This article originally appeared in PureHoney Magazine. Check them out here.
Against the changing tides of tastes and major label-driven drivel, Postcards from Paradise returns for a serious dose of incredible indie music. The music “festival” — a quirky wife of sorts to West Palm Beach’s Bumblefest (both presented by PureHoney) — comes back strong with one of last year’s headliners leading the charge on Friday, April 12 at Respectable Street in Downtown West Palm.
Scaled down to one night from 2023’s two-day event, Postcards presents Scott Yoder with a full band in tow, a contrast from last year’s intimate solo performance.
“I tried a new thing in 2023 by touring solo with backing tracks, a self-controlled light show, and a guitar,” Yoder said. “Completely out there, on my own with nowhere to hide. It was a bit frightening of course, but I was in a place where I had to take ownership of my songs and see how far I could go with them on my own.”
Yoder exists on an astral creative plane bridging the visuals and sounds of glam era rock and a heartfelt saccharine pop informed by the quiet distances of the Interstate Highway System. He is one of the hardest working musicians anywhere, and though he’s been regaining pre-pandemic momentum, the forced hiatus left its mark.
“I had about a year and a half without playing shows,” Yoder says. “So, my process was limited to brief, socially distanced recording sessions with one other musician/producer, Bryant Moore. Together, we completed my third album over the pandemic, and I released it without a tour, which was very alien to me. This newer album was much more traditionally conceived: demos, rehearsals, a little mini tour with a band to flesh it out.”
The albums are 2022’s Wither on Hollywood & Vine and the recently released Scooter Pie. For the former, Yoder took to the old basement/home studio approach to recording by revisiting pre-Covid singles, a process he found “fulfilling” as the album took shape. “I got to make them fit together like I always intended to, but it was a place that felt I had already been before,” he said.
For Scooter Pie, Yoder took a maximalist approach for the new batch of songs that he developed during a West Coast tour with a full band backing him and by recording it with numerous musicians he had never worked with before. The result is a fully fleshed slab of infinitely enjoyable and transformative music that pushes and pulls correctly through bouts of joy, nostalgia, and self-reflection echoing a golden era of the listener’s choosing.
Even the cover art evokes Laverne and Shirley’s madcap supermarket spree and Agent Dale Cooper’s favorite things about the town of Twin Peaks. The truth is far more innocuous: “Scooter Pie” was the childhood nickname Yoder’s mom bestowed upon him.
“I never adopted a stage name and that was done with intentionality,” he said. “I have to paint my face and wear a fanciful outfit to feel like I am truly being myself. Touring is where I get to be that all the time, onstage with my band and the audience or offstage with the various missions and challenges of being on the road.”
Now hardwired into his identity, Yoder is embarking on a relentless, show-per-night schedule that has him and the band hitting every major market in the US from mid-March through the end of April. His work ethic, unbroken by global situations and strengthened by an ability to adapt quickly, is as much a part of his identity as his stage look. A trait he says, “can’t be wiped off.”
New to a South Florida stage — but not new to South Florida audiences is St. Augustine’s ISYA, the harsh electronic experimental industrial punk rock solo noise project by Jake Brown. Brown, formerly of 238, Moments in Grace, Decahedron, and more, brings 18 years of tried and true, on-the-fly, performance-driven audio terrorism, creating a controlled chaos of sights and sounds that have on numerous occasions melted the faces off the esteemed lions guarding St. Augustine’s historic bridge on the Matanzas River.
Delray’s Zippur joins the fun with a snotty, sarcastic take that is more interested in deveining psychedelia’s sacred cows than myth-building — a refreshing dose of rock that reigns in excess while coasting on a melancholic wave of chaos at a frenetic pace.
Also on the bill will be Wilton Manors’ pop balladeers, Sweet Bronco, South Florida via Delaware lo-fi indie soul popsters tiny.blips, and the raucous cavalcade of anti-folk psychedelia as presented by Hollywood, FL’s King of Civic Duty and Action, Mr. Entertainment and his revered Pookiesmackers. Buy tickets here.
