Sing Us Home Festival 2025 Bring Bouncing Souls, Jon Muq, and That Undeniable Philly Attitude

There’s an apocryphal story about John Prine deciding to start his Oh Boy Records after wearying of record label struggles. In 1981, the tale goes, Prine went out into the desert, put his hand on a rock, and declared, “I am a record label.” In 2020, Dave Hause did something similar, and, along with his younger brother Tim and agent Alex Fang, started Blood Harmony Records. Three years later, they upped the ante in Philadelphia, putting their hands on the statue of Rocky Balboa that guards the city’s Museum of Art, and declaring, “We are a Music Festival.” And so the Sing Us Home Festival was born.

The goal of the fest, according to Dave Hause, was “to make your life a little better than when you walked in.” And in Philly, which every day earns its reputation as a tough, working-class, no-bullshit town, that can be hard to do. But the 2025 Sing Us Home, the festival’s third year, somehow pulled it off.

Held on Venice Island in the Manayunk section of the city, the weekend featured a pop-up tattoo parlor, vendors selling food, records, and clothing, and obligatory “E-A-G-L-E-S” chants (the city is still riding high on the Birds’ Super Bowl win). But the draw was the meticulously curated lineup — by the Blood Harmony team with an assist from Rising Sun Presents — of the Bouncing Souls, Frank Turner, Philly’s own Buzz Zeemer, and, of course, the brothers Hause.

In fact, the festival site is only two miles from Dave and Tim’s childhood home, where Pop Hause — Dave Sr. — still resides, and Sing Us Home serves as a homecoming-slash-family reunion for 22 Hause family members. But this isn’t only a festival for locals: Attendees came from all over the world, including from at least seven countries and 26 states, each of them eager to get a taste of that Philly magic. Count Montreal-based artist Gulheim among them: The singer-songwriter cold-emailed Dave Hause to ask if he could perform at Sing Us Home. Hause said yes. Sometimes, you have to shoot your shot.

These are the best things we saw at Sing Us Home 2025.

Bouncing Souls make fans “True Believers.”

The Bouncing Souls headlining set on Saturday was cut short by rain, but in true, unstoppable Philly fashion, the band moved inside to the cozy setup at the Venice Island Performing Arts Recreation Center for a rousing three-song mini set that included drummer George Rebelo pounding out a backbeat on a flattened cardboard box. After a massive crowd singalong of “Lean on Sheena,” with former Mighty, Mighty Bosstones bassist and “Sheena” songwriter Joe Gittleman helping out, the Souls launched into “True Believers,” a punk anthem that embodies this festival and its rabid fans. “The kind of faith that doesn’t fade away/We are the true believers,” they sang, before closing with “Gone,” a song I first saw performed by Hause when he opened a 2010 Brian Fallon show at Philly’s punk landmark, the First Unitarian Church.

Jon Muq finds love and revels in it.

The Hause Family Campfire is the traditional Friday night closer of SUH, and this year’s guitar pull featured the Hauses, Sean Bonnette of the group AJJ, Tim McIlrath from hardcore rabble-rousers Rise Against, and newcomer Jon Muq. There was a wide-ranging selection of original songs and covers, with each musician deftly adding color and harmony as needed. (Special call-out to Mark Masefield, whose keyboard textures and accordion elevated each song he played on throughout the weekend.) But the revelation was the Austin-based Ugandan singer Muq, who thrilled the audience with his soulful plaintive vocals and instantly appealing songs like “Bend” (about finding love) and “Hello Sunshine” (about reveling in that discovery). Muq’s 2024 release, Flying Away, is highly recommended.

Sing Us Home raises its voice.

These are ugly, divided times in America. Both England’s Frank Turner and Canada’s Gulheim expressed fears that they might not have been let into the country to perform, a fear that ratcheted up exponentially in the last 100+ days. At Sing Us Home, artists spoke up and voiced their opinions, either by covering songs like Little Steven’s “I Am a Patriot” and Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” or just by simply appearing: Tim McIlrath’s mission is right there in his band’s name, Rise Against. Turner sang “The Sand in the Gears,” first performed in Philadelphia after Trump’s 2017 inauguration, as a call to arms to not give up and let hate win. Turner said he hoped he’d never have to sing it again. (He sang it again.) The most direct and effective protest songs of the weekend, however, came from Black Guy Fawkes with “Whatever Happened to Jim Crow” and the virulent anti-MAGA screed “New American Meltdown.” Let’s hear it for dissent.

Buzz Zeemer prove they coulda been (and still are) contenders.

Every rock fan has a local band they feel didn’t get their due. For many in Philly, that band is Buzz Zeemer. The group’s leader Frank Brown has been writing incredible power-pop tunes for several decades now in various groups and solo projects, but he regrouped Zeemer last year to play their first show in 17 years, a celebration of the 2024 release of Lost and Found (Main Street Music Records). It’s a collection of finished songs that never saw the light of day back in the mid-Nineties when they were first recorded. Buzz Zeemer, rounded out by guitar hero Tommy Conwell, drummer Ken Buono, and bassist Dave McElroy, regrouped one more time at SUH to pound out scorched-earth rockers “C’Mon If You Can” and “I Live Next Door,” plus joyous singalongs “Crush,” “Break My Heart,” and “The Chosen One.” Let’s hope it wasn’t their curtain call.

Main Street Music spins the black circle.

That venerable independent record shop Main Street Music, now in its 34th year, has survived free downloads, streaming, the death of vinyl, and the CD boom and crash, to ride the vinyl resurgence wave is nothing short of a Main Street miracle. Dave Hause first encountered the store’s owner, Pat Feeney, as a 13-year-old music fanatic in 1991, right as Hause was discovering bands like the Replacements that would have a profound effect on his own music. In fact, without Main Street Music, there may not be a Sing Us Home at all: It was Feeney who originally suggested Venice Island, just a stone’s throw from his store, to the Blood Harmony team as the SUH site.

Frank Turner pulls double duty.

On Sunday afternoon, Turner delivered a career overview set that started with “If Ever I Stray,” a love letter to following your heart and the power of friendship, and ended with “I Still Believe,” extolling the power of rock & roll: “And I still believe / Now who’d have thought that after all/ Something as simple as rock n roll would save us all.” Raise that banner, because there’s no better way to end a music festival…. Until two hours later, when Turner took the stage five miles away at the Ardmore Music Hall to play the SUH After Party. It was his 3,029th show, he said, and he celebrated by playing his 2008 album Love Ire & Song, in its entirety. Ending with “Polaroid Picture,” off 2013’s wonderful Tape Deck Heart, the song was a reminder to remember the small moments and cherish them, even as we create new ones under more difficult circumstances.

Dave and Tim Hause are brothers in arms.

The Hause boys were everywhere this weekend. Dave has been in the rock trenches for decades, most notably with the Loved Ones, and even spent time as a roadie for festival headliner Bouncing Souls. Dave took part, either on his own or with other groups, in 100+ songs over the weekend’s three days. It was a massive undertaking (especially on top of the business side headaches), but his relentless, upbeat anthems were rapturously received by the crowd. The Saturday main stage set ended with “Fireflies,” the best lighters aloft, movie-end credits song I’ve heard in years. And don’t sleep on younger brother Tim – he and his band, Pre-Existing Conditions, played an excellent Saturday afternoon set, highlighted by “Summerkiss,” a gorgeous yet heartbreaking song that illustrates his growth as a songwriter since his 2023 solo debut — the aptly titled Tim.