Andrew Hoyt, the Iowan musician The Rampage covered back in January, headlined his own show for the first time on April 25, 2025. This followed a listening party for the release of his new EP, Kind of Paradise at Secret Admirer in Des Moines.
On April 25, Hoyt performed songs from Kind of Paradise at Wooly’s with a ten-person band. They had performed together for Studio 3 LIVE on Iowa PBS not too long before the show, but that was before adding eight songs to their set.
“I mean we’re adding a significant number of songs, but I wasn’t worried, because we’ve already been together. So, when we rehearsed that time before Wooly’s, it felt like the group was smaller. Y’know how when you’re with a group of people, it seems really big, but then over time, as you get to know them, it gets smaller,” said Hoyt.
The band consisted of not only partners of Hoyt’s, but also members of the band Dickie, one of Hoyt’s openers for the night.
“Dickie’s band was pretty much my band,” said Hoyt, “and I didn’t even plan for that.”
The ten-piece band consisted of Hoyt on ukulele, as well as acoustic and electric guitar, three others on strings, two percussionists, a person who played bongos and chimes, and a brass section with a trombone player, a saxophonist / violinist, and a trumpeter / flugelhorn player.
While they had all ten players on stage for the first half of the show, there was also a section featuring just Hoyt and his ukulele. This was to pay homage to his origins, solo on stage, just him and his strings. Following that, four individuals surrounded him, and played a couple of songs with the smaller group, before expanding once more to the full ten-piece band.
This show brought together individuals from all corners of Hoyt’s life into one crowd.
“There were people from high school to now, to my dad, my mom, my family, my friends that I haven’t seen in maybe a year, a friend I saw yesterday. A lot of different dynamics of people that all came under the same roof just to see me and support me,” said Hoyt. “That was really cool to me, and seeing all those pockets of my life kind of family tree, family, a friend tree come together.”
The support system meant a lot to Hoyt. He spent a lot of time socializing with people before and after the show. There was nearly an hour after the show that he got to spend filtering around and having genuine conversations with each group of people who didn’t leave right at the end of the show.
“I hope that this is the start, you know, like the start. Wells Fargo was the start, but I feel like this [show] was the start of ‘I’m gonna do this forever, and I’m gonna figure out how to do that,’” said Hoyt, “and I hope that people allow me to do it forever, too.”
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Naethan Apollo, the Iowan musician known for his songs “The Eye Color Ballad” and “Person In The Mirror,” as well as others, is going on his second headlining tour this summer. And he’s coming back to Iowa with The Itty Bitty Tour Part 2.
“I was born in Cedar Rapids, but that is not what I consider my home,” said Apollo. “I grew up in a small town of about 2000 people called Solon, Iowa. It’s kind of in between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids.”
While in his rural town, he didn’t quite fit in, claiming that he was “weird and annoying.” By the time he was in high school, around 2015, and began going to the gym, he started listening to rap music. This was a huge inspiration for what became his lyrical ingenuity.
Inspired by the likes of Eminem, Apollo learned the quicker parts to rap music, and thoroughly enjoyed that process. It even helped him with his speech impediment, and is where his love for writing and rapping originated.
This passion continued through his time at Iowa State University.
“I’m 25 now, and I don’t really do fast rap anymore. Sometimes I hardly even rap. Sometimes I release a song and people are like, ‘I didn’t know he could rap.’ I’m like, ‘you don’t know where I came from,’” said Apollo.
With his shows coming this summer, he will be performing some newer songs, and some older songs. “The Eye Color Ballad” makes the list, but in a unique way. Rather than reciting the five minutes of verses with a lack of chorus, he’ll pick out three people from the crowd with different eye colors and sing about those colors.
He starts the show with one of his favorite songs of his own, “Lemon Lime Lips,” and ends the show with a favorite of both his and the crowd, “You’re Not Welcome.”
Apollo’s rapping origins do make a return in his show with his current newest song, “Death of a Profiteer,” his song released following the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO.
“Due to the political climate of our nation, that song goes really hard live. People love it, I love it,” said Apollo.
There was a debate originally, for Apollo, on whether or not to divide his show into two parts—one for his “normal” songs, and one for his Dungeons & Dragons inspired lore album, Tales From Cazilor. However, when rehearsing, or performing in his living room, he decided that one cohesive show with songs sewn together with “lots of [him] yapping” would be the way to go.
Tales From Cazilor is set to have a sequel released this summer, Tales From Cazilor: Wyldflowers. However, details are still being kept quiet, especially for Apollo’s first interview of the Wyldflowers era with The Rampage.
“I can say this summer. I can say that shortly after Itty Bitty Tour Part 2 is over, things will start happening,” said Apollo. This will happen as a rollout that could take weeks, or even months, but Wyldflowers is coming.
A word from Naethan Apollo:
“The world through your phone looks a lot worse than it is in real life. Most people are incredibly kind, caring, and concerned for others’ safety and wellbeing. Go outside, touch grass … It’s good to do things outside of the internet because, as the saying goes, the squeakiest wheel gets the grease, and there’s a lot of squeaky wheels on the internet that act like the world is burning, and in reality—although it’s not great, it is not great out here—it can only be fixed through actual real human connection.”
