Pittsburgh local music spotlight: The Garment District

Mike Palm
Monday, Sept. 29, 2025 8:05 a.m. | Monday, Sept. 29, 2025 8:05 a.m.

Sadie Shoaf

The Garment District

The newest video from The Garment District for “Cooling Station” could be considered “a love letter, postcard or elegy to” the old-school casino Circus Circus in Las Vegas, according to Jennifer Baron, who has documented the site in previous trips out west.

“I was drawn to documenting the built environment of the casino inside and out, particularly the typography, intricate carvings, vivid colorways, patterned old carpets, railings and banisters, friezes and murals, the 1980s aura — everything that creates a sense of another world. This even extends to the hot pink garbage cans emblazoned with the casino’s evocative double name,” she said. “I spent a late evening on the mezzanine, called the Carnival Midway, where an actual arcade still operates and where live circus shows and trapeze acts are still performed. Opened in 1968, the resort also includes the Adventuredome indoor amusement park.

“There seem to be many forgotten stories in those corridors, which makes me think even more about the psychology of architecture. I have read about a hidden Hippodrome — once home to the Soul Follies revue, fashion shows, boxing matches and ‘Nudes in the Night’ burlesque shows — that was walled off there in the 1970s and discovered many years later. …

“While artist Johnny Arlett was making final edits to the music video, my new friend, the Croatian painter and muralist Mislav Lešić, who I met this spring in Pittsburgh when he was painting a large mural at Javor Croatian National Hall, happened to be staying at Circus Circus during his first trip to the U.S. This led to him generously sending me some of his own footage there, which created a new synergy and long-distance communication about this strange and wonderful place.

“I hope that the experience of pairing this video footage and static imagery with the textures and arrangements of my instrumental, ‘Cooling Station,’ and with Johnny’s own video process and sense of composition, abstraction and movement, can transport viewers and listeners into completely new dimensions and portals.”

The song comes from the group’s 2023 album “Flowers Telegraphed to All Parts of the World,” but there is new music on the horizon. The band has been working on music this summer and should perform some new songs at their new few shows, with plans to start recording work this fall and winter.

Those upcoming live shows create an opportunity for a temporary, yet powerful connection between the band and audience.

“The chemistry and the energy that exists and is shared between the music, the humans making the sounds in real time, and the humans receiving them. I love that music exists in a particular point in time, with a beginning and an end, it’s fleeting and fluid yet always with us,” Baron said. “We can’t see it but it takes up space; it can shift us to another place or time, to our past memories, or can be a place to seek empowerment, joy or an escape. I also love that music truly helps people live in the moment and stay present. And that the live experience of a show is never exactly recreated the same way every time.

“Translating recorded music to the live experience is fascinating to me. We think about how to communicate sounds to listeners in a way that fully realizes how we want the song or composition to exist. I’ve come to embrace loosening up the relationship between recorded material and live shows. Some aspects to writing and recording music are highly personal; you can’t always translate the process to a specific language or format. Recently our band members helped bring a few songs that I thought might never be performed live to our live show at Tech 25 (earlier this month), and I am so grateful for that cooperative process.”

Baron filled in TribLive on what else we should know about The Garment District:

Band: The Garment District

Band members: Jennifer Baron (keyboards, backup vocals, percussion, songwriter; multiple instruments on recordings); Mike Kelly (guitar); Corry Drake (bass); Katie Tighe (lead vocals, percussion); Maggie Negrete (saxophone, backup vocals, percussion); Erik Cirelli (guitar); Harry Scarrott or Sean Finn (drums)

Founding story: Here in Pittsburgh, I have also played in The New Alcindors, and we even got to record at Nashville’s legendary Castle Studios. After a period of focusing my creative energies on endeavors beyond music — working at the Mattress Factory museum, co-organizing Pittsburgh’s first and largest independent craft fair, Handmade Arcade, and co-publishing a photography book, “Pittsburgh Signs Project: 250 Signs of Western Pennsylvania” — I returned to music in an organic, serendipitous way while starting to write new material. This led to releasing a cassette, “Melody Elder,” and an LP, “If You Take Your Magic Slow,” on Night-People Records, an underground music label I greatly admired which was run by the talented musician, artist and DJ Shawn Reed. I went on to release a 45 on La Station Radar (France) and a solo instrumental CD, “Luminous Toxin,” on Kendra Steiner Editions (Texas), and have also contributed songs for compilations on Moon Glyph (California), Crash Symbols (West Virginia), Crafted Sounds (Pittsburgh) and 6612 Tapes (Norway), and have contributed music and photography to Brooklyn’s ESOPUS Magazine.

The latest full-length Garment District album, “Flowers Telegraphed to All Parts of the World” is available on orange vinyl and digitally via Athens, Georgia-based label, Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records. The album was recorded, mixed and mastered in Pittsburgh at David Klug Studio. The orange vinyl was pressed by Jack White’s Third Man Records in Detroit, with lacquers cut by Warren Defever (His Name is Alive, 4AD).

I am also a founding member of Brooklyn’s The Ladybug Transistor (Merge Records), with whom I will be going on tour in December 2025 in conjunction with the reissue of our album, “The Albermarle Sound.”

