Final installment: Music critic's Mile of Music recommendations

Scott Peeples has selected his top picks for the Mile of Music, which starts this week. The Dairyland Patriot thanks Scott for sharing his invaluable talents with us and with musicgoers.

DANIEL RODRIGUEZ   Americana

Twenty years after co-founding the seminal folk rock band Elephant Revival, Daniel Rodriguez continues to shape psychedelic folk, Colorado-style, landing somewhere between John Sebastian, the modern hippie folk of John Craigie and Lord Huron. (Making his Mile of music debut, Daniel Rodriguez must not be confused with the Minnesota singer with a similar, but slightly shorter name, who has played many a Mile festival. He’s great, too, but he is not performing at Mile 13.) On  Harboring Pearls, Rodriguez' third full length solo release from last year, his pensive guitar pairs sweetly with his voice, sometimes spectral and sometimes plainspoken, reflecting the influence of co-producer Wesley Schulz of Lumineers fame.

 “Good In Them” is a clever meditation on self-doubt:

“All my worry, all this pain/What’s the good in them when it’s all in vain?/ All my sins, all my doubts/ What’s the good in them/ C’ept the tough way out.” 

At the end of the song, the enigmatic questioning deepens: “When the sun goes down/All my glories, all my pride/ What’s the good in them/Come the day you die?” There is magic in a voice that evokes something deeper, an emotion beneath the surface that rises like a timid dolphin, daring you to pay attention. Track for track, each pearl of wisdom is a unique portal to Rodriguez’s heart and soul.

WILL HOGE    Americana                                                                                                                     

Since his solo debut 25 years ago, Will Hoge’s lyrics, songs, and ethos have been forcefully blowing in the wind, shaping the Americana genre and putting him in a special class among his peers. In the tradition of Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Jason Isbell, Hoge’s songs are raw, honest, emotional, and, thankfully, even political. 

Hoge, 53, is back in Appleton after his introduction to Mile of Music fans last summer. In addition to solo sets, he’ll be performing as a duo this year with Dave Hause. From his catalogue of 15 studio albums, Hoge’s best songs stand alone as anthems for the real American dream. His 2025 release, “Sweet Misery,” shows his musical flexibility, veering into big choruses and gutsy rock and roll. He earned a Grammy nomination in 2013 for his song “Even If It Breaks Your Heart,” written with Eric Paslay. 

Another gem, “Even the River Runs Out of This Town,” from 2020, stands next to the best folk songs ever written. And then there are the political songs. If you were energized by Jordan “Who Would Jesus Bomb?” Smart at Mile 12, you’ll be marching in the streets with Hoge’s moral outrage on his latest single, “You’re In The Epstein Files.” In the spirit of Stephen Colbert and the late Todd Snider, it's a vicious, snarling indictment of the moral buffoonery of Donald Trump. Hoge tells us he knew Trump was a fool from reading his book in 1992. Then this: 

“You're gonna have to hire lawyers/That'll have to hire lawyers/For all the awful things you did/The Supreme Court seats you bought won't keep you from getting caught/For what you did with those underage kids/Right there in the Epstein files/You're in the Epstein files/It's not just a couple lines/it's about a million times/Stretches on for miles and miles/You're in the Epstein files.” 

How many times can a man turn his head, and pretend that he just doesn’t see? Dylan asked the question. Will Hoge wants answers.

DANNI NICHOLLS    Americana

Danni Nicholls is starting to feel at home here, here in the United States, the country that years ago beckoned her with its rich country/Americana history and at home in Appleton, where the Mile of Music has welcomed and embraced her four of the last five years, starting at Mile 9 in 2022. Nicholls’ voice has the tonal familiarity and brilliance of Brandi Carlile but the faint Estuary English accent tarries, most pleasantly. 

Her lyrics flow gracefully through a drifting acoustic sea of self-reflection, humility and rippling quest for truth. Hailing from Bedford England, her new song, “The Wreckage” is a reflection on the influx, the rise and slide whirlwind of the last several years:

“I rise above the wreckage/Hover in the space between/The end and the beginning/Do I lose myself?/Or do I chose to come back/To me?” 

