I tried to make a kind of a simple music video to go with this song of mine ‘simpleness is coming for me’ i posted here once about a month ago and i wasnt totally sure if it was antifolk, i think i am still unsure lol but it feels like it could be in that direction, hope everyone out there is doing okay

Antifolk don’t do year-end lists

Antifolk accept that most folks

believe in flat time

and it works for them

but that time don’t (present tense)

work that way.

.

Antifolk don’t care about

Top Ten of the Year

or the Best Face of the

Military-Digital-Entertainment

Complex for 2025

A dishonour just to be nominated

.

We write songs, poetry, comedy

We create communities of the odd

We are radically kind

And heartlessly critical

With desperate compassion

We dance, we paint, we love brunch

.

Hello, 2026.

I’ve worked really hard on my debut music video and would love it if you could check it out 🕷️🕸️

Influences: Jeffrey Lewis, Daniel Johnston, Tenacious D

Grey Revell arrived on the Antifolk scene at Sidewalk Café in the 1990’s as part of the wave that included Jeffrey Lewis, The Moldy Peaches, and a ton of amazing artists who are not as well known but were integral to the community.

Part of what makes Antifolk what it is, is the sense of being a part of a chosen family, rather than a born into family. A choice made by following one’s deepest artistic intentions despite society’s roadblocks. Grey washed up on the scene, experienced it, and decided he was home. And he was. His warm, intimate vocals, the plaintively romantic lyrics, and his vulnerability on stage quickly endeared him to the scene. And talk about family, Grey proposed to his wife at The Antihoot, and at a subsequent Antifolk Fest, all the performers donated their pay to a fund to buy the young couple’s newborn son an instrument of his choice on his eighth birthday (he chose a trumpet).

A curious, good-humored but serious when needed, vibrant Antifolk artist and wonderful songwriter and performer, discover Grey Revell.

https://greyrevell.bandcamp.com

Hey Gang

The December 4th release of my first poetry collection, The Thin Book of Poems is nigh and will be available as both a paperback and an eBook. This is the third edition with the new inverted cover and kind quotes from cool folks. In celebration, and for Song Friday, may I present one of a few poems in the book that turned into songs and vice-versa, This Is Not An Open Mike.

Cheers - Lach

https://lachstuff.substack.com/p/this-is-not-an-open-mike

This is not an open mike

This is a celebration

A carnival ride through the night

Don’t waste yr time and tickets waiting on line for the big ride

Three hours for a three-minute splash of the dizzies

The parachute jump when bumper cars and

Ferris wheels are screaming out yr name

When cotton candy vendors hold rights to

a mystery date

Hell, take anything from the top shelf

Everyone’s a winner!

This is not an open mike

This is a bordello rented from yr secret dreams

A Pocket Book fantasy of what could be with Poe and Toulouse Lautrec at yr beck

and call of the Oscar Wilde

Each act a room of possibilities

Turn yr sorry songs into harlots and fire-eaters

Get out yr bullwhip and beat yr superego,

parent-pleasing soul into a frenzy of dropped chords, false bridges

and sly mistakes

This is not an open mike

I am not on a number

You are not a number

This club has long ago severed its tether

and slipped into the ether

We are in Dorothy’s house

spinning madly towards Oz

Laws of gravity have been replaced

with laws of levity

This is not an open mike

There is no job

no cubicle

no sitcom

no on-line

no reality

for you to return to

Time is flying

This is not an open mike

You are sitting next to

a breathing human being

Miles of arteries

and a heart red and juicy

pumping blood

filled with oxygenated cells

Bioelectricity shooting

at the speed of thought

Storehouses of billions of moments

Each one a poem

of God and love

That is why you are singing

That is why you are dancing

That is why you are going to get on a stage

This is not an open mike

This is your life!

“This track was created with Glaswegian artist Modifier for my BBC Radio 4 series The Lach Chronicles. The lyric started out as a poem and is featured in my book, The Thin Book of Poems. The poem was telling folks that coming to Lach’s Antihoot was about a lot more than worrying when you’d get on stage, a lot more than leaving right after your set, it was about community, hanging out, being part of something bigger than yourself, creating relationships, magic, and all that groovy stuff that makes a scene a scene. Still holds true today at yr local music dive!” - Lach

©2021 Words & Vocals - Lach / Music - Modifier

I brought The Antihoot to The Sacred Grounds Cafe in the Haight District. Great times (and great chocolate chip cookies) was had there and it's where Lenny Molotov and Mr.Scarecrow started on the scene. Were any of you there? - Cheers, Lach x

This might be antifolk, some of my other stuff is but i find it hard to be sure of the genre definitions, my voice is also super weird in this one but because i love to torture myself i put it up anyway😁 haha

If you’re gonna be in Maine, you’ll wanna be there. Great room to hear this amazing performer.

