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The first sign of trouble arrived shortly after load-in, when we discovered that one fairly important member of the band had not made the trip to Joliet.

The mixer.

We had enjoyed the drive over, including a Wendy’s stop in Princeton and the usual conversation about life and music. Greg’s dad met us at the Moose Lodge and helped with the gear. Everything was moving along nicely until we reached the part where all those instruments and microphones are supposed to plug into something.

That something was no longer in the car.

The Mixer Takes the Night Off

The week before the show, Greg had taken his car into the shop and removed both mixers for safekeeping. This was a responsible decision right up until the moment it became an extremely inconvenient one. Neither mixer had found its way back into the car.

Greg’s dad even made a run to Walmart to see whether they had an inexpensive replacement in stock. They did not, but we certainly appreciated the attempt. We were left with Tom’s two monitors, Greg’s Bose tower, a collection of cables and the firm understanding that the show still needed to happen.

So we turned load-in into a small electrical-engineering practicum. Greg’s keyboard went directly into the Bose tower, which was best suited to cover its full range. Greg’s vocal went through one monitor placed in front of us and pointed toward the room. Tom’s vocal and guitar went through the other monitor, also facing forward.

Without the mixer, we lost the usual control over levels, EQ and effects. We played a few songs, attempted some adjustments and created more problems for ourselves. After about five minutes of getting the sound back, we stopped improving things and settled into the night.

And it worked.

A James Taylor Detour

Once the emergency sound system agreed to cooperate, the evening found its footing. The lodge served up food, people joined in on some songs, and a James Taylor request sent us toward How Sweet It Is.

The person who made the request had expected the more obvious Fire and Rain. Instead, he was pleasantly surprised by our choice. How Sweet It Is is still a work in progress for us, but it is coming along and earned itself a place on the practice list.

The request system was having its own evening of comic resistance. Greg had brought a new banner for the piano shell that more strongly encouraged people to scan the QR code, request songs and share images. The system did receive requests, including 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover and Something in the Orange.

The only flaw was that Greg had stopped checking the app.

Push notifications were supposed to appear on the iPad, but the device was in focus mode and quietly protected him from the very information he needed. A woman eventually prompted him to check the song requests. Greg stared blankly for a moment, having received no notifications and initially wondering whether she meant a paper request.

He knew the requested songs, too. That was the particularly elegant part of the mistake. The technology worked, the requests arrived, and focus mode made sure everyone remained fully focused on not playing them. The notification settings have now been corrected for next time.

A Photobomb and a Possible Halloween

Moose Lodge shows are special for Greg because they provide a chance to see his dad in Joliet. His dad was there with his wife and family, and Greg took a photo of them before the show. The same man who requested James Taylor managed to photobomb it, giving him a second unexpected appearance in the evening after How Sweet It Is.

After the show, Margaret, who was tending bar, gave us whiskey on the house. Before we made it out the door, she also raised the possibility of having us back for Halloween. Tom could not confirm the date that night, but a few days later his schedule was clear. Greg sent a message, and we are hoping the opening is still available.

Nothing is scheduled yet, but there may be some serious Ghostbusters on the horizon. Next time, the mixers are invited too.

If you are planning a lodge night, dinner, party or other gathering and need two musicians who can apparently build a sound system from whatever survived the drive, you can get in touch with Bell & Field here.

The summer of 2025 saw the rise of The Velvet Sundown, a band that seemingly materialized out of thin air. With a laid-back sound equal parts 1970s psychedelic rock and modern indie folk, they quickly racked up nearly a million Spotify listeners – despite having no known hometown, no live shows, and, as inquisitive fans discovered, perhaps no flesh-and-blood members at all. Their music is mellow and moody, full of shimmering organs and gentle guitar tremolos that make you “drift” rather than dance. In other words, it’s music that doesn’t demand your attention so much as dissolve into the background – which, as one critic dryly noted, might be exactly why an AI could create it so convincingly. “Perhaps no human artist could tolerate producing such soulless lackluster,” The Atlantic’s Ian Bogost wrote of the band’s oddly generic vibe, “but an AI is unburdened by shame”.

Meet the Band (That Doesn’t Exist)

The Velvet Sundown’s promotional band photo introduced the world to four shaggy-haired “rockers” who, it turns out, exist only as pixels. The band’s Spotify bio even named them – singer/mellotron player Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, synth “alchemist” Milo Rains, and drummer Orion “Rio” Del Mar – four musicians who appear nowhere outside the project’s own imagery. Each picture the group shared bore the uncanny markers of AI art, from hyper-realistic colors to improbable shadows. From vintage guitars and beard scruff to faraway stares, the aesthetic was spot-on… almost too spot-on, prompting eagle-eyed listeners to suspect a digital ruse.

By all outward appearances, The Velvet Sundown checked the usual rock-band boxes. They debuted two full albums in June 2025 – Floating on Echoes and Dust and Silence – packed with breezy, retro-flavored tunes. Their “About” blurb painted a flowery portrait: There’s something quietly spellbinding about The Velvet Sundown… Their sound mixes textures of ’70s psychedelic alt-rock and folk rock, yet it blends effortlessly with modern alt-pop and indie structures. Shimmering tremolos, warm tape reverbs, and the gentle swirl of organs give everything a sense of history. It sounded delightful on paper. And the music itself – wistful harmonies, easy-going riffs – could easily be mistaken for the real deal. One of their most-streamed songs, “Dust on the Wind,” pairs a plaintive acoustic strum with lyrics that seem profound until you listen closely. Dust on the wind / Boots on the ground / Smoke in the sky / No peace found the singer croons, a line that almost means something – or maybe nothing at all.

