Recording: Ronley Teper & The Lipliners

Artist: Ronley Teper & The Lipliners

Song: Just Show Up

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), December 30, 2025.

Ronley Teper & The Lipliners - Just Show Up

It had been too long since I had seen The Lipliners in action, and a delight to see the band out in full force — nine deep behind the wonderful and ebullient Ronley Teper leading a night of her joyful chaos music. If one were going to make a movie or comic book about this crew, they might be portrayed as a band of easygoing cut-throat pirates, eager to see what fuss is going to happen next after signing up to sail with a Captain who's intent on leading them into unknown waters. Blasting through some classics and a few new ones, the tunes merged together, somewhere between a suite and an elegant mess, with moments of invention on the fly as everyone pedaled faster to keep the wobbling to a minimum.

Speaking of new tunes, the song in question here hit me right where I live. People conversing with me about my propensity of going to gigs might have heard me say that showing up is the most important thing anyone can do — and this one, still feeling like a newborn calf finding its wobbly stride — has harnessed the same feeling. Whether for our musical community, for friends, love, family or whatever you want to be present to, in a time where screens and streams and feeds give us a easy-but-alienating sense of pseudo-interaction, being out there, just showing up, makes so many things plausible. If I ever get hit by a comet or suffer some similar unfortunate demise, please get Ronley to come and sing this one at the party for me at The Tranzac.

You can check out some more from this set over on youtube:

[Ronley Teper & The Lipliners are back at The Tranzac on Tuesday (January 27th).]

Recording: This is Awesome

Artist: This is Awesome

Song: I Just Wasn't Made for These Times [The Beach Boys cover]

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), January 20, 2016.

This is Awesome - I Just Wasn't Made for These Times

Headed by master guitarist Christine Bougie, this quartet (including Dafydd Hughes, wurlitzer; Julia Hambleton, clarinet; and Andrew Downing, cello) brought an absolutely packed crowd to the Southern Cross Lounge to hear their front-to-back instrumental re-interpretation of The Beach Boy's seminal Pet Sounds album. Stripping the concept of composer Brian Wilson's "teenage symphony to God" down to a chamber quartet, these arrangements brought out the underlying yearning melancholy, especially when, such as here, Bougie switched over to lap steel. The group has essayed the album before and promises to come back to it again — given the turnout for this, expect to see the next performance in a larger room. (It was also recorded direct to tape by the band, so keep an eye out for a chance to hear this in hi-fidelity.)

[Christine Bougie and Dafydd Hughes (along with Jessie Baird) will be back at The Tranzac tomorrow (Monday, January 25th in the early slot at the Southern Cross Lounge.]