MI Local: Moravian performs live, Sounds Like Detroit voting is open and Everyone I Owe 2 show this weekend

Busy night on MI Local this week! We started off with an update on WDET’s annual Sounds Like Detroit contest, featuring tracks from five more artists from our Top 10 Contenders, drawn from submissions to this year’s NPR Tiny Desk. 

You, dear WDET listeners, will be determining who among the Top 10 will go on to play our annual showcase at Batch Brewing! You’ll be invited to that, of course: it’s happening on August 13. But first, we’ll need YOU to start voting! Voting is LIVE now, visit wdet.org/votesld.

On tonight’s show, we heard from CHECKER (garage rock), Mild Pulp (pop-rock), KTCHN (free jazz), Jubilee Jackson (hip-hop) and Aisha Ellis (jazz).

Also on the show, the indie-rock quintet Moravian stopped by to premiere a brand new single, ahead of their upcoming show at Orchid Theatre in Ferndale, presented by PUG Fest and the Pleasant Underground.

Moravian’s presence and buzz have been been percolating over the last two years, developing notoriety for their high energy live performances and their ultra-catchy, rough and tumble, fast-tempo, pop-informed rock rips. The band, featuring Alex Christ (vocals), Blake Potvin (lead guitar), Shane Wheeler (rhythm guitar), Coby Valead (bass) and Ricardo Velez (drums), formed in 2022 when many of them were still finishing up college.

Catch Moravian at Orchid Theatre next Friday, June 12, with Mild Pulp and Starlings.

Everyone I Owe 2

Finally, we had members from three different groups on the show to talk about another show, happening this Friday, June 5, at the Loving Touch in Ferndale. There’s lots of lore to unpack with this one…

In the summer of 2011, more than a dozen bands were assembled to perform a jam-packed night of live music, which was to be filmed and then turned into a documentary that would basically stand as Detroit’s version as the iconic 1982 post-punk concert-doc “Urgh: a Music War.” The film was never completed, things went south, feelings soured, and it required a recompense event in 2016, with another attempt at an assemblage of several local bands, which was filmed successfully and turned into a doc called “Everyone I Owe.”

Here we are, now, and we’re doing it again! Bands like The Rogue Satellites, Pia the Band, Starlings, Carjack, The Beggars, and many many more, will be performing at the Loving Touch on June 5, and each performance will be filmed for an intended second documentary film!

I was joined by Jesse Shepherd-Bates, a solo artist and member of indie-rock group Handgrenades, along with Pia-Allison Roa of Pia The Band, and by Lisa Poszywak and Jaye Allen of Rogue Satellites. We had a great conversation about the friendships forged in the local music scene, the benefit of bonding between one generation and the next, and what it means and feels like to be inside of or part of any certain ‘wave’ or moment of a scene! Check out Everyone I Owe Pt. 2 this Friday at the Loving Touch!