Ghosts in the Algorithm

As their songs quietly slipped into popular Spotify playlists – from a Vietnam War era mix to a happy-morning acoustic set – some listeners grew suspicious. How had this unknown band landed on so many curated lists and amassed such huge streaming numbers overnight? Tech-savvy sleuths began digging. They found no tour dates, no interviews, no trace of a human band beyond the curated social media posts. Even the album cover art and “candid” backstage photos felt off, exhibiting the telltale surreal polish of AI-generated images. Soon, evidence mounted that The Velvet Sundown was likely a creation of algorithms. Music publication Stereogum noted that on the streaming service Deezer, the band carried a warning that “some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence”. Listeners pointed out how the lead vocalist’s timbre subtly shifts from song to song – a quirk more common to AI voice models than any mortal singer with a consistent voice. In short, everything about Velvet Sundown was just a little too synthetic to ignore.

An AI-generated image depicts The Velvet Sundown rocking out on stage – a concert that, in reality, never happened. The band has “never performed in person” (and hasn’t given a single live interview), but that hasn’t stopped these faux concert photos from circulating to bolster the mystique. The entire project exists purely online, blurring the line between a genuine musical group and an elaborate tech experiment. Little wonder some critics began asking pointed questions: Was this actually a band, a high-concept art prank, or a ghost in Spotify’s machine designed to churn out streams?

The mystery gained traction as industry watchers floated theories. One was that Spotify might be quietly padding its playlists with “ghost artists” – anonymous or AI-generated acts who fill out mood playlists for pennies on the dollar. (Spotify denies any conspiracy, but the speculation was enough to put the company on the defensive.) Another theory: maybe an independent tinkerer had used generative tools to craft a fake band as a commentary on the state of music. After all, with AI music tools now available to anyone, an enterprising prankster could flood the platforms with passable songs and see if anyone notices. In The Velvet Sundown’s case, people did notice – and the story was about to get even stranger.

A Hoax Within a Hoax

The plot took a bizarre turn in early July. A man calling himself Andrew Frelon emerged online, claiming to be an “adjunct member” and spokesperson for The Velvet Sundown. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Frelon freely admitted that the band’s music was generated with the AI platform Suno, and he gleefully characterized the whole thing as an “art hoax” to troll listeners. It’s marketing. It’s trolling. People didn’t care about what we did, and now suddenly we’re talking to Rolling Stone, so… is that wrong? he smirked, effectively thumbing his nose at the industry. But if Frelon was seeking his 15 minutes of fame, it was cut short. Within a day, The Velvet Sundown’s official channels blasted out a message disavowing him entirely. Someone is attempting to hijack the identity of The Velvet Sundown, the band’s real social media accounts announced, warning that unauthorized interviews, unrelated photos and fake profiles were being spread by an imposter. The statement stressed that this “Andrew Frelon” character was not affiliated with them in any way.

As it turned out, Frelon was a fraud – just not in the way people first thought. In a confessional Medium post, the hoaxer revealed that he had no connection to the actual band at all, aside from being a fascinated onlooker. Using a fake X (Twitter) account and a made-up name (literally “Frelon,” French for hornet), he had fooled even seasoned journalists into believing he spoke for Velvet Sundown. Rolling Stone and The Washington Post had both fallen for it, reaching out to the bogus account and publishing his lies. Frelon – who claimed to work in AI and online safety in his day job – said he staged the stunt to expose “gaps in the verification process” used by the media. It was a prank within a prank: a fake spokesperson piggybacking on a probably-fake band.

After this surreal circus, the real minds behind The Velvet Sundown finally stepped out from the shadows (well, sort of). On July 5, the band’s verified accounts updated their bio and issued a candid clarification. The Velvet Sundown is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence, their statement acknowledged. In other words, yes – the music was made by AI, even if humans were curating the process. They described the group as “not quite human, not quite machine… living somewhere in between,” framing the whole venture as a kind of conceptual art experiment. The architects of Velvet Sundown still didn’t give their own names, preferring to preserve some mystique. They did, however, urge journalists to stick to “verifiable sources – not fabricated accounts or synthetic media” when reporting on them, a wry request coming from a project built entirely on synthetic media and deliberate ambiguity.

Reactions to the reveal were mixed. Many listeners weren’t shocked that the band was artificial – some had suspected it from the start – but the confirmation still set off alarm bells in the music world. Ed Newton-Rex, a composer and AI expert, argued that The Velvet Sundown represents exactly what artists have been worried about in the age of generative tunes. “This is exactly what artists have been worried about – it’s theft dressed up as competition,” he told the BBC, warning that the project’s success validates fears that algorithmic music could siphon income from real musicians. Indeed, in just a few weeks, Velvet Sundown’s tracks had pulled in over 2 million streams, potentially netting its anonymous creators thousands of dollars. For some, that financial upside – earned by a non-human “band” – felt like a harbinger of a new, disconcerting normal.

Others greeted the news with bemusement. Was The Velvet Sundown a bold art statement, a tech-bro prank, or just an easy cash grab? Perhaps it was a bit of all three. The project’s creators themselves claimed high-minded intentions, talking of “analog aesthetics” and “speculative storytelling” in their multimedia narrative. But the jury is still out on whether it’s a meaningful experiment or simply a viral stunt that got out of hand. As indie singer-songwriter Father John Misty quipped on Twitter when the band finally fessed up:

“About time someone did whatever it was you said you’re doing.” — Father John Misty

In other words, if The Velvet Sundown set out to blur reality and troll the music world, mission accomplished. And if they simply wanted to get Spotify plays by any means necessary… well, they did that too. Either way, this strange saga of fake rockers and real algorithms has left us all humming along – even as we double-check that our new favorite band isn’t just a mirage generated by the machine.