Bourbon & Beyond 2026 - Line 7 (Angus & Julia Stone, Cameron Whitcomb, Adam Ant, Amos Lee, Fitz & the Tantrums)

Man, I gotta hurry the hell up.  ACL is being announced next week, and that is going to be all consuming once it lands.  I think I only have three other lines left to do, so let's get into it.  I spent way too long enjoying the Flaming Lips... 

Angus & Julia Stone

One Liner: Generic pop singer voice girl
Wikipedia Genre: Folk rock, indie pop, Americana
Home: Sydney
Day: Friday

Thoughts: Love a good sibling band.  I hope they actually like each other.  The idea of my kids liking each other enough to tour the world and make good music would make me overjoyed.  The sad piece of information here is that they have an older sister, Catherine, who is not a part of the band.  Poor Catherine, back home in some Sydney suburb named Wallabyton doing book-keeping for a local barrister.

I've actually heard of Angus before, because his side project Dope Lemon came through ACL in 2023.  I really liked what he was laying down in there.

But these two homies have released six albums as a duo, and won a handful of APRA and ARIA awards for their efforts.  I like it.  Kind of poppy, kind of folky, and their voices work well together with the two different tones.  She kind of sounds like Lisa Loeb at times, he sounds like Mac DeMarco or Kurt Vile at times.  It is honestly pretty pleasant to listen to all of this as I work.  Top song is "Big Jet Plane" with a whopping 532 million streams.

It sounds like Post Malone covered that one, making it even more popular.  Their 2014 album was actually produced by Rick Rubin, which is kind of dope.  Pretty good stuff!  I'd go watch it!

Cameron Whitcomb

One Liner: Supposedly country but actually crappy pop from an ex-American Idol contestant
Wikipedia Genre: country, alternative country, folk rock, folk pop
Home: British Columbia
Day: Saturday

Thoughts: About 6 songs in, and not liking it.  Like if Ed Sheeran was Imagine Dragons, if that makes sense.  He competed on American Idol in 2022, and now has one album.  I don't really understand calling this County.  Doesn't sound like country to me...

Very Canadian origin story - left home at 17 and moved to something called Kamloops, where he began working on the Trans Mountain Pipeline.  A friend introduced him to Johnny Cash, he found Tyler Childers' music, and he started to post videos of himself singing.  I want to move on and stop listening to this.  "Medusa" is his top track with 159.6 million streams.

It is fine.  I am sure people who go watch it will find him to be a great performer.  I will not.

Adam Ant

One Liner: One Hit Wonder of butt
Wikipedia Genre: new wave, post-punk, alternative rock, dance-rock
Home: London
Day: Saturday

Thoughts: When I saw Adam Ant's name on the poster, I could immediately see his little Eddie Munster ass in my mind.  But I had zero recollection of his music.  But he's the "Goody Two Shoes" guy.  I kind of think that song is butt, if I am being honest.  Feels like the kind of song I probably loved when I was an annoying ass six year old boogie-ing around to it, but its pretty annoying listening to it right now.

Stuart Leslie Goddard is quite a name.  His Wikipedia claims he has 10 UK top ten hits.  I don't recognize anything after the first one.  At first, he had a band called Adam and the Ants, but some producer stole his band and created Bow Wow Wow.  He ended up becoming Adam Ant and finding some new bandmates.  His Wikipedia is sooooo long.  I ain't reading all of that for you, sorry.  He kind of looks like Captain Jack Sparrow in a lot of these pictures though.  He has also been an actor, appearing in stuff like the 1980 version of the Equalizer or Tales from the Crypt.  I really am not enjoying his music.

Amos Lee

One Liner: If Norah Jones was a dude
Wikipedia Genre: folk, soul, jazz, Americana, roots rock, country
Home: Philly
Day: Sunday

Thoughts: Man, I know one song from this guy because it is a banger.  "Windows are Rolled Down" is a good ass song.  But that tune is dwarfed on Spotify by the cheesy ass "Sweet Pea."  181.4 million.

