Wednesday Brings a Little Heaviness to AmericanaFest

Merce Lemon, Craig Finn and Sarah Klang also played for a varied crowd at The Basement East

Craig Finn at The Basement East for AmericanaFest, 9/12/2025
Photo: Hamilton Matthew Masters

A motley mix of concertgoers packed into The Basement East on Friday: Some attendees sported their Drive-By Truckers T-shirts and baseball caps while others represented a more eccentric crowd filling the room with bright hair colors, eyebrow piercings and tote bags. What united these AmericanaFest attendees was the draw of an equally sundry four-band bill.

Merce Lemon at The Basement East for AmericanaFest, 9/12/2025
Photo: Hamilton Matthew Masters

The night began with Swedish artist Sarah Klang and her slow, soulful ballads, many of which reflected on love and romance during her teenage years. Craig Finn of New York rockers The Hold Steady followed with a solo set of sometimes humorous, always deeply personal songs on everything from priests to New Jersey to stories of old friends. The evening sped up with Pittsburgh's Merce Lemon, whose initially quiet and reserved demeanor quickly dissolved as she rocked out with a full band that included a violinist.

Culminating the night was an energetic performance from Wednesday— an Asheville, N.C., project that meets somewhere in between hardcore grunge rock and alt-country. They kicked off their set with “Reality TV Argument Bleeds,” the opener from their album Bleeds, out Sept. 19.

Wednesday at The Basement East for AmericanaFest, 9/12/2025
Photo: Hamilton Matthew Masters

Despite Wednesday having garnered a substantial fan base in recent years, frontwoman Karly Hartzman engaged with the crowd in ways you might expect at a local DIY gig. When Hartzman requested a shot of Fernet from the crowd, it only took a matter of minutes — about the duration of one song — for four disposable shot glasses filled to the brim with liquor to appear onstage.

The band soon fired off the most Americana-esque song of their discography: the new record's lead single “Elderberry Wine,” complete with pedal steel and Hartzman’s innate country twang. The Basement East crowd also heard the live debut of another recently released single, “Bitter Everyday.”

Friday’s show was filled with plenty of heavier sounds, notably coming from performances of Wednesday’s earlier work like “Fate Is…” from 2020’s I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone and “Quarry” from 2023’s Rat Saw God. The band closed the night with “Bull Believer” — eight minutes of noisy, guitar-shredding, cathartic release filled with literal screams, accompanied by a singular crowd surfer.