{"id":2313165,"date":"2026-03-05T01:23:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T01:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2313165"},"modified":"2026-03-05T01:23:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T01:23:22","slug":"mi-local-passalacqua-talks-hamtramck-blowout-plus-michelle-held-the-last-war-perform-new-songs-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/mi-local-passalacqua-talks-hamtramck-blowout-plus-michelle-held-the-last-war-perform-new-songs-live\/","title":{"rendered":"MI Local: Passalacqua talks Hamtramck Blowout, plus Michelle Held + The Last War perform new songs live"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/shows.audiocdn.com\/s\/wdet\/mi-local\/mi-local-03-03-26\/embed\/standard-horizontal\/v2\" width=\"100%\" height=\"173\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/hamtramckblowout.com\/\">Hamtramck Blowout<\/a> is a local music institution. It happens every year, (usually), on the first full weekend of March. It\u2019s overwhelming\u00a0and chaotic, makes you grin and go all wild-eyed; it\u2019s fast, though not really that furious per se, and you have to make peace with the fact that you are not going to see every band that you want to\u2014unless you believe in miracles.<\/p>\n<p>Above all, the Blowout is vital. It nourishes the local music scene, it opens it up to newcomers in a stylishly slapdash way, and it gives everyone a chance to appraise the wide breadth of talent and variety of genres that are consistently percolating across practice spaces and dive bars in this region week to week. It\u2019s had four slightly-to-moderately different iterations over nearly 30 years, but it keeps on going.<\/p>\n<p>Wanna meet the local music ecosystem and dive right in? Blowout is your best opportunity! All that being said, this week on <em>MI Local<\/em>, I was joined in-studio by the dynamic hip-hop duo known as Passalacqua, comprised of emcees Blaksmith and Mister, who fatefully formed their ongoing project<em> during\u00a0<\/em>a live performance at the 2010 Blowout.<\/p>\n<p>On the show, Blaksmith (Brent Smith) and Mister (Bryan Lackner), talked about their interesting origin story, some of the nostalgia they have around their formative years together as collaborative artists, and then teased a bit about their upcoming set this Friday night at Blowout, where they\u2019ll debut some new songs!<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_235754\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-235754\" style=\"width: 900px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-235754\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michelle Held on MI Local, March 3, 2026.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Singer-songwriter Michelle Held also joined me in-studio. Held has been on stages before, with a background in theater. She started writing poetry at a young age, inspired by so many verbose musical bards and troubadours such as Bob Dylan, but she actually started playing guitar at a later age\u2014an anecdote she expounds upon during the interview.<\/p>\n<p>You can hear it, and I certainly saw it firsthand, Held is an incredible guitar player, employing the intricate finger-picking style, and you can hear her perform two songs on the show this week, with her accompanying guitarist Mikey Abbasspour. Her voice is aching with emotion, it hits a heartbreaking vibrato, and her words poignantly pluck the heartstrings. Held performed her latest single, \u201cAnother Jane,\u201d inspired by <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/wdet.org\/2025\/10\/01\/jane-goodall-remembered-by-wdets-ryan-patrick-hooper\/\">Jane Goodall<\/a>, and an unreleased song, \u201cUnresolved.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_235755\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-235755\" style=\"width: 900px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wdet.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/IMG_20260303_233353-900x506.jpg\" alt=\"The Last War\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\"\/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-235755\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Miles Pardo (left) and Drew Moore, of The Last War<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In the third segment, I was joined by the prog-rock duo known as The Last War, with Drew Moore on guitar\/vocals and Mile Pardo on drums\/percussion, discussing their new EP, <em>Smile,\u00a0<\/em>which came out last week. You can see them live, next weekend, at<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/smallsbardetroit.com\/?utm_source=ig&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_content=link_in_bio&amp;fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMjU2MjgxMDQwNTU4AAGnfbJdE10qSDbw8_knJFg-olnGq4uMUDdMlszjkvZQoZ5XAFcTXfYGGj0rViE_aem_hAFl3xepXLmqHXUp7Lpbvg\"> Small\u2019s<\/a> in Hamtramck.<\/p>\n<p>Drew told us about his relocation from California to Detroit in 2023, where he fatefully met Miles and attained almost instantaneous musical and creative chemistry.<\/p>\n<p>The Last War have released several singles over the last few years, including a slew of covers re-imagining some classics, but \u201cSmile\u201d is essentially their solid debut! Their repartee, on mic, is notably charming, so listen until the end. Plus they performed a live song from the new album, \u201cThe Kids,\u201d complete with Pardo on bongos!<\/p>\n<p><em>Listen to the full episode for two weeks after it airs using the player above.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source wdet.org \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Hamtramck Blowout is a local music institution. It happens every year, (usually), on the first full weekend of March. It\u2019s overwhelming\u00a0and chaotic, makes you grin and go all wild-eyed; it\u2019s fast, though not really that furious per se, and you have to make peace with the fact that you are not going to see [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2313166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[448164,308398,448165,448166,21800,448167,448168],"class_list":["post-2313165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-hamtramck-blowout","tag-live-performances","tag-local-events","tag-michelle-held","tag-music","tag-passalacqua","tag-the-last-war"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/MI-Local-Passalacqua-talks-Hamtramck-Blowout-plus-Michelle-Held.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2313165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2313167,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313165\/revisions\/2313167"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2313166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2313165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2313165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2313165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}