At The Helm presents… Thomas Dollbaum

4/8 Tickets Thomas Dollbaum @thomasdollbaum Local support TBA Doors 7 Show 8 18+ The realest-deal storyteller in indie-rock today is the Tampa-born, New Orleans-based singer/songwriter Thomas Dollbaum, and Birds of Paradise is his most powerful and dynamic work yet. Following up his critically acclaimed Wellswood (Big Legal Mess, 2022) and Drive All Night EP (Dear Life Records, 2025), Birds of Paradise is a goodbye letter to lost loved ones and former selves. These songs find Dollbaum searching for acceptance in the transient in-between places: Florida’s pine flatwoods, backroads leading to 1-95, where birds fly across the water. And even though the ghosts of his alt-county predecessors Townes and Molina are definitely present, on Birds of Paradise, Dollbaum emerges from their shadows–waving to the past, sounding all the more like himself. With the help of Lenderman, Halper, Corson, and Jones, Birds of Paradise is Dollbaum’s hard-won breakthrough. Alive and echoing like the poems and short stories you can’t shake: coyotes howl, birds fly south, kids chase rabbits through the sugar cane, and cigarettes are four dollars a pack. Birds of Paradise reminds us where we come from–the things inside ourselves we’ve forgotten–we just needed Dollbaum to show us. Here’s how to look back without fear or shame. Here’s authenticity.