As the cooler autumn weather continues to settle in, the touring circuit is really starting to heat up. With summer festival circuit pretty much over, lots of bands are beginning their fall tours, often with new albums or at least new singles on the way. Over at Saint Paul’s Turf Club, folk rock band BAILEN had driven in (quite literally) from New York to get the evening going.

Opening the evening was Lucy Clearwater, a Los Angeles based singer and songwriter playing folk Americana. With her debut album People ≠ Possessions released in May 2026, she came to stage solo with acoustic guitar. She started with a long instrumental before hitting the lyrics of Love a Friend. A quick intro had Clearwater note it was her first time in St. Paul, which got her “welcome” cheers from the crowd. She went into a song about “not owning just about anything” and What’s Mine was a deeply sarcastic, but somehow emotionally honest number. When the whistling solo hit and she noted she doesn’t really whistle, an audience member took it and Clearwater was shocked in the best possible way, “that’s what it sounds like on the record!” Please Go was a brand new song that she had written while recently on tour in Europe. It strengthened the downer lyrical theme and that continued on with a brutal song Liar coming out in October that was about an ex, “he’s got a wife, but I’ve got a song”. Finishing on Shoulders, Lucy Clearwater had played a heartfelt opening set.

Headliner BAILEN was up and the New York City based trio happen to be siblings, with their last name serving as the band name. They have a pair of albums, including 2023’s Tired Hearts, and we last saw them opening for Hozier at the State Theatre in Minneapolis in June 2019. Hitting stage with Julia on guitar, David on drums, and Daniel on bass, they all sang as well, though Julia often took lead. SWIM! was a brilliant opener with all the vocals playing perfectly off each other. This nexus of rock, folk, and neo-soul leaned heavily into the singing, and with those voices, you’d be silly not to. An unreleased number In My Name was a political statement and had a heavily clapped intro that opened what was an appropriately dour number. And though the focus was rightfully on those vocals, BAILEN did a nice job with the musical arrangements, and their sequencing of different styles was surprisingly mature. BRCA (Nothing Takes Me Down) let Julia open full throttle singing and the accompanying music really built around it. They said they had just driven 18 hours from NYC, “so anything weird happening up here…it’s because of that”. Inevitable had a 60’s rock feel in the opening, and the band kept finding interesting musical corners to track down.

After giving big props to opener Clearwater, Never Gonna Live It Down was the question of how you escape your past, and the triple harmonies and music played a little softer here and BAILEN continued to impress with the wide musical range they could play. Send Me Off almost had a Motown vocal intro from our drummer and the guitar nearly sounded like keyboards before pivoting towards a 70’s sound. Here We Go Again got the big cheers at the front end, and the drums from David were a key part of this folk rock number. It was late in the set and Your Love Is All I Know evoked a strong CSNY vibe vocally in the early going before Julia simply took off, and that CSNY sound really had been vibrant through a lot of the evening’s music. This song really highlighted all of the band’s strengths and those harmonies towards the end over all of the instrumentation may have been the band’s best selling point. Closing with Not Gonna Take Me had drummer David nailing the lead vocals and those inevitable harmonies were a great level up. A single encore song that they called “a tradition”, the band came to the front of stage and sang 25 for the Last Time. BAILEN had given a very pleasing performance, and are well worth tracking down to hear and see live.