The rubber has hit the road. Hard choices have been made. And this show, one of the very best of the year, is only going to get a passing mention. 2025 was just that kind of year.

Empty Moon started the night. Just Brendan Hangauer and his acoustic guitar. He straddles lots of genre lines, but this pared-down version was the sort of indie folk anyone can get behind. He played mostly new songs. All of them were unreleased. An album is coming in 2026. Well, that's the promise anyway. He checked his phone several times during the set. For lyrics maybe? For a setlist most definitely. It made him self-conscious and he joked that he was checking his TikTok. "Nothing to report," he updated the crowd. Hangauer's compositions have hooks. The "this is bad bad bad bad…" track is one you'll sing along to when the chorus rolls around a second time. The audience might have, but if they did, it was in whispers. The crowd was reverently silent all night – they had to be, as Hangauer fingerpicked most songs, only opening up for full-throated strums a time or two. One track has some whistling. Was it marvelous? It was.

Kristin Daelyn had her own acoustic guitar. It was old and didn't like to stay in tune, but Daelyn was loyal and persistent. Her folk music was meditative. Her guitar was fingerpicked, deliberate, and complex. Her voice was ornamented, sometimes delivered with a drawl that made my head tilt. Most of the set was from her latest album, Beyond the Break. She slipped in a few new ones including an instrumental that hasn't been recorded yet. It was Daelyn's first time in KC. She reported that she “actually” liked it — her emphasis, not mine. That sort of backhanded compliment never sits well with me. Other banter made me smile though. "I have a few more heartfelt songs for you – just so you won’t be surprised, in case you were waiting for me to burst into something else. This is the vibe. This is what you get." She ended with John Fahey's arrangement of "Joy to the World." I felt warm.

Then it was Advance Base, the project of Chicago-based Owen Ashworth. There was no acoustic guitar. Instead, there was a keyboard, an Omnichord, a small mixer, and assorted pedals. He's got it down to a science now. This is Ashworth's Christmas tour. Over the years he's written a vast catalog that acknowledges the holiday but doesn't necessarily celebrate it. To hear him tell it, the theme repeated without him noticing. During the breaks, he told the audience about each song, offering the wry and witty asides that make his shows so intimate and special. He was particularly proud of the tracked sleigh bells that accompanied one of his numbers. "They're my sleigh bells," he asserted, "I played them." The setlist spanned both his current Advance Base project and the earlier Casiotone for the Painfully Alone moniker. Every song was a gut punch. Many were literally tearjerkers. He added two covers to his set: an obscure one from Bill Fox called "Quartermaster's Winter" and the classic "Christmas in Prison" by John Prine. That may be obscure in some circles too. But it shouldn't be. Neither should Advance Base. There's no one writing better lyrics today. And no other show can give you the feels like this.