Anybody else feeling kind of sinister lately?
Maybe it’s just the start of spooky season or the promise of literally darker days to come. Maybe I’m still riding the devilish glee I derived from a nor’easter washing out Ed Sheeran’s shows at Gillette Stadium, which is New England’s special way of telling you to piss all the way off. I’m thinking we get an Ed Sheeran and Pat McAfee tour next. Boy George opener?
Sweet, sweet schadenfreude aside, my added levels of wickedness might be Matt Hagen’s fault. In recent years, the Burlington singer-songwriter, guitarist and all-around Renaissance man has brought us musicals about falling in love with a dolphin, a holiday variety album featuring Grace Potter and members of Phish, and an instrumental electronic album scored to satellite launches. Now, he’s unleashing a crime spree.
Another of his many projects is a nasty bit of work titled Matt Hagen’s Murder Ballads, a dark, gothic-folk band that plays songs all about the art of the kill. This is Hagen indulging his most malevolent tendencies as a songwriter.
“I love playing these songs,” Hagen told me recently over a decidedly safe and unspooky lunch. “They get so sinister. I can tell the audience is excited to accept their darkness and go to this place with us.”
Hagen will release three volumes of his Murder Ballads in October, starting with Vol. 1 on Friday, October 2. Vol. 2 follows on October 9; the final installment, on October 16.
The trilogy was almost entirely recorded live in front of a studio audience at Tank Recording Studio in Burlington last October. The only exception: a cover of the Phish song “Shafty,” which was recorded live at the 126 in Burlington, with none other than Jon Fishman on the kit.
To perform the songs, Hagen assembled a truly evil collection of top Burlington-area musicians. (I’m kidding, they’re all lovely, perfectly non-murderous people. But for this project, pretend they could cut your brake lines or drop a piano on you at any moment.) Bob Wagner, Cotter Ellis, Mike Fried, Johnnie Day Durand, Tony Naples, Andriana Chobot and Justin Mazer make up the Murder, Hagen’s backing crew of hired killers.
If, after listening to all three volumes of noir from Hagen, you feel a little FOMO about missing the Tank sessions, fear not! Not only can you see the Murder Ballads show live, it’s in bingo form. That’s right, Murder Ballad Bingo features Hagen and his band simultaneously playing a set and conducting a bingo night. It goes down on Friday, October 23, at Shelburne Town Hall and features food trucks and libations courtesy of Foam Brewers and Shelburne Vineyard.
Check out Matt Hagen’s Murder Ballads at thegoldenloaf.bandcamp.com.
I try to check my sinister levels as Halloween nears, however. Nobody wants Dark Chris — he’s insufferable and will 100 percent try to talk about things like the Octopus Murders or skinwalkers. Or, God save your soul, how liquor liability insurance rates are crippling indie-music venues. I spent the weekend at a friend’s wedding cornering people and telling them about dram shop laws against their will. Bwahaha! More on that soon. (Cue spooky music.)
I also love silver linings and sweeter things. And it doesn’t get much sweeter than the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The nonprofit’s mission to provide life-changing experiences to children with critical illnesses can make the most emotionally stunted dude-bro tear up, as proven by my recent visit to the local chapter’s headquarters on the Vermont Teddy Bear campus in Shelburne. I was given a full tour of the Wishing Space, an immersive environment created to welcome “wish kids” into the program — and yeah, maybe I had dust in my eye for much of the tour.
The president and CEO of the local Make-A-Wish chapter, Jamie Hathaway, also has a passion for music. A self-described “old Deadhead,” Hathaway is both a fan of and friends with bassist Oteil Burbridge, who has played with Dead & Company, the Allman Brothers Band, and Aquarium Rescue Unit. So Hathaway and Make-A-Wish have partnered with Burbridge for a special four-show mini tour to raise funds for and awareness of the organization.
After kicking off on Tuesday, October 6, at Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., the tour rolls into South Burlington on Wednesday, October 7, for a blowout benefit show at the Higher Ground Ballroom. For the tour, which also includes stops in Brooklyn and Somerville, Mass., Burbridge teams up with Burlington jam and funk outfit LaMP, featuring drummer Russ Lawton, guitarist Scott Metzger and keyboardist Ray Paczkowski.
