PROPAGANDA: Salem Slot Machine, Hijas De La Muerte, Obsidian
ARTS GARAGE: Doctor My Eyes, Jackson Browne Trib
CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Wooden Fish
THE PEACH: Creative Fashion Up-cycling, Henna Tattoos
GRAMPS: Rumble in the Jungle
6/28
RESPECTABLE STREET: Emo Night
ARTS GARAGE: Ella & The Bossa Beat Quartet
PROPAGANDA: Shadow Reborn, L.U.S.T., Mark Sinis, Mingo Indus
CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Unlimited Devotion
6/29
GRAMPS: Miami Girls Rock Camp Youth Open Mic BROWARD CENTER: The Princess Bride: An Inconceivable Evening w Cary Elwes
PROPAGANDA: Young Cassidy & Friends
ARTS GARAGE: Jason Ricci & the Bad Kind
6/30
THE PEACH: Comedy Workshop, Open Mic, Drawing & Acrylics Class
BASSEM YOUSSEF
by abel folgar
The list of physicians who hung up their stethoscopes and found fame in the arts and entertainment isn’t long but it is distinctive, and on it you’ll find comedian Bassem Youssef, a formerly white-coated wisecracker who traded hospital rounds for comedy clubs, scalpels for satire, because healing also lays in punchlines. Now based in Los Angeles but never far from the pulse of Middle Eastern life and diasporic identity, Youssef brings his razor-sharp perspective to South Florida for an Arabic-languageonly performance. More risk-taking in his comedic endeavors than one imagines he was in the O.R., Youssef digs into the raw, uncomfortable and often absurd contradictions of authoritarianism, nationalism, religion and exile. His material is a high-wire balance of political insight and personal reflection, with his own harrowing expat journey forming a lens for bigger questions: Who belongs? Who gets to speak freely? And how do you laugh when the stakes are life or death?
A cardiac surgeon by training, Youssef became a cultural phenomenon during the Egyptian revolution of 2011 when he started uploading homemade YouTube videos skewering the news and the country’s political class. That project became Al-Bernameg (The Program), the first satirical news show of its kind in the Arab world, one often compared to The Daily Show — a parallel cemented by Jon Stewart’s guest appearance.
At its height, Al-Bernameg reached more than 30 million viewers weekly, making Youssef one of the most influential — and endangered — voices in Egypt. After the show was shut down in 2014 under government pressure, Youssef relocated to the U.S., a global satirist in a time of escalating conflict, speaking truth to power in two languages.
While medicine has lost a skilled practitioner, the culture has gained a formidable comic voice from an often misunderstood demographic. Employing “tension and release,” as he told commentator Mehdi Hasan, he’ll end his darkest monologues with his best punchlines — and that, he says, is when “the laughter is always the biggest.”
Bassem Youssef performs in Arabic only 7:30pm Friday, June 13 at the Fillmore at Jackie Gleason Theater in Miami Beach. 18+ bassemyoussef.xyz
NOW THROUGH JUNE 20, 2025
BIENNIAL2025
Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Biennial is a highly anticipated juried the breadth of talent in Palm Beach a celebrated gallerist and curator guest juror. Biennial 2025 features living and working in our incredible
Featured artists:
Asandra • George Bayer
Maximo Caminero • Jacques Fiona Drummond • Rod Faulds Mark Forman • Paul Gervais Nestor Guzman • Todd Lim • Hodaya Nadine Saitlin • Amauri
Exhibition generously sponsored by:
Merrill G. and Emita E. Hastings Foundation
Robert M. Montgomery, Jr. 601 Lake Avenue, Lake Worth Tuesday – Friday, 12 – 5 p.m. •
Amauri Torezan, Cloud Nine, 2024, Acrylic
BIENNIAL
anniversary, the Cultural Council’s juried exhibition highlighting Beach County. Tim Hawkinson, curator from Los Angeles, serves as features a variety of work by artists incredible cultural community.
