Summer is hot for Beaver County-born singer Angela Autumn
Rapper Messiah of Madness from Aliquippa and singer Merce Lemon from Pittsburgh are also attracting attention
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Angela Autumn is having a lovely summer.
The Beaver County native will showcase her indie music — she calls it “Cowgirl Folk & Sad Gal’s Blues” — on a tour that stops at a sold-out Sultan Room in New York this weekend, then travels to Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Washington, DC, and then two shows in Chicago (one of which is already sold out).
Autumn opens for Oregon indie folk band Blind Pilot on a tour that takes them to St. Louis and Iowa before heading back east to Cleveland’s Grog Shop on July 26.
“I grew up in Fombell and later moved to Zelienople,” Autumn said via email. “My friend Eric Lee, a fiddler and bluegrass musician, is from Aliquippa, so we have a great team here.”
After dropping her real name “Mignanelli” a decade ago and opting for a stage name that is an ode to the harvest season, Autumn now lives in Nashville and recently wrapped up a series of shows on the West Coast.
Autumn’s songs are intelligent, beautiful and authentic Americana with a down-to-earth feel.
She is a featured artist at the 2021 Pittsburgh Plays Fleetwood Mac concerts at Thunderbird Music Hall. Her Facebook reels, Instagram stories (@roseofappalachia), and official YouTube page offer a fun and fascinating look at an artist who is constantly building the hype around her music.
Rapper from Beaver County represents
Aliquippa rapper Messiah of Madness has released a four-song EP titled “You Already Know,” which has garnered attention on online hip hop sites.
The artwork for the EP, which will be streamed on Spotify, YouTube Music, iTunes and Tidal, features a photo of the former Pyramid Bar, a popular hangout at Fifth and Jefferson Streets in Aliquippa between 1967 and 1994.
“This is hands down my best work yet,” Messiah of Madness wrote in an email. “It’s an EP, but it’s highly focused. Rough rhymes and beats throughout.”
Boom Bap Nation said, “On the mic, Messiah is gruff, irreverent, and verbally murderous… his producer alter ego Tone Fultz (who produces three of the four tracks on this release) is equally adept at crafting the kind of raw instrumentals that made Wu-Tang and Mobb Deep landmarks in the 1990s.”
Boom Bap Nation and Hip Hop Since 1987 point out another new track from Messiah of Madness: “Crown Royal Bag” was produced by Big Jerm, the Pittsburgh producer who has already produced hits for superstars Wiz Khalifa, Mac Miller and Snoop Dogg.
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“Beautiful like Pittsburgh”
Brooklyn indie rock band The Damnwells have released a new single called “Pretty as Pittsburgh.”
Singer Alex Dezen explains: “Pittsburgh has always been a special place for me. Maybe because my sister went to college there and I always loved visiting her and hanging out with her cool friends. It was the early ’90s and the underground music scene in Pittsburgh was thriving with eclectic rock bands: loud, guitar-driven, edgy music that would become the foundation of the ‘indie rock’ aesthetic movement.”
Dezen, who co-wrote the song “Take You” from Justin Bieber’s chart-topping 2012 album, said the Damnwells’ early tours always included stops in Pittsburgh, for which he nostalgically drove to Squirrel Hill to shop at the legendary Jerry’s Records.
“To claim this place, like some moronic conqueror on tour in the early 2000s, I stuck a Damnwells sticker on the front door of Jerry’s,” Dezen said. “It’s still there, although faded and peeling.”
He continued in a press release, “But more than a personal connection, Pittsburgh’s stunning beauty and history have always struck me. Its rivers, crisscrossing beneath towering hills of trees and rocky palisades, seem both sacred and violent. As the legacy of steel magnates like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick, Pittsburgh also ushered in the birth of the labor movement, giving birth to a fierce and enduring pride across generations and cultures. And like any industrial center – both because of it and in spite of it – a major arts movement has also thrived. It’s that kind of simple, uncomplicated alchemy, like the coming together of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers to form the Ohio, that makes me love this city.”
“Pretty as Pittsburgh” features Pittsburgh-area locations such as Carrick, Beltzhoover, McKeesport and nearby Youngstown and airs on stations such as 91.3-WYEP and The Beaver 95.7.
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Lemon’s latest
Rising Pittsburgh indie folk-rock artist Merce Lemon released “Backyard Lover” last Tuesday, the first single from her album “Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild,” due out September 27th.
Hailed as an honest exploration of confused, raw intimacy, with a fiery guitar solo unexpectedly appearing three and a half minutes in, “Backyard Lover” is the second track from Lemon’s first album since 2020, a collection of songs created during a time of reconnecting with community and nature.
““I got dirty and slept outside most of the summer,” Lemon said in a press release. “I learned a lot about plants and farming, just wrote for myself, and during that time I slowly accumulated songs.”
In April, she released the album’s first single, “Will You Do Me a Kindness,” which received praise from tastemakers Stereogum, Pitchfork, Brooklyn Vegan, Consequence of Sound, and Paste.
Lemon’s next hometown show will be on October 18 at the Bottlerocket Social Hall in Pittsburgh’s Allentown neighborhood.
Ellwood resident works on film set
Hannah Mros of Ellwood City serves as hair and makeup artist for “The Haunting of Prince Dom Pedro,” a mystery/comedy/supernatural indie feature film in production the rest of the month in Allegheny and Butler counties.
Mros previously worked as a hair and makeup artist for the short film “I Swiped The Wrong One”.
Filmmaker Joe Fishel has made three short films – “I Swiped the Wrong One,” “Bigfoot Unleashed, Part VII” and “Winner Takes All: Royal Flush” – all of which are incorporated into “The Haunting of Prince Dom Pedro.”
I’d like to imagine that somewhere at Lifetime Movies, someone is wondering how Fishel could have beaten them to the punch with a movie called “I Swiped the Wrong One.”
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