Scott Tady: Summer's hot for Beaver County native Autumn; plus other local artists to know

Angela Autumn is having a fine summer.

The Beaver County native will showcase her indie music − she calls it "cowgirl folk & sad gal's blues" − on a tour that visits New York's sold-out Sultan Room this weekend, moving on to Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., and then two Chicago shows (one already a sellout).

Autumn is the opening act for Oregon indie-folk band Blind Pilot on a tour heading as far as St. Louis and Iowa, before steering back east, getting as close to here as the Grog Shop in Cleveland on July 26.

"I grew up in Fombell, later relocating to Zelienople," Autumn said via email. "My friend Eric Lee, fiddler and bluegrass musician, is from Aliquippa, so we have a beautiful team here."

Having professionally dropped her legal name “Mignanelli” a decade ago, opting for a stage name that's an ode to the harvest season, Autumn now dwells in Nashville and recently finished a West Coast run of shows.

Autumn's songs are smart, pretty and authentic Americana, packing a downhome sensibility.

One of the featured artists in the Pittsburgh Plays Fleetwood Mac concerts in 2021 at Thunderbird Music Hall, her Facebook reels, Instagram stories (@roseofappalachia) and official YouTube page offer a fun and fascinating glimpse of an artist steadily building the buzz for her music.

Beaver County rapper represents

Aliquippa rapper Messiah of Madness released a four-song EP, "You Already Know," that's drawn attention from online hip-hop sites.

Streaming on Spotify, YouTube Music, iTunes and Tidal, the EP's artwork features a photo of the former Pyramid Bar, a popular gathering spot on Fifth and Jefferson streets in Aliquippa between 1967 and 1994.

"This is undoubtedly my best work to date," Messiah of Madness said in an email. "It’s an EP but it’s highly concentrated. Rugged rhymes and beats throughout."

Boom Bap Nation said, "On the mic, The Messiah is gruff, disrespectful and homicidal with his words ... his producer alter-ego Tone Fultz (who produces three of the four tracks on this release) is equally adept at creating the type of raucous instrumentals that made Wu-Tang and Mobb Deep touchstones of the 1990s."

Boom Bap Nation and Hip Hop Since 1987 point out another new Messiah of Madness track, “Crown Royal Bag,” is produced by Big Jerm, the Pittsburgh producer who helmed hits for superstars Wiz Khalifa, Mac Miller and Snoop Dogg.

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'Pretty as Pittsburgh'

Brooklyn indie-rock band The Damnwells have released a new single “Pretty as Pittsburgh."

Singer Alex Dezen explains: "Pittsburgh has always been a special place to me. Maybe because my sister went to college there, and I always loved coming to visit her and hanging out with her cool friends. It was the early '90s, and the underground music scene in Pittsburgh was thriving with eclectic rock bands: loud, guitar-driven angular music that would become the foundation of the aesthetic 'indie rock' movement."

Dezen, who co-wrote "Take You" from Justin Bieber's 2012 chart-topping album, said the Damnwells' earliest tours always included Pittsburgh stops, for which he'd nostalgically visit Squirrel Hill to shop at the iconic Jerry's Records.

"As a way of laying claim to that place, like some halfwit conqueror, I stuck a Damnwells sticker to the front door of Jerry’s on a tour in the early aughts," Dezen said. "It’s still there, though faded and peeling."

Speaking in a press release, he continued, "But more than a personal connection, it’s Pittsburgh’s dazzling beauty and history that has always struck me. Its rivers, intersecting below towering hills of trees and rocky palisades, feel both sacred and violent. Heir to steel magnates like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick, Pittsburgh also heralded the birth of the labor movement, and bred with it a fierce and enduring pride across generations and cultures. And as with any center of industry − both because of and despite of it − a great art movement has also thrived. It’s this kind of simple, straightforward alchemy, like the meeting of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers to form the Ohio, that make me love this city."

Name-dropping Pittsburgh area spots like Carrick, Beltzhoover, McKeesport and nearby Youngstown, "Pretty as Pittsburgh" is getting airtime on stations like 91.3-WYEP and The Beaver 95.7.

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Lemon's latest

Emerging Pittsburgh indie-folk-rock artist Merce Lemon this past Tuesday released "Backyard Lover," the first single off her "Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild" album due Sept. 27.

Hailed as an honest exploration of confused, raw intimacy, with a blazing guitar solo popping up unexpectedly three-and-a-half-minutes in, "Backyard Lover" is the second track off Lemon's first album since 2020, a collection of songs born from a period of reconnecting with community and nature.

“ I got dirty and slept outside most of the summer," Lemon said in a press release. "I learned a lot about plants and farming, just writing for myself, and in that time, I just slowly accumulated songs."

In April she released the album's first single, "Will You Do Me a Kindness," which earned praise from tastemakers Stereogum, Pitchfork, Brooklyn Vegan, Consequence of Sound and Paste.

Lemon's next hometown show is Oct. 18 at Bottlerocket Social Hall in Pittsburgh's Allentown neighborhood.

Ellwood resident works on movie set

Hannah Mros of Ellwood City is serving as the hair and makeup artist for "The Haunting of Prince Dom Pedro," a mystery/comedy/supernatural indie feature film in production the rest of this month in Allegheny and Butler counties.

Mros previously served as a hair and makeup artist for the short film "I Swiped The Wrong One,"

Filmmaker Joe Fishel made three short films − "I Swiped the Wrong One," "Bigfoot Unleashed, Part VII" and "Winner Takes All: Royal Flush" − all of which will be weaved into "The Haunting of Prince Dom Pedro."

I'd like to think somewhere that someone at Lifetime Movies is wondering how Fishel beat them to the punch with a movie titled "I Swiped the Wrong One."

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Scott Tady: Summer's hot for Beaver County native Autumn; plus other local artists to know