High Tea, Michael Grabner
Doors 6:30PM / Show 7:30PM
Seated show
$12ADV / $15DOS
High Tea, the folk-punk “story-yelling” duo hailing from Massachusetts, is what happens when a yarn-spinning blues guitarist meets a harmony-obsessed punk. Isabella DeHerdt and Isaac Eliot have come together to fill spaces with homegrown tales and booming vocals. Their songs are ripe with existential angst, weaving narratives of growing up, going wild, and always coming back to the ones you love.
Their previous releases, Scuba Diving, Old Cowboy, and The Wick And The Flame were featured on playlists, radio shows, and publications like The Boston Globe, andThe Greenfield Recorder (among others). The title track of Old Cowboy led them to be chosen as one of WBUR’s top 4 Massachusetts Tiny Desk entries of 2022. They toured The Wick And The Flame on the West Coast, in New England, and throughout other US States and received write ups from Atwood’s Magazine, The Boston Herald, and more. They were nominated for the New England Music Awards Best Americana Act in 2023, and were selected to perform in the Grassy Hill Emerging Artist Showcase at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in 2025.
Despite its name, there’s nothing little about High Tea’s upcoming album, A Small Notion. Listeners are led through an inspiringly personal journey, from the disoriented yearning of loss, to an appreciation of the brutal realities of rough living, to tender reflections on past mistakes, to an ultimate acceptance of the all-too-human need for community and care. As ever, the Massachusetts duo is heavily committed to marrying intensely beautiful lyrical storytelling with congruent and energetically contagious instrumental arrangements. Without a doubt, A Small Notion is some of High Tea’s most honest, eye-opening, and cathartic work yet.
“The band’s music has an “Alice in Wonderland” like quality to it, and not just because it was named after a tea party. DeHerdt and Eliot’s songs delve into the intimacies and intricacies of growing up, and all that adulthood entails: love, loss, isolation, frustration. But through it all, they maintain a childlike reverence for stories and storytelling, deftly weaving plot lines, narrative, and dialogue into their music.”
“Eliot opens the song in the part of the lonesome cowboy, with DeHerdt taking the third verse from the perspective of his drinking companion, who describes a contrasting reaction to life’s hardships, a kind of hardening of the heart. “You don’t just want agreement in a story,” DeHerdt says. “You want a little bit of friction.” But “Old Cowboy” reaches its apex when the two singers lock into harmony on the chorus. “I’ve always been obsessed with harmony,” says Eliot, who sang in choirs as a boy. The two singers have very distinct voices — hers husky, his unadorned — but side by side they momentarily melt into one.”
“(Hell Of A Ride) opens with ‘Long Gone,’ a mid-tempo pop-rock song... (is a) perfect introduction to the album as it highlights their rich, powerful voices and the way their vocals beautifully complement each other...A rocking tune like ‘You Know (She Knows),’ features some killer guitar, adds some fun to ‘Hell of a Ride,’ ...it’s the quieter moments when the duo draws on their shared love of Americana/folk music that this music really resonates. Songs like ‘Homegrown’ and ‘Heather,’ which feature only their voices and acoustic guitar, bring to mind artists like the Civil Wars.”
Michael Grabner is an Appleton, WI based singer/songwriter who blends the intricate finger style guitar and down and out lyrics of Townes Van Zandt with the energy and attention grabbing hooks of Tom Petty. His unique take on Americana and roots music is informed by a diverse list of influences that range from Radiohead to Hank Williams. Michael recently released his second full length album, “A Story I Can’t Tell”, and was a 2023 Wisconsin Area Music Industry finalist for singer-songwriter of the year and acoustic guitar player of the year.