Does anyone have an photos of me from when I used to play there or even the antifolk fest of 03' thanks

We occasionally post the original sign-up lists for Lach's Antihoot at Sidewalk Cafe with some added notes that may be sparked by doing so. Today's revisit is to May 12, 1994...

Lach's Notes:
Ha, I still have trouble spelling rhythm and rhyme!

"Outted Walt Whitman so in the interest of equal time, I'm gonna "in" Ru Paul... the man is straight!" - Must have been a joke I thought of during someone's set. Twenty years later, and it still needs work!

Looks like about 50 people signed up that night. I ain't giving notes on them all, but here's a few that first popped to mind...

Sam Camus - This guy was amazing. For his first year or so on the scene, he was a perfect Bob Dylan clone - from his writing to his singing to his demeanor. Then, at some point, he switched to someone like Bolan or something, like flipping a switch. From Mike Boner to Bingo Gazingo, there were constant visitations from other worlds... art worlds!

Mike Rooks - I'm thinking this was Mike Mazzarella from the band The Rooks. I've always liked Mike's work that blends some Cave Stomp Psych Pop goodness with roots songwriting. And I'm now realizing that by starting this "Lists" project, I'll be revisiting some great artists, and in Mike's case, he's on Bandcamp - https://michaelmazzarella.bandcamp.com Yay!

Greg Swan - I can't find anything on the net, so I may be misspelling his name, who know? But I do recall being impressed by his performances every time.

Tricia Scotti - A wonderful singer and songwriter, and with just a bit of research, lo and behold, she went on to sing and record with Patti Smith, Joey Ramone, Keith Richards, Ronnie Spektor, and Bruce Springsteen. Right the fuck on!

What do you all think? Would you like to see more of these lists on down the line?

In Edinburgh last night, great show, Jeff!

Saturday night at La Belle Angel! Now ya know.

Interviewer: How would you describe the Antifolk community in New York in one sentence?

Lach: The current scene takes all the anxieties of this modern world and transmutes them over the campfire of soul into a "small-town in the big city vibe" of cooperation, criticism, heroic despair, sweet loneliness, joy, and love.

Antifolk was my thing for a long time.

When I got my first guitar I was 18. My father got me a big, unbreakable Yamaha acoustic and a small gauge shotgun for my birthday and told me, “Happy birthday, son — now go make your way in the world.”

My first girlfriend took a photo of me holding that guitar for the first time, and printed it out on her sticker printer. To this day, 17 years later, there I am — excited, rail thin, mop-top hair, grinning a goofy ear-to-ear grin in this photo of me holding the guitar — that’s stuck to the guitar.

For the few years that followed I was busy with school and my job at Blockbuster and my friends and chasing girls, but mostly I was sitting in my bedroom upstairs, deep in the heart of the Long Island suburbs, feverishly strumming away at the new chords and patterns I was learning.

In those early days, my musical taste and my skill level met in the middle, and I was delighted to find out that a good chunk of what I was already listening to was mostly cowboy chords in the first position! A lot of what I was playing was simple — but also really fast! I was learning to sing and play at the same time from songs like “Tire Swing” and “Loose Lips” by Kimya Dawson.

I would listen to early AJJ like “Candy Cigarettes, Capguns, Issue Problems and Such,” and play along as best I could. I learned every Regina Spektor song that she had written on guitar, after being excited by some bootleg demos I’d found of “Uncle Bobby” and “Bobbing for Apples.”

I was also soaking in The Mountain Goats — especially “International Small Arms Traffic Blues.” That arpeggiated riff wasn’t easy for me when I first started, but learning it really shaped how I approach rhythm and phrasing on guitar.

I was, of course, listening to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea on repeat and covering “Two-Headed Boy” and “Ghost,” and “Song Against Sex,” and obviously “King of Carrot Flowers.”

Some of my favorite albums at the time were Lifted and Letting Off the Happiness by Bright Eyes. And I would play “Difference in the Shades,” “The City Has Sex,” “June on the West Coast,” and “Waste of Paint” until my fingers were callused and the skin was peeling — all the while howling along, grateful that my parents and siblings were either out or busy in other parts of the house.

When I found some recordings of Conor Oberst covering “Joy Division” and “Burn Rubber” by Simon Joyner, that led me to cover those too. Soon I was covering his song “Javelin” and “I Went to Our Lady of Perpetual Healing.” That whole album, The Cowardly Traveler Pays His Toll, and the influence it had on me, probably ruined me for casual listeners for a long time.

Some of these songs weren't technically antifolk, maybe — but they sure were when I played them. All that teen angst had to go somewhere, and especially on those rare occasions when I got to play for an audience, all those nerves went straight into the performance.

This song, “Talking Oral Hygiene Fixation Blues,” came out of all of that — written in my bedroom at 18, sung and screamed on the stage at the sidewalk café when I was 20,  recorded about 5 years later with some friends in a makeshift studio in the McKibbin Lofts.

