South for Winter, Jack Fortune and three more critic picks for next week's Mile of Music
NEW NOSTALGIA Fusion horn band
As the home of Lawrence University’s Conservatory of Music and its 28 areas of study, Appleton is quite familiar with talent that blends jazz, pop and rock instrumentation. Moreover, New Nostalgia, a nine-piece instrumental fusion-horn band from Chicago, finds an eager audience at this year’s Mile of Music Festival. Seven years ago, led by composer/arranger Neil Carson, New Nostalgia got their feet wet with a self-titled debut featuring rocking jazz covers of songs by the likes of Peter Gabriel, Tears for Fears and Tracy Chapman.
Last year they followed up with their second release, also self-titled. Twelve tracks, half originals and six cleverly reimagined covers, offer up a rock/jazz, even pop punk, charcuterie board of deliciousness to lovers of lyricless beat-heavy morels of music. In addition to Carson, who plays alto saxophone, New Nostalgia includes tenor saxophonist Alex Beltran, Andy Schlinder on baritone sax, Matt Kowalski on trombone, trumpet player Connor Bernhard, Zack Marks on drums, Brandon Hunt on guitar, Tim Siesser on bass and Andrew Lawrence (who is trained in both classical and jazz piano) on keyboards.
While Carson writes many of the songs, band members collaborate on arrangements, instrumental fills and the musical nuances that bring each piece to life. On the newest album, Chicago is a smooth symphonic brass hum, soft and pensive, like a camera panning a majestic mountain landscape. “Applause is Mandatory,” written by Lawrence, launches with an explosion of sound, changing tempos several times, letting the horns guide the way before making space for a piano interlude and a melodic, but robust conclusion. Carson compares New Nostalgia to a jigsaw puzzle, “where the song only works if all the parts are arranged and performed just right.” But mandatory isn’t the feeling this music evokes. This is righteous appreciation.
JESSICA WILLIS FISHER Folk
Singer-songwriter Jessica Willis Fisher is living her best life. As she sings each note, you feel her breathe hope, love and courage into her rising chest. Two albums into her solo career, the 34-year old performer from McMinnville, Tennessee, began her musical journey as the oldest of 12 in The Willis Clan Family Band, where she gained prominence for her songwriting, singing and violin playing. She’s honest and open about why she left, as documented in her book, “Unspeakable: Surviving My Childhood and Finding My Voice.”
Her ability to shape a solo career speaks to the power of resilience, captured beautifully in “Dogwood,” from her 2025 sophomore album, Blooming:
“It's hard to find another/With a flower quite like mine/Crimson in the corners/I wear my wounds with pride/Believing in the beauty/Of the many tears I've criеd.”
While her voice is beautiful and strong, it maintains a graceful frailty. Her perseverance, her light- seeking truth, breaks through the darkness, just as the dogwood comes into full bloom in the spring. With her traditional folk family band, Fisher made appearances on the Grand Ole Opry and America’s Got Talent. But her reimagined joy for music is a direct result of the dissolution of the performance-driven burden of her former life.
Fisher’s songs are a lovely mix of melodic country folk ballads like “Dogwood” and “My History,” from her debut album, and sole-kicking tunes such as “Fire,” where she takes the bull of destiny by the horns. “Blooming” also includes a few fiddle driven instrumentals. Smiling, reeling with alacrity, singing and playing her heart out, Fisher wears her wounds with pride.
SOUTH FOR WINTER Folk rock
Answering the call to be part of Mile of Music 13, Nashville-based South For Winter joins the Mile’s five-timers club, becoming the only kiwi band in this prestigious group of artists. South For Winter’s unique chamber-folk Americana brings stories to life through idiosyncratic lyrics and cascading, but complementary, murder ballads and musical waterfalls.The band’s 2024 sophomore release, Of Sea and Sky, builds on the energy of their 2020 full-length concept album debut, Luxumbra.
Their latest record includes stand out tracks "Under the Blood Moon," "Wintersleep (Southern Lights)," and the euphonious “Something in the Stars,” the story of the musical and romantic love connection between New Zealander Nick Stone and Coloradan Dani Cichon. The couple can also be playful when Stone’s faux-ominous baritone contrasts with Cichon’s lilting wonderstruck vocal to give off a B-movie thriller vibe on “Mountains You Move.”
For their Mile 13 shows, two Lawrence University graduates join Stone and Cichon: Michael Murphy, who also returns to the Mile as a solo artist, and standout cellist Adam Korber. While touring extensively throughout the United States and abroad, the road north for summer is always clear for the musical mélange that is South For Winter. Kia Ora, welcome!
JACK FORTUNE Folk
Jack Fortune’s between-song banter is informal and bawdy but when he swandives into song, a ‘70s-folk-rock-frontman confidence takes over, nudging listeners up in their seats. As Fortune would have it, Jack has our attention, a captivating voice that beckons us to listen, a la Mile veterans Ben de la Cour, Wilder Atkins or Dan Rodriguez.
Raised in Boston, Fortune moved to Charleston in 2020 to pursue his dreams. After performing locally, he set out on his first ever tour last fall. On “Spill the Wine,” the lyrics spill out under a bit of ominous guitar strumming before Fortune steps into another gear:
“I keep hoping for a little bit of clarity/If you really love me why are you giving that kind of treatment/No matter what you say I won’t trust you either way/And I’m fine with packing up and leaving what I can’t take.”
Simple lyrics take on feeling under the trance of Fortune’s gritty, intrepid vocals. On “Proclamation,” Fortune seems to be channeling Townes Van Zant with more fervor than lament. As singer songwriters go, Jack Fortune’s endearing lonely-hearts vibe makes him an odds-on favorite for the next best thing at the Mile of Music.
OTIS GIBBS Folk
Crows are cautious birds, as they should be. We humans can’t always be trusted. Otis Gibbs’ latest album, 2025’s The Trust of Crows, once again brings his signature low-hum, gravelly-voiced storytelling to life. As he observes in the liner notes, there’s a lot of ugliness in the world so he does what a folk singer can do.
Ten albums into a low-key but highly praised folk music career, Gibbs is an erudite observer of animals and humans. With his long white beard and ubiquitous hat, Gibbs, 60, aka Paul Otis Gibbs III, doesn’t look a day over 64. On his classic protest movement song, “The People’s Day,” Gibbs honors the radical virtues of Emma Goldman, Harvey Milk, Medgar Evers and Mother Jones as he rasps, “one day, our whispers will be louder than our screams.”
Like Kris Kristofferson, Bruce Springsteen and Tom T. Hall, Gibbs is duly inspired and enlightened by his wife, Amy Lasley, another folk hero floating under the radar. When he isn’t making music or communing with birds on his back porch in Nashville, Gibbs pours his heart into his podcast, “Thanks for Giving a Damn,” interviews with musicians large and small. He recently produced, “A Love Letter to Handsome John,” which started as a film about gratitude, but turned into a glimpse into the quieter moments of conflicted musician Todd Snider’s life before his unexpected death last fall.
Gibbs also has a YouTube channel where subscribers hear tales and folklore passed down by legendary musicians. On the current album, he sings about Memphis, mountains, unloved flowers and the blues, familiar themes that never grow tiresome behind Gibbs’ wise old owl vision. On “Ditchweed,” he returns to his cautious relationships with crows, most certainly a metaphor for all things difficult:
“There’s a pale moon waving/As the black birds dot the sky/There’s a pale moon waning/As the black birds dot the sky/But the crows are my friends/And I wave to them passing by.”
At the end of the show, Gibbs hopes we get the message: As humans, it’s important we find something to trust.
