NoWordsATL 4.0 Spring Edition: A celebration of instrumental music at The Garden Club on Saturday, May 10


This Saturday, May 10, NoWordsATL 4.0 takes over the Garden Club at Wild Heaven West End on Sat., May 10, from 3:30-11 p.m.

This day-long festival is a celebration of instrumental, ambient, and experimental sound exploration—sans words—delivered in an environment that thrives on thick ambiance and both visceral and cerebral responses to the music.

Catch sets from an eclectic mix of forward-thinking artists, unfolding in a space that invites immersive listening. Think synth meditations, modular abstractions, steel strings, and guitar loops stretched into infinity amid light installations and projections turning the room into an ever-shifting canvas where sound and light mingle in real time. 


The Harmonic Continuum is an afro-futurist, multi-instrumentalist foursome featuring Doc Calico, Billy Fields, Kenito Murray, and Kenny Web playing jazz, punk, psychedelic, and experimental rock.


Rasheeda Ali is a Grammy nominated flautist who recently stepped out from the shadow of performing alongside greats like Jeff Mills and Kebbi Williams expressing next level cosmic explorations of sound using flute, synth, and drum machines.

Shane Parish is a guitarist, composer, improviser, and leader of the avant-rock band Ahleuchatistas. He’s also ¼ of Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, and a renowned acoustic soloist. 

Melodic Monster, featuring Ben Garden, is a psychedelic rock band that blends theatrics and effects in an unforgettable live show.

Alexandria Smith is an improviser/multimedia artist, trumpeter, and a professor of music at Georgia Tech, who has performed residencies at the Stone NYC, had feature recitals on the Future of New Trumpet (FONT) Festival West, Dartmouth’s Vaughan Recital Series, the VI Semana Internacional de Improvisación in Ensenada, Baja California, and Tulane University.

Spacers blend Kraut Rock and African rhythms to psychedelic effect.

Jeffrey Bützer is a multi-instrumentalist who plays accordion, toy piano, guitar, electric piano, chord organs, glockenspiel, melodica, banjo, and other noise makers to create a cinematic world of sound.

The Atlanta Improvisers Orchestra is a collective of experimental artists who use classical instruments, movement, and sound in spontaneous improvised compositions. Featuring Majid Ariam, Al-Yasha Ilhaam Williams, Ben Shirley, Priscilla Smith, and an evolving cast of various other artists.

$15. Doors open at 2:30 p.m. Music starts at 3:30 p.m.

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Emily Marie Palmer & Jeffrey Bützer: ‘Rebekka’


Jeffrey Bützer and Emily Marie Palmer have released a new single titled “Rebekka.”

The song finds Bützer and Palmer embracing an elegant folk-pop sound that serves as an invisible soundtrack that’s loosely based on The Ballad of Jack and Rose, a film about a daughter that has an unhealthy relationship with her father. As Bützer explains, the song’s protagonist is “raised in a former comune and has really only been around him for her entire life, and, more or less, falls in love with him. I didn’t want to write a salacious incest folk song, so I kept the mood and changed the intent.”

The song features Bützer playing guitar alongside vocalist Palmer, backing vocalist A. R. Palmer, piano and guitar player Lionel Fondeville, Eric Balint playing vibraphone, and cello player Kristin Haverty. The group weaves together a rich tapestry of ethereal, cinematic chamber pop that tells a story that is as tragic or as wistful as whatever the listener brings to the music. The cover art is courtesy of filmmaker Guy Maddin.

Jeffrey Bützer (left) and Emily Marie Palmer. Photo by Ken Lackner


If Palmer looks familiar, you probably recognize her from her roles as Isabel on the rebooted MacGyver series, or as Betsy in season 3 of Cobra Kai—teenaged John Kreese’s love interest. Check out her previous singles “Holy Magic,” “For Beauty,” and “Two Brothers.”

“Rebekka” offers the first glimpse at a new eight-song full-length album, titled Bedrooms, due out later this year.

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T.T. Mahony & Jeffrey Butzer’s ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ live stream Saturday, December 19

T.T. Mahony (left) and Jeffrey Butzer. Photo by Samantha Shal.

T.T. Mahony and Jeffrey Butzer return for their annual performance of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

This year’s show is a live stream from The EARL stage on Saturday, December 19. Pianist Mahony and drummer Butzer lead an ensemble featuring bass player Mike Beshara and vocalist Kelly Sirmans Winn through composer Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Chad Shivers & the Frigidaires (feat. Nick Bazemore, Brad Mattocks, Matt Steadman, Sonny Harding, and Sean Zearfoss) celebrate the group’s 10th anniversary playing the A Charlie Brown Christmas show by performing the Beach Boys and the Ventures’ Christmas albums in their entirety.

Tickets are available for $10-$100 donations. Music starts at 7 p.m.

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