-spanning repertoire plays like an avant-call-the-tune session—a kind of Real Book for a scene fluent in porch jams, Big Blood, Amps for Christ, and Jean Ritchie. Weirs catch songs whose interpretive canon still feels ajar—open enough to stand next to but never above those who’ve sung them before. These aren’t attempts at definitive versions. The recordings on Diamond Grove feel like visitations rather than revisions. And the question Weirs asks on this record is not how to simply continue the tradition of their forebears, but how traditional music could sound today. For Weirs, the history of this tradition could be taken less from the folk revival than from musique concrète; less from pristine old master recordings than something like The Shadow Ring if they’d come from the evangelical South.
Hour:
Subminiature, the new live album by Philadelphia instrumental chamber folk ensemble Hour, comes fresh off the heels of 2024’s ‘Ease the Work’ and provides a capstone for the band’s oeuvre to date, brandishing new material alongside long standing arrangements of pieces from 2018’s ‘Anemone Red’ and ‘Tiny Houses’, the inaugural releases of Dear Life Records.
Across this collection of recordings harvested over two years of extensive DIY touring, bandleader/composer Michael Cormier-O’Leary demonstrates a deep understanding of the character of his shifting ensemble and its players. Subminiature also serves as a hard worn tour diary, cataloguing concerts that were affectionately curated to highlight the strength of the music; at once adventurous and melodic and insistent upon spaces that encourage deeper connection. These tours saw the group performing in movie theaters, on islands, in machine shops and parking garages, crowded bars and living rooms, churches and theaters. Invariably, the music expands and contracts to match the space the ensemble is performing in. Recorded on a range of recording devices, this impressive live album highlights the focus and dynamism of a hardworking, fluid ensemble.
Channel Marker:
Channel Marker are Shaina Kapeluck, Roger Martinez and Benjamin Schurr, members of Song People, Luna Honey and Interminables.
Vocals, harmonium and contrabass. Songs about death, the sea, death at sea and talking animals.
accessibility: two steps from street to venue.
Please note, entrance is via the side door on Arizona Street.