Theo Kandel at International Artist Lounge

RISE UP SELECTS PRESENTS

THEO KANDEL at INTERNATIONAL ARTIST LOUNGE

Theo Kandel manages to slow life down just long enough to write songs about it. With his quick wit and fingerstyle guitar, the New York-based singer-songwriter has been patiently gathering a loyal audience around the world, earning cosigns from some of the other rising talent in the folk scene along the way.

Now, he seeks to make sense of life’s extremes aloud on his sophomore full-length LP, A Horse Named Friday [Nettwerk Music Group].

“I realized much of this new album was either informed by the really low lows or the really high highs of life,” he observes. “But happiness, sadness, anger, anxiety – all of these emotions are ultimately fleeting. It’s a comforting thing to understand you’re always moving forward, even if it doesn’t feel like it.”

His full-length debut LP Eating & Drinking & Being in Love was released in 2024 to wide acclaim. OnesToWatch raved, “Using his folk-meets rock spirit to capture what means most, Kandel’s debut is the perfect soundtrack for saying goodbye to summer nights and welcoming in the change of fall,” and Melodic Magazine hailed it as “a simple, yet moving debut.” In the midst of that album cycle, Theo shared the stage with artists like Rayland Baxter, Evan Honer, Jordy Searcy, Briscoe, Max McNown, and The Script.

If Eating & Drinking & Being in Love highlighted the small, quiet, and often uncelebrated moments in life, then A Horse Named Friday does the opposite: it deals in peaks and valleys.

“Back in August 2024, one of my best friends passed away out of nowhere,” he says. “I’d known him since I was five. The next day, I flew out for another friend’s wedding. It was a crazy emotional rollercoaster to go on over the course of a week. And almost one year later, I lost another friend.”

Throughout the summer of 2025, Theo crafted the sonic framework for A Horse Named Friday piece by piece, recording everything from acoustic guitar and banjo at Grand Street Recording in Brooklyn to violin in his bedroom. He heralded this body of work with “Right This Time,” setting the tone for more music to follow. On its heels, the single “Mourning Dove” takes flight on gentle finger-picking and a sparse string arrangement. Lyrically, he yearns: “You can break my heart, you can take my star, you can steal my bike, you can wreck my car… baby what’s mine is yours.”

“A mated pair of two mourning doves frequent my fire escape,” he says. “Mourning doves actually mate for life. I began to think of my own relationship and what you give, take, gain, and lose.”

The closer “Sadness Is A Sine Wave” ebbs and flows on the tails of a plucky banjo and a pedal steel. He reaches another realization on the refrain, “On the axis, listen asthey harmonize in little twists of fate – sadness is a sine wave.”

“It’s the thesis of the record,” he declares. “I wanted it to be full of juxtapositions between good and bad moments. I tried to translate how jarring it felt when Oliver died. It leaves you with the understanding that

no matter what tangent you may think you’re veering off on, you should always be confident that you’re going somewhere. None of these emotions last forever.”

On the other end of the spectrum, shuffling rhythms, upbeat strumming, and a “half-empty High Life” carry “The Station” towards a hook projected with full-bodied force: “Yeah, it was a long night.”

“I wanted to do a song that was a mix of ‘Cecilia’ by Simon & Garfunkel, ‘Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard’ by Paul Simon, and a little bit of ‘All I Wanna Do’ by Sheryl Crow,” he reveals. “You can have a certain kind of crazy fun with your friends at a bar, which I tried to capture in my own style.”

“Ghost Lives” pairs his striking falsetto with a messy banjo lick. His voice soars on the hook, “I got a million-sided die and when I tossit, it’s always coming up you.”

“I can’t help but feel like I’d have ended up here, regardless of any of the choices I could have made,” he goes on. “It’s like loaded dice – you can toss ‘em as many times as you want, but they’ll still come up with the same number.”

Carole King–style piano underlines “About Dreams,” courtesy of songstress Jackie Evans, with whom Theo harmonizes throughout the dreamy, seventies-inspired song. Just before the guitar solo rings out, their honeyed harmonies entwine, “Maybe it’s just a rainy season and that’sthe way it goes,soon the skies will open up and shut down all the roads and we’ll juststay at home.”

“I found Jackie on TikTok,” he says. “We wrote the song one afternoon, and it seemed perfect as a duet. It asks, ‘What the hell is happening? Why do eggs costso much? Why do we compare our livesto the people we see on our phones all the time?’ We admit that we aren't the first people to think this is all happening to us, but being able to express it this way definitely was satisfying.”

On “7–10 Split,” he juxtaposes a fictional story of divorce with a bouncy acoustic arrangement.

“The only way for me to write a bowling song was to completely fictionalize the story,” he laughs. “So, it’s about a middle-aged man whose wife is leaving him for a better bowler in the bowling league they're in. Such sorrow!”

The opener “A Horse Named Friday” rolls into town on a fingerstyle guitar reminiscent of the old American folk scene. Theo ponders, “I step into the river, I cannot step in twice, for I am not the same man, and it flows into the night.”

“Despite your side quests and many deviations from the path, you're still pushing forward,” he affirms. “It’s the classic hero's journey where the hero has the moment of impetus, leaves for a quest, and comes back home. However, home isn't the same because he is not the same person anymore. It’s a wandering song.”

In the end, Theo invites listeners to wander alongside him.

“When you listen to the record, I want you to feel like you’ve been on a journey,” he says. “By sharing my own journey, I believe I was able to do right by my friends who are no longer here.”

VENUE LOCATION:

International Artist Lounge

342 S State St #69

Salt Lake City, UT

84111

CARD ONLY AT THE BOX OFFICE

ALL SALES FINAL, NO REFUNDS OR EXCHANGES

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