My first experience with Ames Harding’s music came from his 2022 release, Dance of the Red Flower, a live album recorded on a cold day with nine other artists—including members of Harding’s band, the Mirage, and several other locals—in an abandoned church in Wilkinsburg. The album’s stylistic range struck me as much as its richness did. Here was a group that incorporated instrumentation that ventured outside the traditional indie rock palette, switching on a dime from sultry bayou jazz to moody guitar fantasy to cryptic tango, and on each song bloomed to fill the church’s cavernous space with warmth. Needless to say, I was intrigued.
It makes sense that Harding’s tastes would be eclectic. He grew up between Maryland, Egypt, India, and Latin America, absorbed sounds from each locale, and from those impressions synthesized his own distinct style, a kind of psychedelic world music defined by Harding’s sensuous, tactile vocals and honed both live and in the studio during his most recent six years, spent right here in Pittsburgh.
The next stop? Los Angeles. Harding is moving out to California in mid-July, but not before commemorating his Pittsburgh years with a final show on Friday, July 11 at Lawrenceville’s Thunderbird Café. I got a chance to speak with Harding last week, and he reflected fondly and with bittersweetness on his time in the Steel City.
“It feels like the end of an era for me,” he said. “Pittsburgh is very much the place where I became an adult.”
To Harding, Pittsburgh is a city of firsts, and a city of transformation.
“It’s the first place I ever got a song on the radio, the first show I really played since I was a high-schooler […] and I’m sad to be leaving it. It was the ideal place to come to in my early twenties to be nurtured and figure out what the fuck I was doing.”
A refrain I’ve heard more than once is that Pittsburgh lacks a foundation upon which up-and-coming artists can stand while they build their audiences. But Harding, while acknowledging the predicament of the musical middle-class in general, which has gone the way of the broader American middle class–“You have the struggling masses trying to just get a thousand streams on their song, and then you have huge artists,” he said–made sure to emphasize the benefits of existing in a less corporate music scene.
“There’s not a lot of gatekeeping in Pittsburgh,” he said. “Even when we were really unknown, people took a chance, let us play a show in their vintage shop or put a song of ours on the radio[…] and it felt like, in other cities I’ve lived, there’s a little bit more exclusion, having to prove yourself before being offered opportunities.”
He pointed specifically to WYEP host Joey Spehar—"The first interview I ever did, the first time I got on the radio”—and to the South Side establishment Zenith, a vegan café and vintage store that hosted the band for photoshoots, shows, and even live album recordings. “They let us come in, bring a bunch of friends in, set up all this equipment. They were totally down with that. They won’t ever let us pay them. They’re just kind of old school,” Harding said of the venue. He also highlighted the abundance of smaller independent venues that populate the city, a contrast to other places where “it’s now just a bunch of big venues.” Take Spirit in Lawrenceville, where he and the Mirage soundtracked the ball drop at New Year’s Eve 2024. “It was getting handed on a silver platter to an audience that was psyched,” he recalled. “That was your ideal show, and people loved it, and we loved it, and came off feeling really ecstatic.”
Pittsburgh can’t provide everything, though. Harding is moving to Los Angeles because of his desire to pursue lines of musical work that are not available here. “I’ve really pushed myself along the lines of having a band and playing shows,” he said, elaborating, “where I would really like to push myself […] is writing songs for other people, getting paid to do that, getting paid to produce, helping to score films, video games–all that.”
Despite his reasons for relocating, Harding leaves Pittsburgh with love and optimism for the city’s music scene. He lauded Merce Lemon, whose 2024 release, Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild, earned international attention and festival slots, and expressed excitement about the impending re-opening of the South Side’s Club Café, spearheaded by Maddy Lafferty, who also co-founded management and production company Keystone Artist Connect.
About the scene in general, Harding said, “I constantly see new bands and small artists and people putting on small independent shows. I see a really vibrant independent music scene; like, every single person that works at Trader Joe’s is in a band […] If I was a person that just loved playing in bands, I think Pittsburgh is a great place to spend the rest of your life.”
And although Harding won’t be living here for the rest of his life, much less the rest of the month, he’ll be departing in style, at “one of the best-sounding stages, a beautiful venue.” Come out later this week to say your goodbyes.
Ames Harding & the Mirage perform Friday, July 11 at the Thunderbird Cafe in Lawrenceville, with openers Forager (NYC). 21+. Doors 7pm. Show 8pm. Tickets $20 adv.