artists:
Bayer • Jerilyn Brown
Jacques de Beaufort
Faulds • Yvonne Fok-Gundersen
Gervais • Irina Grimaldi
Hodaya Louis • Debra Robert
Amauri Torezan
DANCE GAVIN DANCE
by erik kvarnberg
Fans of California post-hardcore outfit
Building | Main Gallery
Worth Beach, FL 33460
Free and open to the public palmbeachculture.com/exhibitions
Dance Gavin Dance have gone without a new album from the muchloved math rock screamers since 2022’s Jackpot Juicer — three years being an epoch for a band that has rumbled through dizzying lineup changes with minimal effect on output. The DGD discography boasts a dozen full-length LPs including their explosive 2007 debut, Downtown Battle Mountain
But the recent drought, such as it was, appears to be over. Their longtime label, Rise Records, has announced a new full-length, Pantheon, due in September. And it’s not like DGD disappeared between albums. There was the Strawberry’s Revenge hot sauce and pizza collaboration to go with the band’s appearance at last fall’s When We Were Young Festival in Las Vegas. They also put out two punchy singles last spring, “Speed Demon” and “Straight From The Heart.” The songs marked a new era for DGD, with recent recruit Andrew Wells taking over all clean-vocal duties in the band’s traditional sing/scream tandem setup. Since joining in 2021, Wells had alternated in that role with longtime vocalist Tilian Pearson before the latter’s much-discussed exit in 2024. A relative newcomer joining an established core could be polarizing for diehard fans of these Warped Tour-era contemporaries of the likes of Circa Survive and Alexisonfire. Picture a house party of moody people with comedic tattoos suddenly turning on one late-arriving guest.
But Wells has proved he can conjure DGD’s magic alongside guitarist Will Swan, drummer Matthew Mingus, and shrieker Jon Mess while adding his own spark. He was a standout on Jackpot Juicer tracks such as “Swallowed by Eternity,” a cyber hymn that builds to a volley of distorted, mosh-able breakdowns. And DGD’s essence — raging desperation and self-lacerating humor — endures with him aboard. The star of the two-song video that straddles “Speed Demon”/“Straight From The Heart” is The Gobbler, a Muppet-like mascot with Gritty vibes craving social media fame and human flesh. Is a Gobby walk-on too much to hope for on a night of spirited screamo?
Dance Gavin Dance with openers Belmont, Dwellings, and The Home Team, play 7pm Friday, June 6 at War Memorial Auditorium in Fort Lauderdale. dancegavindanceband.com
Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 75 inches
Donavon Frankenreiter
Summer
Collie Buddz
Peter
Thievery Corporation
Ziggy Alberts
Co-founder
RAINBOW KITTEN SURPRISE
by david rolland
The name might sound like a Ben & Jerry’s flavor, but Rainbow Kitten Surprise are actually a four-piece from the mountain town of Boone, North Carolina and — judging by their latest album — a band transformed. They started out in the early 2010s playing a jolly, folksy brand of roots rock. But the six years between full-length studio albums that ended with 2024’s Love Hate Music Box was also a time of great change for Rainbow Kitten Surprise, and it shows: At 22 songs, Love Hate Music Box makes up for lost time and showcases a band truly experimenting with who they are.
All of a sudden there are synthesizers and a less sunny yet somehow more dance-y tone occupying center stage. If music styles were named for Magic Kingdom parks, Rainbow Kitten Surprise left Frontierland from Tomorrowland, evolving from a rootsy vibe in the mold of The Lumineers toward a sound reminiscent of Glass Animals. These changes also paralleled developments within the band — their founding bassist left — and in the life of lead singer Ela Melo, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and who came out as trans during the hiatus. Melo, in the band’s latest official biography, credits her bipolar diagnosis with improving her mental health and creative capacities: “Ever since that’s been on the table, things have looked a lot brighter for me.”
Melo has emphasized that RKS are still rock ’n’ roll, but as she recently told Nashville Scene, ”I think there’s a little bit of darkness in here that represents some of what I was going through mentally. But, there’s also the end of the tunnel, the kind of light elements of it.”
