2026 City Paper Music Awards: Celebrate Charleston's musical diversity

Charleston’s music scene has never been particularly interested in staying in its lane, and this year’s City Paper Music Awards make that abundantly clear.

From country and Americana to electronica, hip-hop, jazz, punk and everything in between, the 2026 winners reflect a scene that thrives on versatility — not just in its sounds, but in the musicians themselves.

Charleston celebrated the awards Thursday night at a performance-filled show at the Music Farm. City Paper readers nominated musicians in 17 categories in an online poll over three weeks in June. The next month, they voted on finalists.

Martin’s musical life doesn’t even stay within Charleston’s borders: He splits his time between the Lowcountry and Indiana, where he owns and operates a club, and he’s just as comfortable stepping outside his usual lane. For example, he even recorded a duet with this year’s Electronic/Experimental Act of the Year — a cover of “I Love You Now, I Loved You Then,” originally by Jackson Emmer. The duet is proof that in Charleston, genre lines are often less like boundaries than suggestions.

“I’ve moved to Charleston three times in my life,” the 47-year-old Martin said in a recent interview with the Charleston City Paper. “Once when I was 19, once when I was 27 and then again when I was 37.”

At the end of that first stint, Martin took some Charleston music scene friends back to Muncie, Ind., where he opened a club called Doc’s Music Hall. Martin ran the club from 2006 to 2012 before returning to Charleston again.

“We were making plans after they closed the venue in 2012 and sold that building,” he said. “And my buddy who played bass for me said, ‘You love that Charleston so much, so why don’t we go to Charleston?’ I have family here and had a lot of connections at the music venues, so we moved here and started doing what we’re calling ‘Carolina country and beachgrass.’ ”

City Paper Music Awards voters classify the music that Martin makes with The Beautiful Mess as “country/Americana,” and he’s generally fine with that.

“I would think of what we do as country but also Americana because there’s a lot of rock ’n’ roll. It’s got a little more edge and some punk rock in there. And that to me is kind of what Americana is, that broad stroke of American roots music. That is definitely what we do.”

Martin’s Song of the Year winner, “Daddy Hated Nazis,” certainly has a head-turning title. Over a ragged-but-right groove that mixes garage rock attitude with folk honesty, Martin’s rough-hewn voice lays out the story, plain and simple.

“Daddy hated Nazis,” he sings, “This I know for sure. Dad said for that kind of sickness / Son, there just ain’t no cure.”

Even though the song sticks strictly to Martin’s dad’s point of view, it’s hard not to see a modern parallel.

“My dad believed that men have to answer for the things they did. He said, ‘If it wasn’t for the U.S. Marines, we’d all be speaking f**king German.’ Then I was watching Elon Musk give that speech at President Trump’s second inauguration and he did that Nazi salute, and it straight pissed me off. There was no doubt in my mind, he knew exactly what he was doing.

“I thought about my dad, who’s truly an old-school conservative guy,” Martin continued. “I thought, ‘How did American conservatism lose its way this badly?’ But the Allied Forces fought the Nazis the first time, and we’re going to fight them now. And we’re going to win.” —Vincent Harris

Jam Band/Alternative Rock Band of the Year: Tales of an OldSoul

All of the material released by Charleston’s Tales of an OldSoul has come out this year. Its singles — the dark and grinding “All Over Again,” the heartfelt, harmony-drenched ballad “Not Okay,” the epic stomper “Break Free” and the upbeat head-nodder “Muddy Water” — seem like the calling cards for a great new band.

Turns out one part of that phrase is true. Tales of an OldSoul is in fact a great band, but not a new one.

“We played under the name ‘Old Soul’ for about five years,” said the band’s singer, guitarist and songwriter Tristan Lamunion in a recent interview. “But there ended up being a lot of different bands with the same name, which caused a problem with the streaming numbers because when you search, we’re below about 40 other bands. So we started the new band and made it fully original instead of including covers.”

In fact, some of those 2026 singles actually predate the new band.

“A couple of the songs we’ve put out so far have been around for a long time,” Lamunion said. “We just never recorded them with the full band. We had only previously released acoustic material, but since we started the original band, we changed our whole sound.”

Tales of an OldSoul keeps things concise on its recordings, but onstage, the band is proud to explore and stretch the songs out.

