We Speak Alternative

State Champs Bring Ten Years of Around the World and Back to the Tabernacle on December 4

Published

2 days ago

November 6, 2026

Photo: @statechampsny

Some albums become the record a whole scene grows up on. Around the World and Back is that album for modern pop punk, and State Champs are playing it on the road for its tenth anniversary, with a stop at the Tabernacle on Friday, December 4, and Atlanta favorites Cartel on the bill.

State Champs play the Tabernacle on Friday, December 4, on the Around the World and Back Again Tour, the anniversary run celebrating ten years of the band’s breakthrough second album. Fellow Georgia pop punk veterans Cartel join as special guests.

Around the World and Back, released in 2015 on Pure Noise Records, turned the Albany band into the standard bearers of a new pop punk wave. A decade later those songs still anchor the set, and an anniversary tour gives fans the full record in the order they memorized it.

State Champs have spent the years since building one of the most loyal live followings in the genre. Their shows run on momentum, big choruses and a crowd that treats every song like a reunion.

The Tabernacle, at 152 Luckie St NW in downtown Atlanta, adds a hometown layer with Cartel on the bill. Two generations of the same scene in one room on one Friday night is exactly what this tour promises.

Darren Jessee Returns With Wistful New Single “Shoulder Season”

Published

1 day ago

November 6, 2026

We Speak Media

Darren Jessee. Photo by Dustin Condren.

Darren Jessee has been the drummer behind Ben Folds Five and the songwriter behind Hotel Lights, and his new single sounds like a man deciding not to put the pen down. “Shoulder Season,” recorded by Bonny Light Horseman’s Josh Kaufman, previews a forthcoming solo album due in 2027.

North Carolina-based singer-songwriter Darren Jessee (Ben Folds Five, Hotel Lights) is proud to present “Shoulder Season,” the acclaimed multi-instrumentalist’s brand new single lifted from his forthcoming solo album that will see a 2027 release. Recorded by GRAMMY-winning musician and producer Josh Kaufman of Bonny Light Horseman and mixed by Peter Katis (The National, Kurt Vile), “Shoulder Season” traces the paths people chart in and around our lives over the years. The track also invites close listening, which in turn draws attention to Jessee’s evocative lyrics as well as the nuanced instrumental performances he and Kaufman captured on tape. “‘Shoulder Season’ … I liked the words by themselves,” Jessee says. “They suggest perseverance and resilience during a season of time. The term shoulder season means a transitional time of year.” Watch the music video for “Shoulder Season” on YouTube.

Darren Jessee was in a period of personal upheaval. His mother had recently passed away after a short illness. He was also touring as a drummer for the Americana act Chatham County Line, a gig that he enjoyed but one that kept him from performing much as a solo artist. And then his label rep at Bar/None, home of Jessee’s last seven albums, retired. In the wake of it all, Jessee found himself wondering if it was perhaps time to set aside the burden of managing a songwriting career and simply lean into his work as a drummer. “But then I just kept finding these songs and enjoying them,” he says of his forthcoming solo showcase that symbolizes a new beginning for the veteran musician — an organic, hushed and transcendent sound very much inspired by the blizzard that the album was recorded in.

Stay tuned for more music and information on Darren Jessee’s forthcoming solo album to be announced in the coming weeks. Jessee will be making the following appearances in November:

November 12 — Wake Forest, NC — Wake Forest Listening Room

November 18 — Greensboro, NC — Flat Iron (with Natalie Jane Hill)