“I’ve participated in Make-A-Wish since the Allman Brothers days, but it’s been a long time,” Burbridge said in a press release for the tour, adding how excited he was to link up with LaMP onstage.
The tour is sponsored by Shelburne’s Fiddlehead Brewing, whose co-owners, Matt and Amy Cohen, have a personal connection to the foundation. Amy is a member of the Make-A-Wish Vermont & Northeast New York board of directors and shared in a press release that their now-teenage son Noah was a wish kid more than a decade ago.
“In the middle of everything he was facing, it gave him something to look forward to and reminded all of us how much joy is still possible,” Amy said. “To help grant that same joy for other children now, through the live music we love, is a full-circle moment we will never forget.”
As part of the promotion, Vermont Teddy Bear created a limited-edition teddy bear dubbed the Oteil Bearbridge. Proceeds from the bear, who is clad in a tie-dye T-shirt and complete with a miniature replica of Burbridge’s custom purple bass guitar, go straight to helping grant kids’ wishes.
Alas, the Oteil Bearbridge sold much faster than anyone involved anticipated.
“Those things flew out of the gate!” Hathaway told me. “We’re working with Vermont Teddy Bear, though. We’re going to get some more, because, man, they were popular.”
While you can’t get one of the teddy bears (for now), and the Higher Ground show is nearly sold out, VIP tickets are available at wishbenefit.org.
Speaking of silver linings, there’s news regarding the fate of Big Heavy World. Readers may recall that the long-running Burlington music nonprofit founded by James Lockridge folded last year after losing its Pine Street digs due to unpaid rent. It was a blow to the Vermont music scene at large, leaving unclear the fate of decades of history and recordings that the organization had collected.
Thankfully, the folks at the Vermont Historical Society have stepped in to save the day. In conjunction with Lockridge, the historical society is taking on the entire Big Heavy World archive, which includes thousands of Vermont albums, as well as recordings of radio shows, interviews and live performances, plus poster art and all sorts of Green Mountain ephemera collected over 30 years. These archives contain work from the likes of Phish, “Big Joe” Burrell, Grace Potter, Death, Anaïs Mitchell, Gogol Bordello and many, many more.
Having covered the scene for years, and having been a part of it as a musician for even longer, I can’t tell you how happy and relieved I am to see that history preserved. Too many gaps already exist from when the scene either wasn’t covered or was covered by media that’s been lost to time. I don’t want Vermont music to be a secret or some undiscovered trove, as romantic as that might sound. Thousands of musicians have helped weave the state’s long musical tapestry, and their work deserves to be documented and preserved.
“VHS is honored by Lockridge’s trust in our ability to preserve and ultimately share this incredible offering of Vermont’s music,” the organization said in a press release, “and is grateful for the opportunity to steward the next phase of this remarkable collection.”
While plans are still under way for an eventual display of the collection, for now the big update is that the massive archive is moving to Montpelier for preservation.
All of that sunny news is making it tough for me to lean into my sinister side as we head toward Halloween. But let’s be real: It’s 2026. I’m undoubtedly going to read something in the next several hours that will have me buying canned goods and googling things like “Should I buy a sword?”
In the meantime, at least I have some murder ballads and silver linings to ease my heel turn.
New Release Radar
Five recent or upcoming releases from Vermont artists
- Derek Charles Young, Second Chances (more old songs), derekcharlesyoung.bandcamp.com, (August 8, Americana)
- Lilly Golden, North Star (Live), Spotify, (September 25, indie pop)
- The Discussions, No Shrines, No Concrete, thediscussions.bandcamp.com, (October 6, post-rock)
- Alex Underwood, Slow Burn, Spotify, (October 9, folk)
- Bull’s Head, Before the Robins Leave the Yard, bullshead.bandcamp.com (October 16, alt-country)
This article appears in September 30 • 2026.
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