The closure of BSP in 2020 during the early months of the global COVID-19 pandemic could have signaled the end of Kingston as a natural landing spot between vast metropolises for indie bands touring the northeast, but two venues in the city have picked up the slack. On the larger end of the spectrum is Assembly (236 Wall St.), which opened just a few months ago and boasts indie rock artists like Habibi and Bill Callahan, and Afrobeat royalty Femi Kuti and the Positive Force in their 485-capacity space.
A mile away geographically and perhaps even further philosophically is Tubby’s (586 Broadway), opened in September 2018 as a hip neighborhood bar with occasional live music in an intimate 100-capacity space. Named after Kingston – the one in Jamaica – dub pioneer King Tubby, Tubby’s quickly became popular not only with local music and dive bar fans, but also touring acts, who earn 100 percent of ticket sales and are invited to crash in an apartment owned by the venue’s founders. With many venues coming under fire for band-squeezing tactics like demanding a cut of merchandise sales, this kind of generosity is unusual in 2025.
A spot like Tubby’s can be a lifeline for artists like Peel Dream Magazine, the Los Angeles-based group centered around Joseph Stevens, who are touring in support of Rose Main Reading Room, their fourth album, and my favorite released by anyone in 2024. Peel Dream Magazine was sold to me by a record shop clerk astute enough to recognize that throwing around influences like the blip-motorik sounds of Stereolab and the waves of shimmering guitars of My Bloody Valentine would get me to buy anything at all. And for two fine albums and an EP, that’s what Stevens and his various co-conspirators provided.
But in 2022, Peel Dream Magazine revealed new dimensions on Pad, released in 2022 and bookended by writing and recording during 2020 when Stevens moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Here Stevens brings the lush sounds of Stereolab compadre Sean O’Hagan’s High Llamas, and the grandly meditative explorations of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks that yielded the Beach Boys’ “lost” album SMiLE on a concept album about being kicked out of your own band.
On Rose Main Reading Room, Stevens reveals he’s left a piece of his heart in New York City, drawing its title from a grandiose and iconic research and reference room in the main branch of the New York Public Library, and lyrics winding along Central Park West and through the cavernous halls of the American Museum of Natural History. It evokes a bygone era, a sentimental look at the New York City of films like The World of Henry Orient and books like Harriet the Spy. But for Stevens, it’s much more personal.
“I was definitely cognizant of a romanticized, fictionalized version of Manhattan that appears in movies and literature and stuff, which I love,” Stevens said. “I love New York and I have my own kind of like fictionalized romanticized version of Manhattan in my brain that is probably informed by some of that stuff. But I’m also informed by my own memories, and I kind of wanted to play off of that a little bit.”
Stevens moved to Brooklyn in his early 20’s and stayed for a decade before relocating to Los Angeles in 2020. But he grew up in White Plains, and spent lots of time in NYC. “Recital,” for example, is brims with memories of a childhood piano performance during which Stevens followed a girl named Lindsey – “She likes Grieg, Scarlatti, and Green Day” – and worries whether his fingers might have forgotten what to play.
But over the course of his life, Stevens has also spent a lot of time in and around the Hudson Valley, even paying tribute in song with “Kaaterskill Trailhead” on the deluxe digital reissue of the first Peel Dream Magazine album, Modern Meta Physic.
“We’d go hiking, take trips up and down the Hudson,” said Stevens, who studied at Cornell University, and confessed to missing what all of New York – not just the city – has to offer. “I love upstate. I love cold. I love the lush summers. I miss rain.”
Despite this, Peel Dream Magazine’s sold out show at Tubby’s on Wednesday, March 5 will be Stevens’ first time performing in the Hudson Valley. Some dates of an opening slot on a tour with Soccer Mommy that stopped at the Colony in Woodstock was abandoned when Stevens came down with COVID.
“I was really looking forward to that show but it was right at that point in the tour where we had to like fall off,” he said.
For their local debut at Tubby’s, Peel Dream Magazine will play as a quartet, with some pre recorded tracks to ensure they give the audience as close to a full experience as possible.
“I think we’ve been pretty successful with (performing songs from) Rose Main Reading Room,” Stevens said. “We do use backing tracks for certain things, but I have zero ideology around having it be organic. My main thing is I just want people to get the tunes. But I also play with really fantastic musicians. I feel like we don’t really need to compromise on some of the musicality because everybody can play the parts, and that’s really meaningful.”
Their headline show at Tubby’s, with support from Hudson-based duo Babehoven, partially fills a three-day hole between shows in Philadelphia and Brooklyn as the opening band on a tour with another duo, Friko, out of Chicago.
The four-piece Peel Dream Magazine will have played seven shows in support of Friko with just one night off when they arrive in Kingston. But Stevens said they’ll be ready.
“Touring is expensive, and it’s complicated logistically to tour even with one person,” Stevens said. “But four is kind of like a magic number that fits neatly into a van.”
And thanks to venues like Tubby’s, Stevens said, Kingston has rather suddenly become a desirable stop-off for touring bands. He said he was pleasantly surprised they were able to sell out the show weeks in advance.
“I was just talking about this with someone,” he said, “Nobody ever went to Kingston. Kingston was like a place where old people went to go antiquing or something. And we’ve played in lots of random places for no audience, but this one’s fun because there’s actually going to be people there.”
Stevens said selling out Tubby’s is a significant step for Peel Dream Magazine, who continue to make inroads with music fans outside of major metropolitan areas.
“I have a particular soft spot for Upstate New York, but it’s also cool to go into little towns anywhere, and increasingly over the past few years or so kind of get the sense that there’s people in those towns that actually know the band,” Stevens said. “Which is unreal. Back in the day, to do a tour was to maybe have an okay show in a few major cities and just everything else was just gonna be like a huge write off. But it’s nice to know that there are people in these small places that know the band.”
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