When Silverada released their latest album Living Proof this month, it was as much about cementing the band as Silverada as it was about being time to put out new music. “I feel like there was a lot hinging on it being the second Silverada record,” frontman Mike Harmeier says. “When we released the first one, that was the introduction to this whole thing. This is driving it home.”
The 10-track Living Proof completes an evolution that began long before the group’s 2024 rebrand after 16 years as Mike and the Moonpies. While that moniker established the band as modern-day torchbearers of honky-tonk music, it also, according to Harmeier, pigeonholed them as only honky-tonkers. But the Moonpies have always contained multitudes. They jetted off to London to record with a symphony at Abbey Road Studios for 2019’s Cheap Silver & Solid Country Gold, and ultimately decided to make the name change five years later to showcase a group with a full range of styles and influences.
Then, in early 2025, steel guitar player and founding member Zachary Moulton left the band. Rather than replace him with a new steel player, Silverada turned to Parker Twomey, a 25-year-old singer-songwriter and keyboard player who has previously played with Paul Cauthen and Ben Kweller. The current iteration of Silverada is Harmeier, Twomey, guitarist Catlin Rutherford, drummer Taylor Englert, and bassist Omar Oyoque.
The decision to replace Moulton with Twomey had two immediate impacts: It left Silverada with only two of its founding members — Harmeier and Rutherford — and also meant Twomey had to replace steel guitar with keys while not upsetting the melodies in the band’s catalog. The group previously had a keyboard player until John Carbone left in 2020, but always in tandem with a steel guitarist. “We’ve had keys on every record, but nothing that was in the forefront before,” Harmeier says. Since Twomey’s arrival, Silverada have been turning its pre-show soundchecks into jam sessions, largely driven by Twomey. That, in turn, gave rise to Living Proof.
“It was months beforehand of straight-up jamming out during soundchecks,” says Oyoque, surrounded by his bandmates on a patio at Bux’s Place, one of three bars in Challis, Idaho, where the group was peforming. “Since Parker joined, it was, ‘Let’s all get acquainted, musically, together.’ That was really important. This is Silverada, and this is where we are. A lot of the riffs and hits and little nuances of Living Proof are products of those moments in soundchecks in the months before — us jamming out.”
Silverada recorded and self-produced the LP at Sonic Ranch Studios in Tornillo, Texas, just outside of El Paso. They chose Sonic Ranch in hopes of recreating those soundchecks. For their first record without a pedal steel, they embraced the seclusion of the studio. Twomey describes the occasionally weed-assisted studio vibe as a “flow state.”
Such phrasing is associated more with mellow, Seventies-era rock than hard country, and there are undertones of that on Living Proof, but Twomey played up to Silverada’s fast tempo, making “a country jam” the most apt description of the record. Besides, Harmeier hails from Tomball, Texas, and has the drawl to prove it. That, combined with Twomey’s adaptation to Silverada’s twang makes the record’s hardest-driving tracks, “Drag” and “Jack,” sound like they could have come from any era of the band. The former is a stressed-out lament from someone who gave up cigarettes. “Jack” is a classic country kiss-off to a lost lover. Harmeier builds to the refrain of “I ain’t doin’ nothing, but you ain’t doing jack,” over a dance floor beckoning two-four drumbeat.
“You can sound like whatever the fuck you want to sound like,” Harmeier says of the album’s genres.
Silverada made the album official in Challis with a headlining set at the annual Braun Brothers Reunion. The three-day festival, hosted by Reckless Kelly and Micky & the Motorcars, draws upwards of 3,000 fans to the Sawtooth Mountains on the outskirts of Challis — population 800 — and its alums include Parker McCollum, Turnpike Troubadours, Charley Crockett, Steve Earle, and Old 97’s. This year’s iteration, which also showcased Hayes Carll, Bruce Robison, and Cody Canada and the Departed, saw fans brave temperatures in the upper 90s and smoke-filled air from wildfires in the Pacific Northwest. Silverada’s closing performance on the second night served as a chance to showcase the revamped lineup in a set blending the rock-edged Living Proof with Silverada’s honky-tonk staples.
Before taking the stage, Twomey passed a spliff around. “This is how we started the record, and this is how we’re gonna bring it into the world,” he declared to his bandmates.
Then Silverada stepped into the spotlight and kicked off a two-hour set that made any handwringing about rebrands, steel guitars, and keyboards seem silly. From the first song, “Road Crew” off 2018’s Steak Night at the Prairie Rose, Silverada’s instincts as a shake-your-ass bar band took over, and pairs of swing dancers popped up across the crowd at Braun Brothers Reunion.
“When they’re getting that energy that you’re giving them, and it becomes reciprocal? That’s what we’re after,” Englert says.
A sizable number of fans knew the Living Proof songs, but Harmeier promised from the start that there would be plenty of vintage tunes too. Silverada kept it country right up until the end of their 20-song main set, when their 2024 standout “Eagle Rare” led directly into a cover of ZZ Top’s “La Grange” — and featured tour manager KC Powell rushing the stage, shirtless, to show off a massive ZZ Top tattoo across his abdomen.
Regardless of song selection or tour manager ink, it’s actually the bass player who dictates the energy of a Silverada show.
While his four bandmates are largely stationary, Oyoque throws himself — and his flowing hair that hangs well past his shoulders — around the stage with the abandon of an Olympic medalist. Harmeier is singing, but Oyoque is conducting. The stage plot places him between Twomey and Englert, forming a rhythm trio on one side of center stage. “Yeah, but Omar gets out of the Bermuda Triangle and comes over to my side every once in a while,” Rutherford quips.
During one 10-second stretch of “Beaches of Biloxi,” the bassist stands to the right of Harmeier — next to Rutherford — and sways his bass guitar like a swaddled newborn for the line, “We’ve been savin’ up for babies,” before running to Harmeier’s left, one line later, to let the crowd know when to do two quick handclaps.
“The biggest thing with Silverada,” Oyoque says, “is that it’s not a show. It’s an experience. And I hope it’s always that way, for anyone — first time or hundredth time.”
Mike Harmeier of Silverada. Photo: Robert Millage*
Such an experience remains a constant for the band. Silverada still tour relentlessly, and their summer and fall schedule is a mix of major club shows in their largest markets — a Billy Bob’s Texas date in August and a stop at the Caverns in Tennessee in September, for two examples — and dance hall gigs across most of the western two-thirds of the U.S. through the fall.
Their tour bus is a two-decade-old hand-me-down from Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, but it’s still a tour bus. Silverada are as aware as anybody that they haven’t leveled up to arenas since rebranding, and they have been at peace with that from the get-go. They are a do-it-yourself, independent band, managed by Harmeier’s wife, Chase, with a skeleton crew. They can draw 5,000 fans in a few markets, and 500 in the rest. They make it work, and they’re grateful to be where they are.
“We have those core fans who are our diehards,” Harmeier explains. “I remember in the early days, when we started doing this. We were following around the Turnpike Troubadours all the time. It was still the old model: Let’s just play all the time. The only way to do it is to just constantly work. I think that has kind of stuck. Our overhead is pretty fucking high. Everybody gets a little bit of cash, but most of it goes to our touring expense. I had this conversation with Jason Eady a couple of years ago. He asked why we are still on a bus, doing as many shows as we do.
“Because I’ve been chasing this for a really long time,” Harmeier answers himself. “Now is the opportunity, and I don’t know if that comes around again.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose upcoming book, Sonoran Sounds, is set for release in March 2027 via Back Lounge Publishing.
