For this series of articles, our writer Ty Maxwell will be documenting his tour of the Northeast, spanning from August 6th to September 8th. Maxwell will be writing reflections and insights into the process of booking and executing a DIY tour as an independent artist, the relationships that enable the whole enterprise, and the general day-to-day experience: the minutiae, difficulties and triumphs involved in touring as a solo musician.
Day Eight: Wednesday, August 13th, 2025 – The Avalon Lounge (Catskill, NY) with Gracie Gray, Blue Ranger
I left the cabin early in the morning and continued my weird back-and-forth east-and-west zig-zag across New England, this time heading southwest to Red Hook, New York, to begin the day. I was going there to conduct an interview with a painter, for a different website I sometimes work for. We would be meeting for the first time. (That's another cool thing about doing the solo tour; I can easily fit stuff like this in without holding any bandmates hostage, and take my time.) After a couple hours of winding roads dotted with self-serve vegetable stands and signs for dairy farms – and breakfast at a classic Silk City diner – I met the painter at his beautiful red-barn studio, which he shares with his wife, also a painter. It was all totally idyllic and wholesome and inspiring: the best possible way to kick things off and to reawaken any sleepy desires to get in front of people and perform songs. It was ultimately a reminder that art and creativity can be your life’s work. Before leaving, I told the painter about my show at Avalon. He said he’d try to swing by, which he did: a sweet, random connection that could only have happened under these circumstances.
I left Red Hook and drove straight to my friends Anna and Nick’s house in Catskill, which they’d left open for me (I’ve stayed here many times previously). Anna is another sweet random connection, a friend of a friend who took Zoom guitar lessons from me during Covid before we eventually discovered we went to the same college and had several mutual buds. After many consecutive days of perfectly swimmable weather, my luck finally ran out in the form of severe afternoon thunderstorms. I alternated between napping on the couch and idly strumming my banjo to the tune of Magnolia Electric Co.’s “Hold On, Magnolia,” until it was time to load in.
To say I was anticipating tonight's show with extra eagerness would be an understatement. I really love both Gracie Gray and Blue Ranger, and The Avalon Lounge is one of my favorite places to play or hang; this was my third time performing there, and I often go out of my way when traveling this region to stop in for a drink and a heaping portion of bibimbap. The place rules, simple as that. I’ve known the Blue Ranger twin brothers Josh and Evan Marré for close to ten years now and Gray since ‘22, and getting this bill organized felt like a life hack: I manifested a show that I would have eagerly attended whether or not I was performing.
Gray took the stage solo, standing and playing acoustic guitar and singing, with electronic beats and vocal effects engaged by foot switches. She’s got a vocal range that must be several octaves; we’re talking about one of the more powerful, commanding singers I’ve ever seen up close, full stop. She doesn’t unleash it too much in her own songs, which are catchy and grooving, but just like when I last saw her sing, in Los Angeles two years ago, she covered “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” in utterly show-stopping, breathtaking, hair-raising fashion, going off-mic as she reached the absolute height of her register, with the casual control and vibrato of a natural songbird. It was jaw-dropping.
Blue Ranger – the Marré bros, with Connor Armbruster and Matt Griffin – recently released a live album, The Yea, which is especially ambitious in scope: a 40-plus-minute group improvisation, with their four members switching instruments throughout the performance, captured and never to be replicated again, achieving a collective fury and grandeur through droning overdriven electronics, scraping fiddle, whining guitars and painterly drums. Last night, they showed up as a three-piece, sans-drummer (Griffin), with bouzouki, acoustic guitars, fiddle and upright bass. I love this band in part because they’re as down to launch into an extended free-improv go-anywhere-because-anything-goes jam as they are at playing and composing their own versions of old-time or traditional Irish fiddle tunes. That kind of musical omnivore thing is completely my bag. The band played a mixture of Josh’s impressionistic folk-rock songs, stripped to acoustic essentials, and some instrumental tunes, in a hushed, gentle, nocturnal way that is completely dreamlike. To share the stage with these artists, at one of my favorite best-kept-secret venues in the whole country, is in the upper stratosphere of the best I could hope for on a trip like this; I’m so happy it went down.
