Fair warning to those walking around Burlington this week: The chances of a stranger coming up to you and saying something like “What’s a place you hate to wait in line?” or “Tell me a noun, any noun, that you heard recently” are dangerously high. As they almost too eagerly await your response, you may realize you’ve been accosted by an improv comedian. Don’t be afraid; just go with it. Be ready with a “Yes, and…” at some point, and let the improv take you.
This forecast for unscripted comedic hijinks is down to the Big Pond Improv Festival returning for its sixth year. Produced by Vermont Comedy Arts and held at Vermont Comedy Club this Thursday through Sunday, September 10 through 13, Big Pond is heaven for improv nerds. Featuring a slew of teams from Vermont and abroad, the fest is headlined by comedians Ify Nwadiwe and Erika Ishii, two familiar faces to fans of Dropout TV. Check out bigpondimprov.com for tickets.
Well, venues might be dropping like flies, but there’s one thing the Vermont music scene can still do in style: throw a giant party in the woods.
Enter the Brewster River Jam Fest at Brewster River Campground in Jeffersonville. Now in its second year, the one-day festival on Saturday, October 10, is stacked with local talent, largely from the jam, bluegrass and roots scenes. This year’s lineup, which was finalized last month, features the likes of Cotter & Friends, All Night Boogie Band, Forest Station, Ponyhustle, Ali McGuirk, Lara Cwass Band, and Bob Wagner. In other words, the jam fest is a great soirée to cap off festival season.
If you can’t make it, don’t fret. Last week, organizers announced that the fine folks from Tank Recording Studio will be on-site recording every set at the festival, then mixing and mastering it all for release a few weeks later.
It’s been a little while since we heard from singer-songwriter and banjotarist extraordinaire Bow Thayer — four years, in fact, since his 2022 album, The Book of Moss. The Stockbridge resident, a fixture of the Vermont folk and bluegrass scenes who previously played in bands such as Elbow and the Benders, has been hard at work on a new concept record titled Ninevah.
Inspired by both the remote Lake Ninevah in Mount Holly and the ancient Assyrian capital Nineveh, Thayer’s forthcoming record concerns “a mythological realm that sits within (or next to) the fading realistic world we are in and transitioning through,” he explained in an email to Seven Days. He clarified that “the songs are about the awe of nature, and its sign-posts to guide us through this portal that is Ninevah.”
The album drops on October 4, but Thayer released its first single, “Old News,” on September 4. The tune features Thayer’s core band of guitarist Krishna Guthrie and percussionist Steve Ferraris, though the album has plenty of guests, including Jackson Browne guitarist Val McCallum and Rough Francis bassist Tyler Bolles.
Thayer and his band will celebrate Ninevah’s release with a Friday, October 23, show at the SEABA Center in Burlington.
Check out “Old News” on Bow Thayer’s Bandcamp.
Indie-rock weirdos (it’s a compliment) Ruminations continue to roll out fresh tracks from a recording session in a repurposed textile mill on the Winooski River. The band cut the songs last winter when Greg Bonsignore brought his self-described “post-punk psychedelic garage rock” project — including drummer Luke Maggio, bassist Ben Roth and keyboardist Brendan Rooney — to the DIY studio.
The third single in a planned five-song series, “The Last Hipster,” dropped on August 28 and features some of the most impenetrable lyrics of the year so far, about the etymology of the word “sardonic.”
“The last hipster, closing it down,” Bonsignore sings on the track. “Convulsive laughter will lead to his death / The effect of a Sardinian plant you ingest.”
Continuing the strong Ben Collette theme this week, the tracks were all mixed and mastered at Tank Recording Studio and, accordingly, sound fantastic. Give them a listen on their Bandcamp.
New Release Radar
Five recent or upcoming releases from Vermont artists
- Chris Clark, Across a Carnival, (August 11, Americana)
- Malcolm Miller, 40 Days, Spotify (August 17, EDM)
- Banjo Dan, The Country Blues, Spotify (August 24, folk)
- Goodnight Nobody, s/t, (September 18, indie rock)
- Matt Hagen, Murder Ballads Vol. 1-3
This article appears in September 9 • 2026.
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