Moon Taxi

Moon Taxi (with Futurebirds and Sparkle City Disco) will be performing LIVE on the Outdoor Stage at Salvage Station on Saturday, October 9th! Doors open at 5pm and the music starts at 6:30pm. Check out our FAQ page here to learn about parking options, what you can and cannot bring inside the venue, and MORE!

Root Down will be serving their delicious twist on Southern Soul food PLUS we will have three food trucks on-site for the duration of the show.  And, of course, we will have MULTIPLE full bars open for you to enjoy!

Please review our Covid-19 policy here: https://salvagestation.com/covid-policy/

CDC guidelines + band requirements + our own personal policies are changing daily, so please keep your eyes on our website for updates.  As always, thank you for supporting live music and for your cooperation as we navigate this challenging time together!

About Moon Taxi:

Since forming in 2006, Moon Taxi have brought their genre-bending musicality to a boldly adventurous body of work, all while taking their live show to leading festivals across the country and sold-out runs at such iconic venues as the Ryman Auditorium. In a dynamic new era for the Nashville-based band—vocalist/guitarist Trevor Terndrup, lead guitarist Spencer Thomson, bassist Tommy Putnam, keyboardist Wes Bailey, and drummer Tyler Ritter—their fifth full-length Silver Dream broadens their sonic palette even further, exploring everything from folk to soul to inventively crafted electronic pop. But while the album embodies an endlessly forward-thinking sound, its lyrics offer a thoughtful reflection on days gone by.

“A lot of these songs came from bringing up moments from the past and recognizing how those memories, especially the good ones, have a sort of soft shine to them,” says Terndrup. “The title is our way of asking, ‘Was it really as beautiful as you remember?’” As Thomson notes, the sweetly hazy reminiscence documented on Silver Dream involved tapping into something of a collective memory. “We’ve been making music together for such a long time that we’ve all seen each other go through major life changes,” he says. “Because of that, the moments that found their way into the lyrics are often experiences that we all lived through together.”

The follow-up to Let the Record Play—a 2018 release that featured the chart-topping single “Two High” and earned praise outlets like from Rolling Stone and NPR—Silver Dream finds the band opening themselves up to collaboration more than ever before. To that end, Moon Taxi joined forces with songwriter/producers like Chris Seefried (Fitz and the Tantrums, The Kooks), Christian Medice (lovelytheband, Halsey), and the late Busbee (The Head and the Heart, Maren Morris), recording partly at the legendary Blackbird Studio in Nashville. At the same time, the band made much of the album entirely on their own, with Thomson maintaining his longtime role as producer and spearheading the free-flowing experimentation that shaped Silver Dream.

Working mainly at Thomson’s home studio, Moon Taxi brought Silver Dream to life by fearlessly following their intuition, embracing total spontaneity in every element of the album-making process. “The line was kind of blurred between the writing and production, where we were doing both in the same moment,” says Terndrup. Thomson adds: “Working that way really helped us not to overthink anything—whatever was our first instinct, we just rolled with that and kept building on it, and most of the time it took us into some exciting directions.”

Co-produced by Thomson and Medice, Silver Dream’s anthemic lead single “Hometown Heroes” shows the wisdom of that approach. As Thomson points out, the song was sparked from a hook that Terndrup stumbled upon while playing a mandolin/guitar hybrid late one night at Medice’s studio. “We’d been writing and recording all day and felt a little delirious, but Trevor got that hook and we held onto it,” he says. Several months later, backstage at Summerfest in Milwaukee, Moon Taxi began improvising lyrics based off a song title Putnam had suggested years before. “Tommy and I started playing together when we were 15, so we definitely got nostalgic bringing up those memories—there was a lot of funny-slash-stupid stuff about hot-boxing cars and N64s,” says Terndrup. As they completed “Hometown Heroes”—a wistful but brightly textured and immediately catchy track—Moon Taxi captured a far more universal sentiment, thereby allowing the listener to project their own recollections onto each lyric.

A particularly meaningful song for Moon Taxi, “Take the Edge Off” was co-written with Busbee not long before his diagnosis of brain cancer. With its potent back-and-forth between stripped-back verse and shimmering chorus, “Take the Edge Off” unfolds with an unguarded honesty that the band partly credits to Busbee’s influence. “Initially I had this idea of making a fun drinking song, and Busbee took that idea and helped us to get to the core of it,” says Terndrup. Driven by a nuanced but powerful vocal performance, “Take the Edge Off” evolved into a soul-stirring meditation on the need for connection in times of deep struggle. “Working with Busbee made a huge impression on us, as far as bringing real emotional truth to our songs,” says Thomson.