Released just a few months ago, Nicholls fourth studio album, Making Moves, was produced by Sarah Peacock, a talented singer in her own right, who also returns for Mile 13. Nicholls will play full band shows and solo, accompanying herself on guitar, at this year’s festival. The heart-strong affability of her latest, 11-track album, continues the ride she’s taken listeners on throughout her serendipitous career. “I’ll Carry On” is hopeful, confident and honest, highlighting the tenderness of her voice. “Honey” is a tenacious energy burst of anger and deception — “pouring honey in my ears and f . . . ing up my dreams” — and “The Pendulum” is a whispered country masterpiece. “That the broken parts of me just fit the broken parts of you,” she sings on the title track. 

But she knows it isn’t true: She’s making moves, in choices both personal and musical. The lyrics and arrangements reflect her drive to create meaningful songs that support and respect her vision to love herself, authenticity, and to impart that message on all of us.

LARA SUPAN   Folk

Americana rock veteran, heart-felt lyricist, pianist, entrepreneur . . . the inscrutably lovely Lara Supan returns to the stage for Mile of Music 13. At Mile 12, Supan debuted a new batch of songs laced with equal doses of humor, heartache, divorce, children, people who hurt you to save themselves and endings, happy or otherwise. “I can’t explain all her egregious behavior, she takes it so personally.” The clever lyric from her song, “The Businessman,” is a less than flattering account of someone whom, we’ll just say, Supan is no longer working with. 

Accompanying herself on piano, she performs with a flair that reflects her musical theater and vocal jazz training at Ithaca College. Her style combines Sarah McLachlan’s elegance with a touch of righteous campiness. Joining her onstage will be partner and musical collaborator Yoshi Aerson, playing the melodica. For over a decade, Supan shared vocals with Jay Byrd in the rootsy Americana band South Rail, including an appearance at Mile of Music 10. 

On her new songs, she courts an endearing pluckiness befitting her current stage in life. But performance isn’t Supan’s main gig these days. In May, she left Midwood Entertainment to start her own talent booking company, Luminary Touring. Artists she represents include Mile 13 artists Flamy Grant, Crys Matthews, Spencer LaJoye, Pat Byrne, Susan Werner and Sweet Lizzy Project. Lucky concert goers are likely to see a few of these luminaries jumping on stage with Supan at some of her festival appearances. Lara Supan is the business(wo)man now, booking shows, sharing her feelings through songs and being as joyful, or egregious, as she cares to be.

JOELTON MAYFIELD   Indie rock

There’s an eerie similarity between U2’s 1984 classic “MLK” and the lead track on Joelton Mayfield’s debut album, Crowd Pleaser. The tracks both have an atmospheric, hymn-like anguish and longing. Yet shared community doesn’t always mean shared theology. While Bono is leaning into Christianity, in the spirt of the slain civil rights leader, Mayfield nudges religion aside in an effort to truly embrace King’s dream. 

Growing up in tiny Marble Falls, Texas, it took a move to Nashville and several years of contemplation for Mayfield to complete his cathartic album. Brought up in the Pentecostal tradition, he became disillusioned by the misogyny and the bigotry he observed. Through an alt-country/indie rock lens, Mayfield and his band shape gentry rhythmic, instrumentally rich songs to unravel the lessons of living life, with and without religion, in the pursuit of everyone’s happiness. That opener, “Red Beam,” starts the conversation:

“When everyone you′ve ever loved/Is either damned or booked up/Born again or buried alive/In the red beam burning through the sky.”

No longer worried about going to hell it would seem, Mayfield’s voice is a Tyler Childers whine, a bit dissonant so you stand up and notice but true to the spirit of the lyrics and well-crafted arrangements. On the debut album released in October of last year, there are 18 musicians and back-up singers. For his Mile of Music 13 debut, a four-piece band will reproduce 27-year-old Mayfield’s musical vision. With influences ranging from Bob Dylan to Sufjan Stevens and the quirky folk band The Mountain Goats, he tackles song structures like Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. 

