We’re excited to welcome Merce Lemon (with full band!) to West Art for a night beneath the stained glass. Merce is a Pittsburgh-based songwriter with a sound that’s both tender and perfectly off-kilter—music that's personal, a little raw, and totally magnetic. Her latest album has gotten well- deserved praise from Stereogum, Paste Magazine, and Pitchfork, and it's undoubtedly going to be another fantastic evening of music and community here at West Art . Opening the night will be the trio of Abigail Dempsey (a solo artist who previously toured with Low Cut Connie), Zoe Lemon, and Ahna Ell! Don't miss out! Grab your tickets HERE, and come be part of it!
What to expect at the show:
>> Doors will open at 6:30. The show will start at 7:30.
>> Tickets are $15 in advance, and $20 at the door if not sold out. As always, we’re proud to present an all-ages show! Grab your tickets HERE!
>> Parking may be available in the small lot across the street. Beyond that, there’s parking available around Buchanan Park and F&M College in the blocks surrounding West Art.
>> Format: This will be a standing show. Our space is ADA accessible, and we will do our best to accommodate any specific needs.
>> If you haven't yet discovered the magic of the West Art Coffee⚡Bar, now's your chance! We're open from 7am-10pm daily, with a full and delicious espresson bar menu, along with a lovely selection of beer, wine, and cocktails, plenty of N/A options, and some tasty bites from our favorite local bakeries. Something for everyone, all day long! Come hang out before the show and experience it for yourself!
>> Please note that all ticket sales are final. Thank you for supporting great music!
Tickets HERE!
Band Bios:
Merce Lemon
“I could not be alive alone,” a longtime family friend says with a smile. “None of us could be alive alone.”
Within the quiet, cascading corners of Pittsburgh lies a community – nothing short of one large family – that spans zip codes, histories, occupations, and generations, always tumbling inwardly into itself, propped up by steadfast pillars of conviction toward spiritual and emotional mutual aid. The kind of earnest community scaffolding that gets bandied about, wielded as conjecture, particularly in an age of increasing fracture through digital sublimation, is alive and quite well within the universe surrounding Merce Lemon.
When asked how the city has inspired her creative practice, she responds with a characteristic joke wrapped in an earthen warmth – “There are big hills, three rivers, and more bridges than anywhere in the whole world.” Growing up in a family of art and music in a city with a small, but vigorously supportive scene, Merce has been going to shows here her whole life, even playing them with the “grown up” friends of her parents – as recently as a few years ago, her band was comprised of her own father and his peers in the Pittsburgh music community.
Merce took a step back in 2020, after releasing her last album Moonth, to reassess during an era of anxiety and lockdown – even the reliably nourishing exercise of releasing and playing music felt precarious. “I was grappling with what kind of relationship I wanted with music in my life. It was just something I’d always done, and I didn’t want to lose the magic of that – but I was just having less fun.” In this time of restless confusion, she turned her gaze inwardly, down to the roots – figuratively and literally.
“I got dirty and slept outside most of the summer. I learned a lot about plants and farming, just writing for myself, and in that time I just slowly accumulated songs.” A never-ending creative hunger, supported by the community framework she’d always been able to depend on, had been newly fertilized by the wide-eyed inspiration that came from plunging her hands into both the earth’s soil and her own. Rooting around for an answer, finding and turning in her palms what had been buried there all along – from this rediscovery, imbued with the vitality of earth’s green magic, Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild sprouted forth.
The album emerges, enveloped in propulsive guitars and saccharine-sweet songs of blackbirds and blueberries, from the dead-calm center of a pastoral frenzy in a manner that one could argue as erratic, reckless — a grave misunderstanding, as Merce is just as aware of where she’s being pulled from as she is curious about where to go next. Her sound is built from a reverence and gratitude for the natural world, how paying respect to it charts a clearer path through the choppy waters of the heart. “I can see your relentlessness / in the muddy puddles where retting is / shattering the splintered stalks / where golden braids pour into drops.”
They are songs of belonging just as much as they are songs of longing – ”Say I was a lonely gust of wind / could I redirect them,” she muses in “Crow”, forgoing the voyeur in all of our hearts, hoping only to help direct the “murderous flock” as they help direct her. In this music, romantic and familial love rips into and out of itself, barely registering as disparate feelings in a flurry of reckoning. Do not make the mistake of ascribing a gentle nature to these songs, nor Merce herself. There is a fierceness, a persistence in this vulnerability, that is matched in droves by the wildness of her band. In “Backyard Lover,” the strength of reconciling the quiet conflict of a desire for closeness and solitude in equal parts – “I don’t get out much / is being swallowed by a room supposed to feel this way? / Maybe i’ll come out / babe” – is complemented with the gritted promise of “Foolish and Fast” to plow through mountain highways in search of a respite from heartache — “And my love just passing through you / foolish and fast.” For Merce, the only certainty is an endless questioning, roaring straight past a dogwood, never missing the opportunity to watch a petal fluttering to the ground in the rear view.
There is an oaken warmth in Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild that makes it easy to love – once wild, still free, honest and familiar. Its genesis is timeless, its restlessness eternal – it is one cohesive yet unanswered question built around, and dependent upon, the life-giving force of nature that came before Merce. The album’s closing track also inspires its title – a lonely ballad of forlorn projection into an unknown future, forever protected by the comforting green of Pittsburgh’s hills, rivers, bridges, and homes:“Old man howling / laughing his teeth out / with the dogs down the hill.And a tree fell / I smell the wood / and the bark is coming off in sheets / I write my words down on it. And honestly / the thoughts of a husband / weighing on me.”
Abigail Dempsey
After touring internationally for five years with acclaimed band Low Cut Connie, bandleader Adam Weiner crooned of Abigail Dempsey, “What can I say? She’s a star.” Indeed, Abigail has developed a cult following of devoted fans in her decade of professional performance with her powerhouse vocals, audacious dancing, and intoxicating stage presence. Her songs are catchy but meaningful, and even though her array of talents prove why she’s in the spotlight, you get the welcoming feeling that to Abigail, you’re as important to the show as she is—and maybe that’s why people keep coming back.
Ahna Ell:
Ahna Ell is a songwriter steeped in poetry and wandering. After touring for a decade (Forlorn Strangers, The Rally Club), Ell launched her solo project with lofi bedroom folk album Everybody's Gonna Let You Down in 2021. In subsequent years, she’s released two live EPs, and now, she's on the road bringing the songs to life as often as she can. Birth, death, pancakes, heartache, Charles Manson, and Pascal’s God shaped hole—Ell mines the ordinary and the exceptional for meaning. When not writing, Ahna’s probably surfing or eating oysters.
Zoe Lemon:
Zoe Lemon’s songwriting is introspective with pop tendencies. She plays violin, makes live loops, and often sings with swirling guitars and lofi drums backing her up. She’s a dramatic artist with bright outfits, earnest performances, and lots of attitude. After releasing her latest EP, Tailspin, Zoe Lemon has been featured on NPR, WXPN, and WKDU.