King Youngblood - Make Your Voice Heard Loud & Vote Tour

King Youngblood plays The University of Texas at Austin on Thursday, October 8, as part of the Make Your Voice Heard Loud & Vote Tour. It's a solo-acoustic set, so you'll be seeing just the man behind the name, Cameron Lavi-Jones, rather than the full band.

If you're not familiar, King Youngblood is a Pacific Northwest alt-rock and Afro-punk band fronted by Lavi-Jones, whom Alternative Press called "Seattle's Alt Rock Prince." The full group includes drummer Paul "Styx" Stoot, cellist Chet Peterson, and bassist Samy Garcia. They released the album Big Thank in March 2022, followed by the single "Thousand Songs," which premiered on KEXP 90.3 FM. AfroPunk Magazine described their hook-writing as "unparalleled in the world of heavy music." The band has a creative side that goes beyond the music, too: they published a comic book called Afrothunda, which imagines them as rockers and superheroes from Planet Xenon.

Lavi-Jones brings a lot more to the table than just the songs. He's the son of former Black Panther Maurice Jones Jr., studied communications at the University of Washington, and has worked as a social-justice speaker, musician, producer, and filmmaker. During the 2020 Capitol Hill protests, he co-founded the podcast The Revolution Will Be Harmonized. This tour project started back in 2018 to mobilize youth voter registration and turnout, with pop-up acoustic shows played with just a handful of guitars, a small PA, and a generator, focusing on purple states and states with low youth voter turnout. This stop is part of that same nonpartisan voter registration and civic engagement effort.

The show is on Thursday, October 8, at 12 PM CDT at The University of Texas at Austin, and it's free.