It’s been three years since RKS played South Florida (at SunFest in 2022), and for longtime fans and noobs alike, it will be fascinating to see and hear the transformations embodied by Melo and bandmates Bozzy Keller, Ethan Goodpaster and Jess Haney More than a return, it’s a reintroduction for Rainbow Kitten Surprise.
Rainbow Kitten Surprise and Michael Marcagi perform 8pm Tuesday, June 17 at War Memorial Auditorium in Fort Lauderdale. rksband.com
4700 S DIXIE HWY, WEST PALM BEACH, FL 33405
BURNING GLASS
by david rolland / sean piccoli
South Florida alt-rockers Burning Glass are celebrating the release of their second EP, The Yellow Pages, with a party on June 13 at Respectable Street. Before then you can find them online, sprinting through heartbreak on “Worth The Fall,” wading into wistful darkness on “Lost in You,” and going at life with bursts of hope, melancholy and humor.
A trio in high school, later a quartet, Burning Glass settled in at college as a party of five. At every turn, “We’ve been influenced by all of those around us,” the band says in an email that name-checks peer bands as influences and mutual support, among them Staircase Spirit, Bonus, Opposition Dolls, Listener555 and Disputer. “They have helped us find a place to feel as we are and know there is a strong comradery amongst us all,” the band says, adding a plug for some of the allies that help keep a scene ecosystem healthy: “South Florida wouldn’t be where it is without Equinox Booking, PureHoney, and Breakeven Booking.”
The band tells us that The Yellow Pages EP is a bit retrospective, comprised of songs written during the pandemic. “Back then, we were into bands like Nirvana, Queens of the Stone Age, and Foo Fighters,” the band says. “We wanted to find a way to collaborate on all of these songs and found inspiration from old phone books and Yellow Pages. How they have different interests and lines to anywhere you want to call. These songs are from different points of our lives going from 2021-2023. Each has its own meaning and was impactful when they were created. Recording was stressful and scattered. We had sat on these tracks for a long time.”
Looking forward, they plan to tour Florida with some of their favorite bands and start work on a full-length album. 2025 will be a year of growth and commitment. As for the EP release party, Burning Glass say to expect one thing: “Balloons.”
Burning Glass play a release party for The Yellow Pages EP with Rude Television, Default Friends, and Day Lily, 8pm Friday, June 13 at Respectable Street in West Palm Beach instagram.com/burningglassofficial
PETER HOOK
by tim moffatt
It turns out that one of rock’s best and best-known bass players was a little confused at first about his chosen instrument. Peter Hook, of Joy Division and then New Order fame, says that after he and friends saw the Sex Pistols in concert — June 4, 1976 in the English city of Manchester — he knew just what he wanted next.
“Went to the guitar shop after the gig, because we were so hyped up, and I asked for a bass, and the guy gave it to me,” Hook tells PureHoney ahead of his current band, Peter Hook & The Light, playing Miami Beach Bandshell on June 14. “I said, ‘No, no, me mate’s bass has got six strings.’ He said, ‘Nah, your mate’s got a guitar!’ So it came as a complete revelation to me because I never knew.”“When I got it,” Hook adds, “I thought, ‘Oh, four strings. Maybe it’ll be easier to learn it?’“
An auspicious start for an artist who co-wrote some of the most recognizable songs of the late Twentieth Century, including Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and New Order’s omnipresent “Blue Monday.” The latter song launched an era, introducing the world to the New Order-bankrolled nightclub, The Hacienda and the “Madchester” scene that followed. The Hacienda would in turn help to spawn Happy Mondays, Oasis, Stone Roses, and Chemical Brothers, and export acid house music and rave culture globally.
The four-string bassist extraordinaire and deployer of killer hooks also has a creator’s credit in a sound and attitude imprinted on every variation since of dark-hearted, nightclub-suited, electronica-laced rock. Hook’s overdriven, guitar-like approach to bass manifests in the work of The Killers, Interpol and Fontaines DC. Echoes of Joy Division and New Order pulse through the sonic nervous systems of Los Angeles’ She Wants Revenge, Minsk’s Molchat Doma and other acts too numerous to list.
