Official MusicFest Artist

Mike & The Moonpies
Band Members:
Mike Harmeier, Preston Rhone, Catlin Rutherford, Kyle Ponder, Zach Moulton, Omar Oyoque, Colton King
Years at MusicFest:
7
Releases:
Cheap Silver and Solid Country Gold (2019), Steak Night at the Prairie Rose (2018), Live at WinStar World Casino and Resort (2016), Mockingbird (2015), The Real Country (2010), The Hard Way (2012)

When frontman Mike Harmeier sang “they don’t make ’em like they used to” at the start of Mike and the Moonpie’s last studio album (2015’s Mockingbird), it wasn’t the idle complaint of an armchair country music critic: It was a self-imposed challenge, answered by Harmeier and the rest of his band of young but stage-hardened, old-soul honky-tonkers. The reaction to the album was pretty grand, too, with Rolling Stone Country picking Mockingbird as one of the genre’s best albums of the year. The following year’s Live at WinStar World Casino and Resort only offered further indisputable affirmation of the Moonpies’ hard-earned status as one of the Texas music scene’s finest country bands. The rest of the Moonpies may not have known it at the time when they hit the WinStar stage, but the frontman was already laying the groundwork for their next studio album. The results — as heard on the band’s freshly minted Steak Night at the Prairie Rose — speak for themselves. Recorded in April at Yellow Dog Studios in Wimberley, Texas, the Moonpies’ fifth album is not only their best effort to date, but arguably the first to really nail the irresistible, good-time spark and spirit of one of Austin’s best bar bands in the studio.