Rock is dead they say? Long Live Florry!
Florry, an up and coming band from Philly restore faith in live music, local bands getting their due and a shout out to the venues (and fans) that keep it all humming!
(Florry @ Johnny Brenda’s. December 26, 2025)
A band is a precious thing. I’ve been in a few, and my experience of making live music with other people is incomparable. The feeling of taking the stage of a packed venue, feeling the excitement of a crowd who are there for you and your bandmates, tuning up, hearing the whoops and cheers, and then setting off and taking the crowd for a ride, locking in, feeding off the energy of the crowd, the crowd feeding off you, the back and forth.
You can’t replicate that in your basement, or on your laptop.
And it goes both ways: A great band (Steely Dan and studio years Beatles aside) needs a live audience, and the audience needs great bands to see, hear, feel, and touch. And by great I don’t necessarily mean BIG AND FAMOUS, playing enormo-domes, charging 350 dollars for tickets.
You can discover a great band anywhere: a street corner, a basement, or perhaps a slightly bigger venue, like Philly’s own Johnny Brenda’s, located in the heart of Fishtown. I lucked into seeing such a band the other night, Florry, local heroes who are becoming less unknown by the hour.
A few weeks back, a friend alerted me to their presence, she thought I would like them (I did) and then mentioned they were playing Johnny Brenda’s in late December.
A quick word about Johnny Brenda’s: it’s got two levels, (well, three actually), and a great big bar on the main floor. The music venue part is up a set of narrow stairs, past a smaller bar, and then into a small club (200 capacity) with a great balcony that sits pretty much right on top of the stage. It’s got this dramatic high ceiling, fun lighting, great sound, and is one of my favorite spots to see live music.
And Florry made the most of their time on stage. Hometown crowd, lots of their peeps there to share the love. Three songs in, the band hit a more up-tempo groove and out of nowhere, a flash-mosh pit broke out, or as my friend quipped, “A true hipster mosh pit, everyone was carefully smashing into one another.”
Click the image to see Florry stir it up!
A love-mosh, if you will.
Florry is fronted by Francie Medosch on guitar and lead vocals. Irrepressibly joyful onstage, Francie can flat-out play her guitar and knows how to connect with the audience. She has the ‘it’ factor that could propel this band to bigger things, for sure.
The band (7 members if I counted correctly) played a bunch of tunes off their new wonderful new album, The Holey Bible, covered Wilco and Tom Petty, brought up Kurt Vile to sit in, and before the show sang “Happy Birthday” to Francie’s mom. The whole night was full of sweet, raucous fun, slightly dangerous (as when three ‘bros’ decided to jump in the mosh and crowd surf. Fortunately, it did not last long!) but overall fantastic.
Great venue, great band, great energy.
Long live rock, long live LIVE music, long live LOCAL BANDS and long live great venues like Johnny Brenda’s.
Happy 2025 everyone!