For all that, Hook in conversation is disarmingly down to earth and discursive considering his role in a cultural Big Bang. Asked if he knew in the ‘70s and ‘80s that he was creating a legacy, Hooky, as he’s known, says, “I think the thing is, when you’re that young … you don’t think you’re going to make it to Friday. … Time passes in a different way when you’re young. … You have to grab everything, and everything’s in the moment. So, you know, I mean the answer is no.
“It was always Ian Curtis, funnily enough, who used to say, whenever we got down … about lack of gigs or lack of success in any way, ‘Don’t you worry. People will be listening to us for years and years and years,’” Hook says of Curtis, the hauntingly voiced Joy Division singer who took his own life in 1980, a tragic turn of events that gave way to the formation of New Order.
“We were always like, ‘He’s got his head in the clouds, this lad,’” Hook says. “But we loved him and God, you know, sadly, he managed to prove himself absolutely right.”
Peter Hook & The Light are in town to perform the 2001 New Order album Get Ready in its entirety along with key New Order and Joy Division tracks, part of a yearslong tour project that has Hook working his way live through both bands’ complete discographies. True to Curtis’ word, the crowds Hooky sees on the road are populated by aging hipsters and cool kids alike.
“And to see youngsters there and then to have youngsters come up to you and ask, ‘What was Ian Curtis like?’ And I’m thinking, ‘He was just like you!’” Hook says. “‘With stars in his eyes; it’s just that he didn’t make it. You know, I hope you do, in the same way I’ve made it.’ And he didn’t. You know, the world can be very cruel, can’t it?”
Hook fell in and out with New Order over the years, and quit for good in 2007. His projects during and after New Order form a storyline of their own. There was Freebass with members of Stone Roses, Primal Scream and The Smiths. And there was Monaco,
which Hook formed with David Potts his bandmate in an earlier side project, Revenge. Monaco scored a hit single with “What Do You Want from Me?” from 1997’s Music For Pleasure. For Record Store Day this past April they reissued the title track from 2000’s “I’ve Got a Feeling” as a standalone single.
Which begs the question: Is there more Monaco on the horizon? Hook isn’t sure schedules will allow it but he sounds open to the idea. “Funny things, isn’t it?” he says. “Celebrating the music of Joy Division and New Order and then [if] you started celebrating the music of Monaco, it would be like, Oh my God, even I can’t remember that much! … But it’s very flattering … that people are still so interested in Monaco, I must admit. You know, it was a lovely period in my life, and I wish that I hadn’t gone back to New Order. I wish I had stayed with Monaco. You know, it’s like hindsight, isn’t it?”
Teaching the past to future generations has become vital work for Hook. He’s also memoir named after a Joy Division album, and promotion master’s degree program Central Lancashire. The project grew out of too academic and removed from the actual students work at Fac51, the successor to original Factory Records label.
“They also get involved with Peter Hook & The the clean,” Hook says. “So, the thing is that them a hands-on moment. … Reading and experience it. … With the adrenaline, you have these things happen in real time, don’t they? of them love it. Some are quite frightened!”
Peter Hook & The Light perform 8pm Saturday, peterhookandthelight.live
also the author of Unknown Pleasures, a 2013 and a force behind a music management
established in 2012 at the University of of Hook’s belief that music education was actual labor of getting music to be heard. So The Hacienda — named for New Order’s
The Light, doing all the dirty jobs and some of we’re actually using our experience to give and writing about music is not the best way to have to be much more in the present, and they? So the kids have to act [quickly]. … Some
June 14 at Miami Beach Bandshell.
JUNETEENTH JUKE JOINT
by olivia feldman
The classic juke joint as a place for Black Americans to play and hear live music, and to dance, drink and socialize had its heyday in the segregated South following the abolition of slavery. While just a handful bona-fide juke joints still operate today, their impact in fostering Black music and its profound influence on American life is enduring. For the third year, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami is recreating that formative experience with Juneteenth Juke Joint, a celebration of Black joy, music and culture that also commemorates the end of slavery.
Juneteenth, long celebrated in Black communities, became a national holiday in 2021 marking June 19, 1865, when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to free enslaved people. Arsht Center community engagement manager Zaylin Yates tells PureHoney that the center’s Heritage Committee, which puts together events and programming supporting Black artists, wanted to find a way to celebrate the milestone, and the Juneteenth Juke Joint was born. “The juke joint is for everyone,” Yates says. “It’s a night where we all get to come together under one theme of freedom, artistry and community.”
This updated juke joint features a pre-show happy hour with soul food-inspired bites and libations, along with local poet David Hepburn and music by New Cannon Chamber Collective. The party officially begins with resident DJ Cardi and soul, funk and pop jams by Coral Springs-based musical duo The W’s, who play originals and hits by artists including Usher, Alicia Keys and Michael Jackson.
For the The W’s — musical and life partners Chadwick and Brittany Watkins — 2025 is a year of milestones. Their Juke Joint performance comes a week before the couple’s tenth wedding anniversary, and three years after Chadwick suffered a near-fatal heart attack. There’s a lot to celebrate. “We want people to have an experience together and to know that we are all coming from different places,” Chadwick says, “but our first language, music, is our common denominator.”
Juneteenth Juke Joint with The W’s, DJ Cardi, David Hepburn and New Cannon Chamber Collective, 7:30pm Saturday, June 7 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami. arshtcenter.org
ALEX MARKOW
JASON MOONEY
BRIAN BUSTOS
by kelli bodle / sean piccoli
When he lived in New York City in the late 2000s, Charleston, South Carolina-based Brian Bustos made paintings of an alien humanoid character he called Ker-ij (pronounced “courage”) “wandering around collecting light to survive on earth,” as Bustos wrote on his Instagram. In frame after frame, Ker-ij peeks out from a bundled blue coat, almost a casing, like some Studio Ghibli character passing through a neon-colored world.
“Ker-ij originated from feeling like an alien mostly,” Bustos, the PureHoney artist of the month, says by email. “I was in New York City getting on the subway and felt completely apart from the people going to work or wherever they were going. That alienation, and separateness, has subsided some over the years.”
Alienation still figures into Bustos’ art brut creations: winged skulls, medieval soldiers, human and animal figures and figurines, and cryptic texts; or vaguely geometric characters with closed eyes, bodies linked by delicate strands. “I know we are connected in ways I can’t understand,” Bustos says, “and visual work is how I communicate, when I don’t know how to say it out loud to someone.”
He’s also made sculptures, collages and original films, and he’s writing books — a versatility he attributes to restlessness. Drawing is his favorite medium. “It is immediate and fast,” he says. “And while I listen to music, or watch a movie, somehow some lyrics or sentence will work itself into the drawing and make sense somehow.”
Artwork is rendered in a child-like hand by the self-taught Bustos using paper, pen, acrylics and scavenged materials, or pieces of drop cloth like he used when he worked in set design. His pieces are often created on the road.
“When I travel,” he says, “I usually wander around the first couple of days collecting scraps of paper, pieces of wood, whatever to use in my work. Then I make the work in my motel room, or Airbnb. I think the aged scraps of paper give a memory of the painting, or drawing. If I cover it up it’s still in there.” The traveler’s method is an outgrowth of Bustos’ early experiences. The New Jersey native grew up in a military family that moved often. As an adult he’s sold paintings on the streets of New York City, lived on a sailboat in Oregon, and later in Denver, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, before touching down in South Carolina.
“I have never had a steady studio; the work is generally always created in brief intervals at home, or in motel rooms, or even in my van sometimes,” he says. A few times a year he loads paintings into the van and drives to New York City to sell pieces on the street. Though he’s had gallery exhibitions, he says, “I still very much have a punk rock ethos about my work being affordable and doing it myself.”
