JOY. Present
Friendship + support
Sunday 10 May 2026
Rough Trade, Bristol
19:30-23:00
14+ (under 18s to be accompanied by a responsible adult)

FFO: MJ Lenderman, Florry, Greg Freeman, Brown Horse

An album for sleeping and waking, walking and driving, hunting and fishing, for loitering outside a roadhouse on the haunted tundra. Shambolic guitars are offset by flute pads, bleary poetry is set against a Motown rhythm section, songs about Jerry Garcia and First Lady Betty Ford fade in and out with drum solos, like if Talk Talk came from a dingy Philadelphia basement and was fronted by James Tate. Songwriter Dan Wriggins’ ragged baritone cuts through murky, swirling country-rock songs with profound lyrical substance and sincerity. Like an alarm clock incorporated into the edge of a dream, their fourth LP ‘Caveman Wakes Up’ belongs equally to the conscious and subconscious mind, fraught with background, steeped in reference and experimentation, delivered casually and as a dire warning, dedicated, above all, to music’s creative soul.

Over the years, dedication has paid off. Friendship has become a kind of reverse supergroup, wherein the band itself and each individual member are located centrally in an increasingly prominent scene of young folk and country musicians and songwriters. Drummer Michael Cormier O’Leary leads the instrumental collective Hour and, along with bassist Jon Samuels, runs Dear Life Records, home to friends and peers who count Friendship as a major influence including MJ Lenderman, Florry, and Fust. (Samuels also plays lead guitar in MJ Lenderman and the Wind). Guitarist Peter Gill’s band 2nd Grade records prolifically. Wriggins began writing the songs of Caveman Wakes Up on a downtuned classical guitar of Lenderman’s and finished on a barely tuned piano in an apartment he shared with Sadurn’s G DeGroot.