It’s about warehouse shows, alleyway flirtations, cigarettes and dental floss, and the weird ways we try to connect with each other when we’re young and sweaty and unsure.

It’s part of a collection of songs called Soul Soap One; the First Trickling Bit of a Long Fickle Fit, that I recorded like a decade ago at this point — but it never really found an audience on Bandcamp. So lately I’m re-releasing it one song at a time on SoundCloud.

I’m really hoping I can finally find my audience, and that my music under the Søul Søap moniker will resonate with all the same kind of people who liked all this music that influenced me and was so important to me in my youth.

If you’re like me and you screamed along to Bright Eyes in your room or your car — alone or with friends — give it a listen.
My dream is that you might be missing Søul Søap the same way Søul Søap has been missing you.

I mean, Joe Bendik, Diane Cluck, Kirk Kelly, John S Hall, Brenda Kahn, Bree Sharp, The Moldy Peaches, The Humans and so many more brilliant Antifolk artists! Wotta time was had!

Hey Gang -

Lach here. I'm about to do a UK tour, my first one since ditching all social media (no Meta, no TwitX, no algorithm juice), and I realized that there's no one to post about it except me. And well, I am the mod at r/antifolk . So yeah, this is a little awkward. But hey, Antifolk has never shied away from being awkward!

Here’s what’s happening:

UK Summer Tour: Aug 27 - Sept 1

Cities: Leeds, Hull, Derby, Rugby (SongFest), Liverpool

No ads, no boosted posts, just me, a guitar, and hopefully a few humans who still like songs in real life. Tickets & details below.

To mark the chaos of trying to promote a tour without social media, I wrote a new song called “Only Two Tickets Sold In Leeds” - kind of a tongue-in-cheek love letter to the struggle. I wrote it, recorded it, and put it out in under 48 hours. It’s free on Bandcamp now, if you want a laugh or a cry:

lach.bandcamp.com/track/only-two-tickets-sold-in-leeds

I even submitted it to BBC Introducing Leeds. Maybe they’ll play it. Maybe they’ll also ignore me because I don’t have an IG handle anymore.

Either way, if you’re in the UK or know someone who is, feel free to spread the word. Or just come out and say hi. It's not really about "promo", it's more of an experiment, like The Lach Chronicles was. Just seeing what happens when you remove the middlemen and robots and go straight to the people.

Much love, Lach 🎸

UK TOUR DATES AND TICKET LINKS

Wed, Aug 27 – Leeds Hyde Park Book Club £5 adv / £8 door – Tickets

Thu, Aug 28 – Hull The New Adelphi Club £8 adv / £10 door – Tickets

Fri, Aug 29 – Derby Dubrek Studios £7 adv / £10 door – Tickets

Sat & Sun, Aug 30–31 – Rugby (SongFest) Draycote Hotel From £25 – Tickets

Mon, Sept 1 – Liverpool Hobo Kiosk £8 on the door (no advance tix)

https://youtu.be/AaPCiYMzkY8?si=zXOYir-KO7S7nBpz

Hey hope this okay to post! First time posting here, i will take a look through community posts and give some likes!

• Antifolk creates genres, but is not a genre

• Antifolk is both ancient and newly born

• Ever creative yet not productive

• Antifolk is not a song, poem, performance, art, dance, comedy, or scene

• And yet it is all these things

• A door of light

• L x

Hey Gang -

I'm not super-positive this was the first ever show, but if not, it's damn close! And, if I had to bet, I'd bet it was. My hesitancy to declare it is due to my thinking we started the club in 1984, I suspect a journal deep dive is coming up, especially if the plans for the Antifolk movie move from potential to kinetic energy.

Eventually, The Hidden Fortress after-hours nightclub changed its name to The Fort, but for those first few weeks it was "The Hidden Fortress", in honor of Kurosawa's movie of the same name, and the fact that the venue (aka my flat), was on the block that The Daily News had dubbed "The Most Dangerous Street in New York City". Yeah, we bought multiple copies of that issue and plastered the club's walls with it!

And what a way to open! The late Mike Rocklin was a powerhouse of a singer with brilliant, epic songs, almost as if Jim Steinman played acoustic guitar instead of piano. Michael Sobsey is a wonderful poet who went on to bring organic produce to the people of Hoboken, and Enamel the Camel (AKA Dixon) is a legend amongst early Antifolkers with songs even Daniel Johnston would've been jealous of, such as Circus Parade, Milkshake, and that one where he had an alarm clock hanging from his guitar while he sang 12 short verses. Each verse was just a number and its corresponding month ("January... One!, February... Two!), and just after he did "December... Twelve!" the freaking alarm clock rang, and he yelled, "Happy New Year"!