Pretty sure that song was in a commercial or something.  Ah yes, AT&T.  His real name is Ryan Anthony Massaro.  Weird that he had a normal ass name and just created some other normal ass name for his stage name.  He's a Gamecock, and was a second grade teacher after college before getting his singing career on the road. Holy smokes - I swear I wrote the One Liner up above before reading it, but his Wikipedia says he has "been both lauded and dismissed as the 'male Norah Jones.'"  This music is honestly really nice.  The show might be a chill way to spend part of the afternoon (or it might be terribly boring, unclear).

Fitz & the Tantrums

One Liner: Fun ass pop rock
Wikipedia Genre: indie pop, neo soul
Home: L.A.
Day: Sunday

Thoughts:  They came through ACL in 2014, and I have also seen them at Stubb's a few years ago.  Just a purely fun band full of good energy.  For a while, they had gotten to be pretty annoying because they were on every radio station at all times.  Because of this fact, I had grown tired of them and started to change the station/tune them out.  But if you go listen to the excellent Moneygrabber (42 million streams):

, you’ll get a really great groovy rock thing with Hall or Oates mimicry singing over the top.  Which one was Hall and which one was Oates?  How did those two dudes just get in to the Hall of Fame?  They totally remind me of Six Flags as a kid.  I digress - F&tT is really fun music.  "The Walker," "Out of My League," "Spark," "Don’t Gotta Work it Out," these are all well-made retro pop jams.  I’m going to practice my Molly Ringwald dance and break it out fo sho during "Out of My League" (a truly astounding BILLION streams):

I think Fitz has the same hairdo as the AFI guy.  Maybe they are the same guy?  That would be awesome - and that story was broken right here first.  Dibs on breaking that huge story.

Years ago, also at Stubbs, I saw that someone had scrawled "Fitz + the Tantrums! (with a star for the bottom of the exclamation point) 7/13/13 Stubbs <heart symbol> EK" inside of my port-o-potty.  What an odd bit of graffiti to make sure to add to the port-o-potty.  I'm imagining some drunk UT undergrad sitting down to pee, pouring her heart out to the teal wall of the port-o-john, then passing out for a couple of minutes before waking up and rolling back out to party.

Their self-named 2017 album was another big hit.  Funny story, that one tenth or so of my readership already knows, is that a friend of mine has two twin boys, who are like 12.  And those twin boys freaking LOVED themselves some Fitz and the Tantrums when they were little.  They wanted to be Fitz for Halloween. They watched live Fitz shows in their free time.  They know the name of the drummer for the band.  I'm very jealous of this maneuver, as my kids wrinkle up their nose to any music that isn't the absolute most overplayed pop music at any given time.  Taylor Swift or the godawful Chainsmokers!  They're in. Zeppelin or Chilis, and they're yelling at me to change the station.  I've done something terribly wrong in the raising of my children.

Anyway, beyond my parenting shortcomings, this band is super fun.  I saw them play ACL a few years back, and it is just a straight up massive dance party when this group starts blasting you with their good times.  This 2017 album keeps the same vibe, lots of imminently danceable tracks and fun stuff ("HandClap" or "Complicated"), that really never slows down for any serious or slow jam tunes.  Obviously, the big hit is "HandClap" with 457.5 million streams.

Quite a set of dancers in that video.  Good song, very catchy and the kind of thing I think I could easily get behind jumping around to like a crazy person if seeing this band live.  The album really sticks that same fun and danceable flavor - I also like "Fadeback."  This thing is good.

I honestly did not know that they had more music - 2019's All the Feels, 2021's Head Up High, 2022's Let Yourself Free, 2024's Summer of Us, and 2025's Man on the Moon (so many more albums!) keep the same vibe going, although not much in the way of stream count for those.

Two maybe fun facts - the lead singer's last name is Fitzpatrick, and the other singer's last name is Scaggs.  While poorly spelled, it still gives me a little charge of pleasure.  Anyway, I hope I can see this one.