His use of color is vibrant and symbolic, and grew out of a long-ago job he had at a sign-making shop. “Over time, I’ve toned them down a bit, to be less aggressive,” he says. “In paintings from asylums, or mental institutions, the colors are always bright because maybe it is the only light that he/she has. I think I fall into that category. I’m a pretty dark person sometimes.”
Bustos also credits television cartoons from childhood as an influence on his style and approach. “I think a colorful cartoonlike image allows entryway into some philosophical ideas much easier than something serious,” he says. Childhood moments that stand out for Bustos cast animated kids’ fare as a refuge. “I would lay on the floor and watch cartoons and eat french bread pizza,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more at peace.”
The memory contrasts sharply with preoccupations in his work about the rat race of adult life. “I understand you have to make a living, but sometimes I just don’t get ‘why?’ it ever got like this,” Bustos says. “I don’t have an answer, I’m just asking questions via pictures.”
Surfing, hiking and retreating to nature help Bustos stay level and productive. “I think I’m going to Costa Rica soon to paint and surf,” he says. “I’m interested to see what kind of work comes from spending awhile doing my two favorite things next to a volcano.”
MON THRU FRIDAY
FRIDAY 4-7P
BluEco SWAPS
Wright Brothers Contracting Services, Inc partner with local youth-lead initiative to work towards a sustainable future
BluEco Swaps is a new initiative in West Palm Beach connecting young leaders with local businesses to create impactful and sustainable practices. The project’s goal is to help businesses make small but powerful changes through energy, waste, and material swaps that can create a major positive impact on the environment, especially our oceans BluEco Swaps is proudly led by youth ambassadors who are passionate about building a more sustainable community.
Recently, BluEco Swaps proudly partnered with Wright Brothers Contracting Services, a reputable subcontracting company based in West Palm Beach, to integrate eco-friendly changes into their workplace
Founded in 2008 by President Yin Kyi, Wright Brothers Contracting Services has grown into a leading subcontractor in Florida, specializing in HVAC, plumbing, and electrical services. With a commitment to excellence and innovation, the company serves both residential and commercial clients across the state
Recognizing the environmental challenges associated with the construction industry, Wright Brothers Contracting Services acknowledges that while large-scale changes can be daunting, initiating small, meaningful steps is essential. Their recent sustainable initiatives reflect a genuine commitment to reducing their ecological footprint By fostering a culture of environmental responsibility within their organization, they aim to inspire continued progress and set an example for others in the industry.
Join our Mission!
Through our efforts, we hope to bring attention to the importance of sustainable use of resources to protect our ocean planet If you are interested in learning more about BluEco Swaps, how to get involved, and how we can help your business, visit us at bluecoswaps.com or write to us at leaders.blueswaps@gmail.com This project would not be possible without the support and mentoring from the City of West Palm Beach Office of Sustainability, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and Loggerhead Marinelife Center
We believe that small changes can lead to significant impacts By adopting these sustainable practices, we're not only supporting our team but also contributing to a healthier environment ,
In collaboration with Youth Ambassador Bridget Wu Min Qi, Wright Brothers Subcontracting Services made several impactful swaps to support a greener future: Replaced their traditional coffee maker with a more sustainable Keurig system, which reduces energy and water use during brewing
Removed plastic utensils and switched to providing biodegradable paper cups in place of Styrofoam cups
Provided each employee with their own reusable mug to encourage sustainable daily habits and reduce waste
Plastic cups and utensils contribute significantly to environmental pollution, taking hundreds of years to break down and often releasing microplastics into ecosystems By switching to biodegradable paper cups, Wright Brothers is helping to reduce landfill waste and prevent long-term harm to the environment.
Their use of a Keurig brewing system also supports sustainability, offering energy-efficient brewing and reducing both water and coffee waste With energy-saving features and single-serving options, Keurig machines make it easier for businesses to minimize their environmental footprint especially when paired with reusable mugs and compostable cups
Bridget Wu Min Qi
BluEco Swaps Youth Ambassador
Wright Brothers Contracting Inc Staff Team
Environmentally friendly coffee station and reusable mugs