“The Speechwriter” pits privilege and absolutism against feeling and emotion. Like many of the tunes on the album, agnostic affirming or otherwise, it’s purposefully nuanced. “The Shore” is a slow-walk through missile launches and the issues of the day as a metaphor for the collapse of relationships. On “Jacob Dreamed A Staircase,” Mayfield decomposes his biblical knowledge and church experience to conclude that “every one of God’s children will never grow up,” another testament to his journey away from faith. But he seems to leave the door open: “Behold the lord, as you’ve never seen before,” meaning faith is an ongoing question, if not the Bible verses he memorized as a teenager. 

Whether or not the deeper messages in the lyrics fully resonate, the songs are solid as musical nuggets of wisdom and knowing the journey Mayfield’s been on allows us to appreciate the passion. Returning to “Red Beam,” Mayfield cries out, “And the heaven we deserve, will show up to prove me wrong.” Separated arbitrarily by generations, Bono and Joelton are likely to arrive at the same conclusion: As people, we need each other, right here and now. The afterlife isn’t as important as this one.

CREATURE COMFORT   Indie rock

Bandleader Jessey Clark grew up staring down at his boots perched atop a tractor on a Tennessee farm. On the heels of their Mile of Music 13 debut, the sound that now defines Creature Comfort is the result of plowing musical fields as varied as The Beatles, Slowdive, Waylon, Merle and Willie. With changing band members and life circumstances, the five-piece band, formed in 2012, has evolved from the indie rock dynamic that characterized their earliest songs. 

Creature Comfort reaches its folkiest mellow on 2024’s The Honeymoon, a four-song love sonnet for Lorrie, Clark’s newly wedded wife. “Green Eyes” is a stand-out track with a classic James Mercer (The Shins) sound punctuated by Jo Cleary’s violin playing. In addition to Clark and Cleary, the current line-up includes acoustic guitarist Alex Robinson, Cole Bearden on bass and Taylor Cole on drums. In concert, it’s a rich blend -- call it Bootgaze or Countrified Shoegaze. Guitar effects, big vocals and mood-bending undertones still drive songs like “Big, Buff and Handsome,” a tongue-in-cheek jibe at toxic masculinity and “Heartstrings,” featuring a shout out chorus, “And you came here with your good intentions. Just to break my fall, just to break my fall.” 

From Clark’s rural Tullahoma to Creature Comfort’s current base in Nashville, their ever-expanding fan base has always been on board for the ride. Longer time Mile fans might hear echoes of early Mile favorites Susto – great vocals, lyrics and instrumentation tied up in a kempt bale of hay.

MINOR GOLD   Americana

Americana folk duo Minor Gold presents a trio of moods in guitar-driven, harmony-rich nuggets of kindliness. There’s sweet strumming free folk (“Way With Words,” “Leave a Light On”), Milk Carton Kids quintessence (“Cannonball”) and Harry Nillsson “Everybody’s Talking at Me” groovy (“Hair Hang Down”). 

Three times and still charming, Australian Dan Parsons and partner Tracy McNeil, who hails from Canada, make their third consecutive Mile appearance fresh off a tour of the United Kingdom and the European Union. Together their talents pair nicely; voices harmonize, rising and falling in unison, leaving space for Parsons acoustic guitar leads and McNeil’s rhythmic strumming. Both had long, successful solo careers previous to their musically idyllic pairing. Hand in glove, Parsons and McNeil started writing together on their 2023 self-titled debut. 

On the track “Way with Words,” Parsons sets the tone, McNeil finishes the sentence and voices blend in a smooth, dually strummed, alt-country gift. Their release from last summer, Way to the Sun, sharpens their collaborative edge. The track, “Lighter Shade of Blue,” harkens back to Southern Ontario. It’s a lost melody from McNeil’s father’s band songbook five decades ago. “Time can be cruel/But a new day’s coming soon/And lonesome, is just a lighter shade of blue” – a fourth mood Mile of Music goers will gladly embrace.