TS Foss

with Julia Blair + Graham Hunt

Doors 7:00PM / Show 8:00PM

$8 ADV / $10 DOS

TS Foss started in 2015 as a quiet expression of Madison, WI musician Tyler Fassnacht. Acoustic guitars gently strummed and fingerpicked. Bedroom recording experimentations with soft vocals breaking through hiss. The sounds of honking cars and rain against the roof. A casual project that was dropped and picked up for years as he toured and recorded with punk bands. Fassnacht has now, however, turned his focus towards fleshing out TS Foss into a bigger band with new music. Full of classic twang, lush arrangements and laid back yet poignant lyrical poetry, this reemergence is just the beginning of a new stage in life for TS Foss.

Julia Blair - Appleton, WI (mem. of Dusk / Tenement) bio:

Julia Blair was born of this world as a force to smother the disquieting agents of despair- and as a gentle soul that no-less employs her mighty voice to speak truth to power. Those who know her personally know this, and those who have heard her sing know this as well. On her debut solo album for Crutch of Memory Enterprises, Better Out Than In, Julia proclaims her fondness for self-expression and demonstrates her aptitude for dynamics: from the explosive nature of a pop hook to the firm, comforting grip of a lullaby. She does so at-times anecdotally, while utilizing the marriage of sophisticated arrangements and plain-spoken lyrical language.

Graham Hunt bio:

The thrill of listening to a Graham Hunt album is the thrill of hearing an artist finding and honing an aesthetic in real time. “Even after a decade of recording music I still feel like I barely know what I’m doing, and that makes it magic for me—there’s always something new to discover from just messing around and making weird sounds.” 

Perhaps accidental given the trajectory of his solo catalog, the Wisconsin songwriter finds himself making the most current sounding music of his career right now on his latest album, If You Knew, Would You Believe It? (Smoking Room Records), tapping into a nostalgic, scuzzy, radio pop aesthetic.  Recording in a basement alongside Isaac deBroux-Slone and Shannon Connor, who both make music with a similarly hooky, midwest indie rock lean in the band Disq, Hunt explores a 90s dayglow trip.

If You Knew, Would You Believe It? is a journey—Hunt confidently delivers a collection of music that tackles power pop songwriting from every possible sonic angle. Occasionally it leans into a distinctly Manchester aesthetic, from the whispering, neo-psychedelic chug of “Speeding Towards A Wall” to the strung out lo fi hang “Stripes,” and at other times Hunt finds comfort in a quieter Elliott smith influenced style.  

“I kind of abandoned the concept of making a purely ‘baggy’ record pretty quickly, but that idea was the spark that got me motivated,” Hunt says. “A lot of the drum-loopy songs ended up sounding more like Sugar Ray or something anyway, maybe because that’s the kind of music that was ubiquitous when my brain was developing.”