“When we play our live shows, we’re full-on experimenting,” Lamunion said. “Some of those songs will last 10 to 15 minutes. We’ve never really said that Tales of an OldSoul is a jam band, but it’s almost an every-night thing.” —Vincent Harris

Electronic/Experimental Act of the Year: P!lot

Erel Pilo, the singer, songwriter, guitarist and founder of P!lot, was a bit bemused about the “Electronic” part of this year’s readers’ award. P!lot’s album, Fake Hangover, certainly has its share of electronic moments sprinkled in, but it’s all decidedly outmoded gear, as opposed to

the programmed beats and synths of Pilo’s solo work.

“It was recorded with mostly analog instruments,” Pilo said in a recent interview. “We even use an omnichord, which — I guess is electronic?”

As far as experimental goes, though, that word fits perfectly. The foundation of “Fake Hangover” is guitar-heavy indie pop, but everything else is up for grabs.

“Rocket To The Moon” feels like a throwback to the veteran experimental post-rock band Stereolab, with a pleasant vocal melody punctuated by just enough whooshing space sounds to be weird. “Or Lack Thereof” is like two songs welded together, one a moody, stutterstep rocker and the other robotic, mechanical stomp. Then the song comes to a full stop so Pilo can say, “Come talk to me after the show; I’ve got t-shirts for sale.”

And that’s all before the epic soundscape that is the title track, which sounds as big as all outdoors, with considerable help from Charleston’s most in-demand producer, Wolfgang Zimmerman, who also played drums on the album.

Each song is its own animal on Fake Hangover, and that’s because when writing the songs, Pilo let the stories guide the music.

“I came into music with an acting background,” she said. “So I think when it comes to songs, I come in with a story to tell that might influence the structures that I create. So it is very much based on the lyrics. I’ll get a concept that I want to share and then create a song around that.” —Vincent Harris

Screamo/Metal Band of the Year: Erode the Dream

Local metal band Erode the Dream is regrouping after a significant shakeup this year — good timing for the awards, right?

Following the departure of lead singer Mauricio Masáre, guitarist Jon Stout said the band is rerecording some songs, revisiting some older ones and starting fresh on others.

But he said he feels pretty good about the future of the band.

“We had a bunch of stuff already recorded that we’re going to have to revisit,” Stout said. “But we also had a lot of stuff that wasn’t recorded yet. By the end of the year, you’ll start to see some new singles and stuff coming. This is kind of a chapter two.”

And taking home a win in the CPMAs is a great start, he added.

“It’s great to get the word out in local music like this — you know, there’s more than just cover bands,” Stout said. “There’s a lot of great people we look up to as well, some who weren’t even nominated. So it’s nice to be recognized. People know about us. That’s great.”

After the successful release of Neon Nightmares in early 2025, which it also released on vinyl, Stout said he was happy to keep doing what the band does best all on their own.

“We’ve had great success digitally, even done some music videos,” he said. “We just put out a single not too long ago, called ‘Blue,’ with a crazy set and scene with some ghouls running around. The editing took forever, and we could spend the money and get someone else to do it, but we’re all pretty good at what we’re doing, and we like it.” —Skyler Baldwin

Jazz Artist of the Year: Charlton Singleton

Local jazz musician Charlton Singleton of Ranky Tanky fame is no stranger to awards. The two-time Grammy Award winning trumpeter, though, said it’s always great to be recognized, especially by your own community.

“It’s always a genuinely good feeling when people appreciate what you do,” he said.

And it’s been a good year for him as he has several projects in the works, including a Big Band record with the Honeycomb Jazz Orchestra, plus small projects celebrating legends like Miles Davis and John Coltrane and some large-scale gigs with other jazz ensembles around the Lowcountry.

“I love the variety,” Singleton said, pointing to the several different bands and groups he plays with. “The feeling of playing with a lot of different musicians — it’s one of the unique things about Charleston music. You have a lot of different people who are able to be like a chameleon. You can play in a rock band one night and a cover band the next and a traditional jazz setting the next, and so on.”

“That’s a real strength we have here in Charleston. And it’s been that way for a number of years, all the way back to the legend of Jenkins Orphanage.” :Coming off the heels of this year’s CPMAs, Singleton said he’s planning to do more contemporary jazz work. He’s playing with a small group at Gullah and Grooves soon and putting out a new album with it a bit later — something he hasn’t done in a few years. Beyond that, he said, he has some surprises in store. —Skyler Baldwin