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Miya Folick at Amsterdam Bar and Hall (23 Apr 2025)
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The artists that bet on the Twin Cities having bearable weather in the latter part of April not only won their bets, they hit the jackpot. On perhaps the most gorgeous evening of the year in downtown Saint Paul, Miya Folick kicked off her 2025 tour at Amsterdam Bar & Hall.
After letting the fog machine get going for a few minutes, Olivia Kaplan, a Los Angeles based singer and songwriter, came out as the opener. Her most recent album was Afterlife (2024), and as largely expected, came out solo with acoustic guitar. Kaplan immediately brought an air of intimacy to the venue and at least at the front of the house, the audience was silent during her songs. The second song was extremely plaintive and Kaplan’s vocals fit those difficult but wistful lyrics well.
Joking that she was going to “do it radio style” and talk about songs mostly after she played them, Kaplan told us that several early songs were from her first album, but was paired with the opener that has not yet been released, “so you can’t listen to it anywhere”. After that first group, Kaplan stated that she would play the rest of the songs in her set from Afterlife, an album about loss, death, and grief. Two Red Chairs gave us some of the strongest guitar playing, making that a little more central in the number. A joke about having stuttered over her words between numbers got us a self-deprecating, “the banter has got to get better on this tour”. But Kaplan was having no issues playing the songs, as the sadness from Over radiated through. With a final song, Nothing Changes, she dedicated it to the audience and those involved in live music “and the beautiful exchange”.
I spoke briefly with Kaplan between sets. Having mentioned during the set that she had just gotten back from touring in the UK and Ireland, I asked her how this evening felt, being the first of this US tour. Was it a different thing or more of a continuation Kaplan said that so far, it has all felt like a continuation or chapters of what she is hoping to do, as this is only her second US tour.
Miya Folick is also a California based musician who released her first album, Premonitions, in 2018 and her most recent, Erotica Veronica, in February of this year. They immediately led with Erotica, a pretty stellar song that showcased Folick’s charisma. The quartet (Folick on guitar, drums, bass and the back up vocalist splitting between guitar and keyboards) rolled into La Da Da and it certainly didn’t seem like a first tour stop.
A great bit of banter from Folick started with her saying, she had almost asked us if we “wanted to go for a walk, the sun’s still out!”. Shen then recounted that as she had picked up the van for the tour in Chicago and driven in on Highway 94, and was amazed by the sight of the setting sun (“We don’t get that in hilly LA”). Intentional or not, it did set up a sense of being thankful for what you have, and the band’s next song, Alaska, picked up on that theme. Folick also lost her shoes during the song, kicking them away as she danced around the stage during the guitar solos.
The keys intro on Felicity, set up a funkier number, ending with a great bass solo. While Folick is obviously the central focus, the backing band was pretty top notch. The bass player completely owned her instrument, while the backing vocalist was a great sound to harmonize with Folick. A visibly touched Folick was super pleased that the audience knew her new songs and were singing them. It never gets old seeing a musician have that moment of connection with their audience.
A moment with a red rotary phone that was hooked into the pedal board set up modified Folick’s vocals then guitar on interesting ways. Olivia Kaplan joined Folick and band for This Time Around, though Folick pulled an audible and did first verse and chorus on the “phone mic”. The band continued to power through and after checking a key (“We’re in F sharp, right?”), moved into the quieter number of Light Thru Linen, with a gorgeous ending. As Folick headed into the final numbers, she introduced the band and headed into the excellent Fist. A cover of Nothing Compares to You completed the main set. Setting up for the encore, Folick mentioned that she doesn’t write these down because she “like to free wheel it, and also give myself the out not to do one”, which I thought was a pretty brilliant strategy. Ending with My Mind Is a Muscle, Folick left the stage with a very successful night one of the tour and a very happy crowd.
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