Lizzie No & Olivia Ellen Lloyd Double Record Release at Public Records with Nathan Xander
Sat, 29 Mar 2025 (EDT)
07:00PM - 10:00PM
Public Records
233 Butler Street
Brooklyn, New York 11217
Open Map
$25 adv / $30 dos
7pm: Doors
7:30pm: Nathan Xander
8pm: Olivia Ellen Lloyd
9pm: Lizzie No
With the release of her debut album, 'Hard Won,' in March 2017, singer-songwriter, harpist, and guitarist Lizzie No established herself as one of the most exciting new voices in indie folk music. Billboard Magazine called the album “simultaneously understated and fervent.” She followed up the album with the release of “Sundown,” a benefit track for Black Lives Matter.
Building on the songwriting prowess displayed in her critically acclaimed debut album, Lizzie No is unsparing in the stories she tells on her second album, 'Vanity,' released August 2, 2019. The nine songs on ‘Vanity’ are epic tales of ego, featuring narrative shifts within vividly crafted characters. No embodies characters ranging from a handsome egoist in “Narcissus” (which Rolling Stone called a "crisp alt-rock gem") to a broke songwriter waiting for her big break in “Pity Party,” to a bitter and isolated rocker on “Loyalty” who rants that the crowd has left him behind. Inventive arrangements written in collaboration with co-producer Nick Rapley elevate the record to shimmering heights, alternating between swaggering grooves and intimate clarity.
Lizzie has toured with Iron & Wine, Adia Victoria, Ron Pope, Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, and has showcased at festivals like Newport Folk Fest, Americanafest, South by Southwest, and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. Classical arrangements of her songs have been performed at the Louisville Orchestra's Festival of American Music and the Downtown Chamber Series. She is also a winner of the American Songwriter Magazine Lyrics Contest.
In June of 2021, Lizzie joined Basic Folk as a guest host, appearing monthly on the podcast. Since her debut, she has interviewed Valerie June, Will Sheff of Okkervil River, Brent Cobb, Amythytst Kiah, Molly Tuttle, Kishi Bashi, SG Goodman and many more.
Olivia Ellen Lloyd will try anything once. From flight attendant school in Dallas to producing theater in New York and teaching in Guatemala, Lloyd sought adventure but struggled to find a greater sense of purpose - until she found her way back to music. Channeling that restless spirit, she writes songs that dig deep for hope in the face of hardship.
Her debut album, Loose Cannon, has been streamed over 1 million times while she has been crossing the country playing shows, winning songwriting contests (like Kerrville in 2023) and generally eating life down to the rind. She also works as an in-demand side woman, singing backing vocals for the likes of Lizzie No, Emily Scott Robinson, and Renee Rapp during her 2024 performance at the All Things Go Festival in Forest Hills, Queens.
Lloyd has spent the past three years doubling down on her efforts to build community within the Alt-Country and Americana scene while deepening her working partnership with Mike Robinson, an in-demand sideman known for touring and recording with the likes of Sarah Jarosz, Railroad Earth, Teddy Thompson, Iris Dement, Lindsay Lou, Bella White, Zach Bryan, Jobi Riccio and Ryan Beatty. Mike served as her producer and primary instrumentalist on this project.
Together they crafted an album that refuses to be placed in a narrow genre definition, focusing instead on building songs that paint a picture of liberation from oppressive patriarchal and paternalistic forces.
She is also a newly inaugurated member of the Resistance Revival Chorus, a collective of more than 60 women, and non-binary singers, who join together to breathe joy and song into the resistance, and to uplift and center women’s voices.
Nathan Xander writes songs that are steeped in the quiet, restrained tension of what Greil Marcus called the 'Old, Weird America'. His sixth album, Three Waltzes, is an acutely perceptive look at life’s transitional moments, capturing Xander and his band amid pivotal changes—a new lineup, Xander’s quitting alcohol, and the pandemic’s impact on musicians everywhere. With musical sensibilities inspired by latter-day Nick Lowe, Tom T. Hall, and Paul Westerberg, Xander sorts through loss and evolving identity as he stands on the threshold of a new era in his own career.
Originally from rural Union City, PA, Xander started songwriting at age eighteen, sparked by his habit of scouring record shops for first the classics, then the hidden gems and vinyl obscurities that tell a more lonely and mysterious tale. A self-professed crate digger and amateur musical anthropologist, Xander dove off the deep end into country, folk, and rock—sounds all woven expertly into Three Waltzes. He also credits the local music scenes of Pittsburgh, Chicago, and now New York City, his home for the last decade, for pushing him to grow as a songwriter. This drive to ever improve eventually brought him success playing shows with Justin Townes Earle, Tyler Childers, BJ Barham of American Aquarium, and Howe Gelb of Giant Sand.
Xander takes the experience of the last few years and runs with it, relating current events to his real life with relatable lyrics meant to get people’s heads nodding along in recognition. “People Might Believe” is a rocker about living in the world of the endless news cycle, while “Sitting In The Corner” is a love letter to a partner sitting just a few feet away. New York City itself often appears as a character, as in “Tide Rolls Back,” a song about accepting his place in a changing world, and “BFE,” a cosmic waltz about extraterrestrials visiting NYC in their mothership. Loss also shows up across the album, nowhere more poignantly than on the Sparklehorse influenced waltz “Progress of Man” (“At best you’ll walk on with a good story to tell / The nights last forever, some days are pure hell / Scatter the ashes of the progress of man / I just can wait to have you in my arms again”).