Origin of band’s name: I came up with the name The Garment District to reflect my love for vintage textiles and fashion, sewing and crafting, as well as my deep respect for anonymous laborers — many women. I have always been inspired by crafting, DIY culture and thrift shopping, so the name also reflects my artistic outlets and interests. For many years I helped to run Pittsburgh’s first and largest independent craft fair, Handmade Arcade. I am also drawn to the way certain words sound and look, when spoken, heard and written. For me, music involves making, creative labor, production and collaboration as well as a distinct sense of place — while also being homespun, tactile and visceral, especially given that I have released music on hand-designed cassette and vinyl. I also think this extends to the design of our latest album, which was done in collaboration with Pittsburgh artists Maggie Negrete (of TGD) and Ashley Divine. Maggie also creates the band’s illustrations and some of our show posters.

On a more literal level, when I lived in New York City, I loved losing track of time shopping for vintage trimmings not only in the fading Garment District, but on lower Canal Street, in Chinatown and in Brooklyn warehouses. The Garment District continues the music-making heritage of my family, as my grandfather, great-aunt and great-uncles performed in tamburitza orchestra family bands in the Monongahela Valley towns Braddock and Rankin, and in Benwood, West Virginia, often for boarders who worked in area steel mills.

For fans of: Free Design, Os Mutantes, Broadcast, Library Music, The Kinks, New Order, The Seeds

Someone recently said after one of our shows that we sound like a “demented Beach Boys.” I think we should put that on a tote bag. I’m definitely focused on seeking a sonic intersection where orchestrated pop music, arrangements and melodies, folk psychedelia and elements of electronic, ambient and experimental sounds can coexist within the space of our music. I do prefer to leave it to listeners to form their own impressions, fold their own stories into the music and experience it in personal ways.

Influences: I definitely think more in terms of inspirations maybe rather than direct influences and some can even be subconscious. Growing up, our house was filled with LPs, some of our first toys. Earliest memories are of gazing at fantastical album covers by The Beach Boys, Jefferson Airplane, Donovan, Leonard Cohen and on and on. My mom taught a high school course called “Poetry & Rock Lyrics,” and I loved writing lyrics on index cards for her classroom. Our home contained some iconic psychedelic Fillmore West posters by legendary artist Bonnie MacLean, because my mom grew up with Bonnie’s sister Valerie, who would mail them to their Penn State dorm room. Watching shows like “H.R. Pufnstuf” and “The Electric Company” and singing along to “Free To Be … You And Me,” “Puff, the Magic Dragon” and our parents’ albums — this planted the seeds for the kind of music I make and still love. I am inspired by my bandmates at every practice!

On any day, we are listening to a vast range of music at home or on car trips: 1960s-1970s psychedelia from around the globe, garage, freakbeat; 1950s-1960s rocksteady and ska; early German electronic music; free jazz; 1980s hip hop; Tropicalia; 1970s-80s pop and new wave from the U.K., Scotland, New Zealand and Australia; library music, etc. I am also deeply inspired by instrumental and interstitial music because it allows listeners to access visceral worlds through non-verbal communication. I love having analog instruments around the house to encourage a spontaneous writing process and see where an instrument might take the genesis of a song. Nature and water, along with many creative mediums provide inspiration: design, photography, material culture, film, particularly 1970s film, British folk horror and Italian giallo horror, documentaries…

Releases: “Flowers Telegraphed to All Parts of the World” album (Happy Happy Birthday to Me), September 2023; “Nature-Nurture” Sonic Boom Remix (La Station Radar), April 2018; “If You Take Your Magic Slow” album (Night-People Records), 2016; “Luminous Toxin” album (Kendra Steiner Editions), 2016; “Melody Elder” album (Night-People Records), 2011; “Bird or Bat” Buscrates 16-Bit Ensemble Remix, July 2018; songs for compilations on Moon Glyph (California), Crash Symbols (West Virginia), Crafted Sounds (Pittsburgh) and 6612 Tapes (Norway)

Next shows: Oct. 3, Monongahela Pop Festival at the Government Center with Greg Hoy & the Boys, The Denalis and Pink Gin Marimbas; Oct. 18, Windy Pop Weekender at Cole’s in Chicago with Idle Ray, Tambourina, The Feeders, Modern Cults, Monogamy, Gentle Brontosaurus and more; Nov. 8 at Brillobox with Chariot Fade, Giant Day and DJ Joan of Arc

How to find them: The Garment District can be found on Bandcamp, Linktree and FUGA.

Three other Pittsburgh area bands to check out: Hard to just name three! Chariot Fade, Mystic Seers, Chameleon Treat, Prepare Thyself, BusCrates, Astrology Now

Favorite pizza shop: Spak Brothers

Mike Palm is a TribLive digital producer who also writes music reviews and features. A Westmoreland County native, he joined the Trib in 2001, where he spent years on the sports copy desk, including serving as night sports editor. He has been with the multimedia staff since 2013. He can be reached at mpalm@triblive.com.

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Pittsburgh local music spotlight: The Garment District

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