Florry flourishes like all these summer wildflowers - live from Asheville

Florry flourishes like all these summer wildflowers, like they are much more than a band. 

Florry feel like a contagious concept, a moment & a movement, an entire thing of all the things combined in this messy beautiful life. Now, I am a complete dork to say all this about a band, but Florry bring this freaking feeling unpretentiously & with an open heart that is turned-on & tuned-in to a raging choogle of psychedelic stoner country. 

I remember the worn cardboard of an old album cover of hippy daze house band, with an entire collective on stage in flowing fabrics, blissed out trippy R&B with a gospel hint. Those bands like Stoneground or Yahowha 13 or the Farm Band could be a religion, a free love thing, or the staff at a vegetarian restaurant. They might even live in teepees or yurts or on a magic mystery bus. They might be the house band for every house party & backyard jam. Don’t pass this off as cliche or quaint or all faded sunsets through a nostalgia filter. I don’t think Florry are a religion but they have released two versions of a song about prayer & they did have an album with the word Bible in the title. 

As so many writers & re-issue vinyl labels have reminded us, when you peel back the onion skin of the time portal, all that crazy stuff might not just be as good as you remember, it might be better. There have been some more recent floral folk-pop attempts to project this aura wide-angle & wide-screen, say Polyphonic Spree or Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. 

But as awesome as those projects were, they are purified water sipped in choir robes when compared to the questionable moonshine & dank weed of what Florry is throwing down. Those groups were clean eating while Florry brings the fried foods of a diner at 2am with some raging munchies. 

Enter front-person Francie Medosch & her merry band of collaborators with their relentlessly face-melting take on the margins of our musical past, all Meat Puppets meets Mother Earth. Not just the dueling guitars but the fiddle & the pedal steel. 

At the glorious Grey Eagle in Asheville, Francie has on an NRBQ blue ballcap, a blue peasant top, & a floor-length plain-style denim skirt that touches a new pair of charcoal Merrill hiking shoes. With long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail & no makeup, Medosch throws out a strong hippy librarian energy. From what I can glean from articles & interviews, Medosch recently relocated from Philadelphia to Burlington, Vermont, which given these stylings, fits perfectly.

But when she starts working her magic to melt my face as she shreds on the red Fender guitar, I think we are witnessing some serious Rosetta Tharpe energy. The band’s overall talent & intensity fuse with Francie’s singular talent & they burn through their set with so much blissful bravado that the crowd cannot help but to start shaking. Down front, we had a dance party revival meeting that uncorked into a friendly multigenerational mosh pit by the time they sizzled through “First it was a movie, then it was a book.” 

I think the only song that wasn’t pure bottled lightning was a mellow shift to the soulful tender jammy cover of Commander Cody’s “Seeds and Stems (Again),” which simply worked. 

Florry’s chemistry & charisma are so raw, raucous, unfiltered & friendly on stage, that their live shows extend the glorious intricacies of the already shaggy albums into feral immersion in the sweaty arc of human connection. It’s all-to-the-wall with passion & musical precision, all seven band members find their own beauty & blow your minds.

Asheville’s Tombstone Poetry were a stunning, also very vibey & energetic opener, also shades of psychedelic punk but with fiddle & pedal steel. Such a great show. 

- Andrew/Sunfrog

Florry at the Grey Eagle

Asheville, North Carolina

June 22, 2025

Dip Myself like an Ice cream cone

Pretty eyes Lorraine 

Hot weather 

Waiting around to provide

My amigo (possibly a Terry Allen cover, but totally changed if so)

Say your prayers rock 

Seeds & stems (cover)

Take my heart 

Trucked Flipped over

2 Beers

Hey Baby

First it was a movie, then it was a book