'Live at Thawed Out' ... is out!
The first Minor Moon live record is out today on Bandcamp. Our release show with Lily Seabird is Saturday, April 11th at The Hideout in Chicago.
Welcome to everyone who is tuning in for the first time. And for everyone else, hi, it’s been a while. So long in fact, that I think it’s worth reintroducing this newsletter, Light Up Schmaltz.
I’ve been writing with varying degrees of consistency for the past year and a half on here. Some highlights:
the time I got fired from a wedding gig for calling for a free Palestine on Passover.
Zohran, the politics of inevitability, AI, the streaming economy, art making & agency.
helping to organize a Chicago music exodus / divestment from Spotify
My goals for the future of this space are: to continue to tap into a sense of exploration and discovery outside of writing and performing songs, to share demos and other musical tidbits that wouldn’t easily live elsewhere, to deepen my engagement with what I’ve been reading, to find or conjure something meaningful—and even hopeful—about current events, or just to share something I’ve noticed about the process of making music and being a person. This space is also sometimes just a way to get the word out about an upcoming show or tour & get info to folks who are interested in staying in the loop without the mediation of an algorithm.
I’m writing today to announce the release of Live at Thawed Out on Bandcamp (CD & digital download), a live recording of a show we performed on April 26th, 2025 as a part of the inaugural Thawed Out festival in Chicago. The record comes out via Chicago’s Truth Zone Records who curated and organized the fest last year.
The performance features The Light Up Waltz core album band: that’s me on guitar and vocals with Jason Ashworth on bass guitar and harmonies, Max Subar on pedal steel and harmonies, Sam Subar on drum kit and Chet Zenor on guitar.
The performance was recorded by Richard Hayes, (see Richard’s extensive & heady archive at milwaukeetaper.com) with a stereo pair of Beyerdynamic MC930s in ORTF & a rip from the soundboard. Richard sent over the tracks a few months after the festival. I’d completely forgotten he’d asked to record the set so it was a pleasant surprise to hear from him. When I listened to the performance though, I was really taken by the moment he captured. There’s something about this performance that feels really unfussy and joyful. I hit up my dear bud Dave Vettraino and we ran it through his tape machine and some other fun gear and got it sounding extra juicy.
Garrett Luczak absolutely crushed the design and layout on the album artwork and CD packaging. Take a look:
We’ll be celebrating with a release show co-bill with Lily Seabird at The Hideout this very Saturday, April 11th. Get your tickets right here right now.
I’ve decided to keep this live record off of the big streaming platforms for a few reasons that might be obvious to anyone who’s read this newsletter before. First off, like most people I know who make records right now, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about those streaming platforms: how they are actively invested in the machinations of technofascist surveillance and war-making, how they nudge us all to “lean back” and treat music as content for behavioral manipulation and training data for AI. How they do not compensate artists fairly.1 2
Secondly, while I do stream music (currently I’m on Qobuz, which I like better than the others), I’ve really enjoyed getting back into CDs this year. There is something about the friction of physical media that helps me feel more present with what I’m listening to. I had to choose to put the disc in. Listening to more CDs seems to have even helped retrain my brain to treat albums the albums I only have access to on streaming more like CDs or records when I put them on.
For a live release like this, it honestly felt like a no-brainer to keep this one on Bandcamp.3 If doing so nudges anyone towards more attentive listening habits, or more interested in trying out CDs again, that feels like a genuine victory. I know that fewer people will hear the record when it’s released this way, but I am interested in pushing away of the norms of the last decade of platform dominance. I’m trying to take part in a movement away from the algorithm in my small way.4 And while I’m not sure how I’ll approach distribution of an album of new songs in the future, I do hope the landscape and industry norms look different when that time comes.
I don’t consider myself an expert on the state of the music industry. But I’m interested in learning more about what people are doing out there. Have you seen any creative approaches to releasing music that have inspired you to change your listening habits in any way? Let us all know in the comments or shoot me an email at minormoonmusic@gmail.com.
Finally, happy Pesach to those who celebrate. Here is a quote that interrogates the very concept of freedom in a way that I can’t unthink and that feels both urgent and ancient. It’s from great contemporary Iranian-American writer Kaveh Akbar’s novel Martyr! which I loved and wrestled with a lot this past year.
“The whole Abrahamic world invests itself in this promise: Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t fuck or steal or kill, and you’ll be a good person. Eight of the ten commandments are about what thou shalt not. But you can live a whole life not doing any of that stuff and still avoid doing any good. That’s the whole crisis. The rot at the root of everything. The belief that goodness is built on a constructed absence, not-doing. That belief corrupts everything, has everyone with any power sitting on their hands. A rich man goes a whole day without killing a single homeless person and so goes to sleep content in his goodness. In another world, he’s buying crates of socks and Clif bars and tents, distributing them in city centers. But for him, abstinence reigns.”
Peace,
Sam
Over a 100 Chicago artists signed onto an open letter divesting music from Spotify. I wrote about that action here.
Meanwhile, I’m by no means claiming any kind moral purity. Even Substack, which I have tended to see as a lesser evil than “traditional” algorithm-first social media platforms, has partnered with the bet-on-anything platform Polymarket. I’m not interested in supporting any company that is attempting to turn reality into more of a casino than it already is under this era of capitalism. And yet, here I am. It’s a partnership that truly sucks. I hope it isn’t a harbinger of the enshitification of this platform, but I’d bet (fuck it, pun intended) that it very well might be. At least, since this is subscriber-based with real email addresses (unlike Instagram, etc.) if I ever choose to park this newsletter elsewhere, I can invite you to come along.