Another creative breakthrough for Moon Taxi, “Say” arose from a spur-of-the-moment session with Drew Fulk, an L.A.-based songwriter/producer who’s worked with countless bands in the metal/post-hardcore world. Taking a cue from the more brooding offerings in Fulk’s catalog, the band built the song around a fuzzed-out bass riff, ultimately transforming “Say” into one of Silver Dream’s most urgent and kinetic tracks.

Proving the tremendous depth of their musicianship, Moon Taxi deliver a hypnotic piece of soul-pop on “One Step Away.” “I started writing that one in the airport on the way to L.A.,” Thomson recalls. “It ended up becoming more of a vibe than a story, this sort of desperation cry about being one step away from falling off the edge.” In part inspired by the dramatic California landscape and the retro sensibilities of Quentin Tarantino, “One Step Away” magnifies that mood with its surf-rock-leaning guitar work, jittery rhythms, and psychedelic textures.

In looking back on Silver Dream, Moon Taxi feel newly exhilarated by the possibilities in their future music-making. “Sonically it feels like everything’s been blown wide-open, and I think a lot of that has to do with letting everything happening more organically with his album,” says Terndrup. As Thomson reveals, that shift in approach goes hand-in-hand with a newfound sense of self-assurance. “Sometimes in the past we’ve held back from taking big risks with our sound, out of fear that it wouldn’t fit with who we are as a band,” he says. “But now that doesn’t faze us at all anymore. I think this album really expanded what we’re capable of, and now we have the confidence to go forward with whatever crazy ideas we might come up with.”

About Future Birds:

Recorded at several studios (Portico, Chase Park, Rialto Row, Dialback Sound), the LP is a snarling devil-may-care batch of 12 tunes. It encompasses a seamless blend of hard rock, psychedelic alt-country and folk stylings — something signature to the unique sound, tone and attitude of the Futurebirds.

“We recorded this album all over the place,” says guitarist/singer Thomas Johnson. “In a lot of ways it kept us from bogging down, at times it was probably inefficient, but ultimately everyone of the songs captures the vibe(s) of the spaces and cities we occupied while we made it.

‘I’m Killin You’ really captures the vibe of the whole record for me. The main theme I had in my head while writing it though, was getting past the negative shit that can live on the periphery (or in the forefront) of life. Killing the bad side of human nature. Being self-aware, and being honest with yourself and trying to find peace with the person you’ve become or are becoming (or always were).”

“We’ve been putting one foot in front of the other for a decade now. Every tour, we get smarter about how we operate, how we craft a live show, how we utilize everyone’s individual talents,” guitarist/singer Carter King adds. “Every day, we become better songwriters, more comfortable as artists and producers, better business people — it’s all about teamwork.”

Now on the backside of a decade of road warrior hard-knocks and well-earned accolades, the Athens, GA rock sextet has been hitting its full stride as of late. It’s a sense of time and place where what’s most important remains at the forefront of the group’s philosophy and deeply-held personal mission — a group of friends making sonically innovative music.

“We have one of the oddest and most talented mix of people to make up a band that I’ve ever seen. Everyone is extremely talented in an assortment of different ways, hilarious, tough, creative, scrappy,” King says. “Stylistically, everyone brings something different to the band, and we’re getting better at simultaneously nurturing those differences, melding them together into one unified thing.”

With a touring schedule resembling some haphazard spider web spun across America, the Futurebirds are unrelenting in their quest to bring the melodic party to your hometown, no matter how far away the destination or how small the stage may be.

“And we’ve learned a lot about life along the way,” guitarist/singer Daniel Womack reflects. “Watching other bands rise and fall, watching the sunrise and the sunset, cried because it hurt, cried because it felt good, watching strangers turn into friends and some into family.”

“In a lot of ways the live show is the last frontier, the last thing left in the music industry that can’t be digitized and given away for free,” Johnson adds. “It’s the thing that keeps us coming back. The act of making something awesome and unique with six individuals, creating a sound-weave, connecting to the core of human existence, that’s the teamwork.”

Ultimately, the underlying message of the Futurebirds is making sure everybody feels included in the grand scheme of things — this absurd reality that is life itself — where compassion from both sides of the microphone and drinks held high, and in unison, is the name of the game.

“There’s a reciprocated energy between us and the crowd, where everyone is riding on that same wave together,” Womack says. “And when you’re in that moment, everything about this band life makes sense. The feeling that exists in that moment between the crowd and us — that’s why we do what we do. That’s Teamwork.”

Listen to Future Birds:

Listen to Sparkle City Disco: