Lincoln, since 2017
About the band
Four friends from Lincoln’s Near South who met at a contra dance, started rehearsing above a laundromat on South 11th Street and never really stopped.
The story so far
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Marigold Static started in the winter of 2017, when Isla Carrick and Reuben Oyelaran ended up on the same night bus home from a contra dance in Havelock and spent the whole of Route 44 arguing about whether synthesizers count as folk instruments. By spring they had a drummer, Callum Shiach, who answered a handwritten note in a South Street record store, and a bassist, Fenna de Wit, who had moved from Utrecht for a sound engineering program and stayed for the weather.
They rehearsed in a room above a laundromat on South 11th Street, which is why the early recordings hum faintly in B flat. The debut single Overpass came out in 2019 as 300 lathe-cut 7-inches and sold out at the launch show. The Sodium Light EP was finished in lockdown with every part recorded in a different apartment, and Night Bus Hymns followed in 2022.
Their debut album, Lowland Signal (Lantern House Records, 2024), was shortlisted for Great Plains Independent Album of the Year and took them across the US, Canada and, for the first time, Europe. The new album, Weather for Two, was written through one long, snowed-in Lincoln winter and recorded live to tape in nine days. It’s the band’s warmest and biggest-sounding record yet, and the first with Callum on lead vocals.
They still live within a mile of the laundromat.
The band
Everyone writes, everyone sings, and nobody is allowed to bring a tambourine to rehearsal.
Isla Carrick
Writes most of the words on the back of bus transfers. Owns eleven keyboards and one working coffee maker.
Reuben Oyelaran
Produced the early EPs in his bedroom and still mixes everything on headphones first. Collects broken effects pedals.
Fenna de Wit
Moved from Utrecht in 2016. Arranged the strings on Weather for Two and keeps the tour spreadsheet.
Callum Shiach
Answered a note in a record store window in 2017. Sings lead for the first time on “Second Summer”.
Timeline
2017
Isla and Reuben meet on Route 44. Callum answers a note in a record store; Fenna joins after one rehearsal above the South 11th Street laundromat.
2019
Debut single Overpass: 300 lathe-cut 7-inches, sold out that night. First gig outside Nebraska, in Sioux Falls, to 23 people.
2020–22
The Sodium Light EP, recorded in four different apartments, then Night Bus Hymns. First national radio session.
2023
“Paper Moons” gets them signed to Lantern House Records, the Lincoln label run out of a former piano showroom.
2024
Debut album Lowland Signal, shortlisted for Great Plains Independent Album of the Year. 74 shows, including a first European tour.
2026
Weather for Two is out November 13, followed by the biggest tour yet: 21 nights, two continents, two hometown shows.
What people say
“The most quietly enormous record to come out of Nebraska in years.”
“Songs that sound like the walk home after the best night out of your life.”
“A band that makes synthesizers sound like weather and weather sound like hope.”