(L-R) Micah Schnabel and Vanessa Jean Speckman, who play Independent Bar & Cafe in Tampa, Florida on Nov. 3, 2024. Credit: Photo by Caitlin Carter
Over the summer, Micah Schnabel and Vanessa Jean Speckman spent a few good hours rocking with Frank Turner at Jannus Live.

The couple takes to more intimate, familiar, digs for this return to Seminole Heights’ Independent Bar & Cafe where their Midwestern brand of folky cowpunk will fill the air. And don’t worry about any election-related banter, either. Schnabel’s latest album The Clown Watches the Clock is packed with enough zeitgeist-related woe and worry to go around.

Speckman, who fronts Call Me Rita, also has new music (“This Is A Stick Up!”) that contemplates the dark side of debt. “ …from the big cities to the small, no-name towns, where there’s an edge on everything and the social contract feels broken,” Speckman recently told Matter News.

Still, the sad songs make fans feel better, and the setlist is sure to be borderline therapy at this gig.

There’s no cover to see Micah Schnabel and Vanessa Jean Speckman play Tampa’s Independent Bar & Cafe on Sunday, Nov. 3.


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This article appears in Oct 24-30, 2024.

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief...