$15 admission / $12 advance / 7:30 doors / 8pm start
Indie Rock show promoting the new EP from Cambridge based Jonny Tex -- "Mark of Cain", 4 songs that are vignettes about the odd things people do under pressure.
Jonny Tex
is an indie rock band from Boston, Massachusetts, assembled from the wreckage of a messy country cover act and rebuilt with tighter songs, dry humor, and a steadier hand on the wheel. Their music runs on earnest absurdism and slacker pop precision, Western undertones woven through East Coast restraint. More sermon than confession.
Mark of Cain, out May 28 via Austin label Happen Twice, is four songs about men performing as someone larger than themselves: insisting everything's fine, shutting people out, picking fights with their own reflection. The EP moves through a cast of vignettes — wide-eyed indie rock, alt-western isolation, lovesick indecision, and a Dinosaur Jr.-inspired closer about getting tripped up by jealousy. The whole thing is held together by misguided sincerity and cheap heroism.
Frontman Tex, a former youth pastor in training, writes as someone who mistakes confidence for clarity. The narrator is more amused than sympathetic, and not entirely off the hook himself. In under a year, the band has opened for Guerrilla Toss, French Cassettes, and The Thing, played six showcases at SXSW 2026, and headlines Boston's Lilypad on release night.
the clearwater swimmers
In the fall of 2024, The Clearwater Swimmers (split between New York and New England) tied their self-titled debut tightly to the changing affect of the season. Ten songs crafted to echo in woody interiors, soundtrack a leaf-peeping stroll, or wade into stoned and fuzzy reflection, introduced the group as a new face in the alternative rock scene. The album received warm and widespread critical acclaim: Seasons, the result of this effort and their sophomore release, arrived on March 20th via New Martian Records, the band’s own small-form record label. Collaboratively written, and recorded in June 2025 at the Garrett Linck's farmhouse (touring member for Greg Freeman and Lily Seabird, conservationist, and moonlight engineer,) these songs reinforce and expand their blend of hazy alternative and modern americana, while still bearing the individualistic stamp of Bright’s voice and lyricism. In the nineteen minute collection, Bright casts a wide net on themes of age and youth, adjustment, and ambition. From the languid and smoky daydreaming of the jazz-lounge title track “Seasons,” to the distorted squalls punctuating a tragic narrative in the first single “Landline,” the EP is a mosaic of little stories, each one determined to explore their own purpose. @theclearwaterswimmers
