Summer is giving back, Indian-style! Did it ever really try to leave? Perhaps we'll hang onto it through winter this year, as fires and earthquakes and hurricanes provide cold truths we cannot ignore. In the short term, here's another element you shouldn't ignore (and another with high winds): the convergence of many a Drag City band at the finest festival the middle USA has ever seen, Cropped Out Festival in Louisville, KY! This year's line up is fine as silk, and deep like wool - and with a multitude of bands we're anxious to see for the first time, it goes without saying we're quite stoked to have the opportunity to rock, strum, croon, laugh, scream, applaud and straight up VIBE with the some of the bands that make up the foundation of of our core. We're talking about, of course, Drag City's primest of movers, the incomparable (and incorrigible!) Royal Trux! Neil and Jennifer are back in a way that makes us hopeful for the comets of our future, and Cropped Out is their next rock stop on the block. But wait, this Cropped stable is royal in more ways than one: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy brings his Bonafide United Musicians to the fold, doing their absolute best set Merle Haggard covers in honor of the man and the Best Troubador release from earlier this year! On the lighter side of... hippies, Magik Markers are wild and woolly, rank, and with a razor stuffed in their beard, fuck you up, man. Neil Hamburger provides comedic relief for those who eat this year's version of the brown acid and need a talking down, and Mike Donovan leads the festival's closing party with a solo set of introspective/intuitive songing you'd be a sucker to miss! And not only ALL that, but Circle X (on both dexter's cigar and Blue Chopsticks subsidiaries) will put on a rare performance that we're already circling as a potential finalist for gig of the year, and Axis: Sova (God? Records) plan to arrive with a bowl full of robo-boogie guitar goop set to blaze. What's amazing is at Cropped Out, you get some from our team plus a slew of comparably vibed up musics (and camping and food and booze and like-minded vibers) all in one spot on one rare weekend. You know what to do! Louisville or BUST.