On April 11, most of Murfreesboro band Flummox sits around a table at Garden Greek Grill. They just released their new album, “Southern Progress.” Drummer Alan Pfeifer and lead vocalist and bassist Alyson Blake Dellinger sit with guitarist Max Mobarry. She doesn’t just eat, but channels her food.

“Any answer I give is going to come from this gyro,” Moberry says.

Keyboardist Jesse Peck pulls up a borrowed chair later. Guitarist Chase McCutcheon stays behind at Hop Springs Beer Park, where, in a few brief hours, the band will play what they would consider one of their greatest shows ever.

The upcoming concert will be a celebratory release show. They’ll play “Southern Progress” in full, sell merch and promote themselves, just like a regular album release show. But they’re Flummox. They don’t do “just” anything.

Southern Progress Ritual Retreat

The show was fully immersed in the album’s religious and political satire of the South, titled “Southern Progress Ritual Retreat” and additionally marketed as “a Friday evening worship service and outreach program.” The event was fully committed to the bit; the original announcement for this show even encouraged people to bring their own Bibles.

The event bolstered a jarringly varied line-up: hardcore punk band Black Market Kidney Surgeon, dance-rock band The Dead Deads and, of course, Flummox.

“I like the term ‘genre-fluid,’” Dellinger said. “That’s typically what I use to describe it because we hop genres, like, 90 times or whatever per song. Especially on [“Southern Progress”], it definitely ends up being where one minute it’s show tunes and then the next minute it’s thrash metal and then it’s funk and then it’s death metal and chamber pop kinda stuff. It’s all over the place.”

As Flummox began their performance, they didn’t jump into a full run of their new record straight away. Instead, Dellinger read scripture from a podium, then led the audience in Rich Mullins’s worship song “Awesome God,” switching “awesome” to “possum.”

‘Where does my allegiance lie, if not here?’

Much of “Southern Progress” and this show’s storyline are rooted in experiences as a queer person in the South, surrounded by hatred from socially conservative religious organizations and political figures. While the focus on comedy is strong, it also functions as a message of resilience and hope within the darkness it portrays.

“[Making music] is the only thing that I’ve ever done, really,” Dellinger said. “It’s the one thing that, I have kind of realized over the last couple years or so, seems to make somewhat of a difference to the people in our community and so forth. As far as being here in Middle Tennessee and everything — staying here, kind of waving that flag so to speak … well, I’ll quote Faramir from Lord of the Rings and say ‘where does my allegiance lie, if not here?’ If I can make that sort of safe space and places comfortable for kids that are basically just like me when I was that age to come out and feel like they belong somewhere, why not?”

Dellinger switched out her four-string bass for her signature six-string and the group began what was likely the most confident performance to ever grace Hop Springs. Despite odd time signatures and fast tempos, the band had incredible precision, all while each member actually enjoyed themselves. The simultaneously comfortable and bombastic nature of this performance can be attributed to how uniquely collaborative “Southern Progress” is compared to previous Flummox releases.

“The new one is different because I would say it’s what this actual group of musicians who’ve been performing for the last couple years sounds like,” Moberry said. “Not that the previous records didn’t accomplish that, but they definitely sounded more like studio albums trying to capture the songs that had been written as opposed to a group of people who sound like this playing the music that we play.”

Notably, the band’s previous album, 2022’s “Rephlummoxed,” comprised of selected rearrangements and rerecordings of material put out before 2018’s “Intellectual Hooliganism.”

“This is the first time we all were able to write together and arrange ideas together,” Dellinger said.

‘Our piggies need slop’

A few songs into the show, Flummox invited the crowd to surround the front of the stage and flung holy water on them as Dellinger laid on the stage to sing “Nesting Doll,” a slower electronic piano ballad. 

“It was one of the first things I ever wrote on piano,” Dellinger said. “I had some lyrics for it and I had that melody and everything. It was just one of my own personal songs. … One night me and Max were hanging out really late at night, like two in the morning or something, and I just started playing it, and Max was like ‘what the hell is that?’ … She insisted that we do it on the album.”

In true Flummox fashion, they followed with “Long Pork,” featuring Claypoolean lyrics equating the (alleged) taste of human flesh to pork. Once the song concluded, an audio clip of Dellinger repeating “our piggies need slop, please feed them ingredients,” went on for a few minutes as she put on an apron. The rest of the band, now in pig masks, crawled through the audience with their hands outstretched begging for offerings. Pfiefer made it back to the stage with an apple.

Many of the group’s performances are influenced by experimental artists like Frank Zappa and Mr. Bungle, as well as surreal sketch comedy acts like The Whitest Kids U’ Know and Monty Python, Dellinger said.

“I wanted to really f–k with people,” Dellinger said. “That’s what it boils down to. … It’s always been, ‘how do we make this more engaging for the audience?’”

The band had no problem engaging with the crowd regardless of the bits, due in part to how much fun they had on stage. Most notably, when Dellinger climbed on Pfeifer’s drum kit during “Flumlindalë.” Eventually, the band gained enough control over the crowd for Dellinger to initiate a wall of death from the stage using a properly placed Moses metaphor.

‘The possum has devoured the snake’

As the spiritual retreat came to a close, Dellinger resolved the sins of the audience as well as the band before closing with “Coyote Gospel,” followed by a reprise of “Possum God” to freshen everyone’s spirit. With that, (and a much-needed encore of “Trans Girls Need Guns”), Flummox sent the attendees out into the night with lessons, melodies and sore muscles from the mosh pit that would likely stay with them for a long time.

“‘Southern Progress’ definitely has a lot of cynicism and apathy and that sort of thing, but … think about the album cover,” Dellinger said. “You’ve got the possum fighting the snake, a big tornado in the background; it’s pretty hopeless. But then you flip the album cover over and the possum has devoured the snake and the tornado has ‘blown away’ the Old South, so to speak. It’s more about how destruction through revolutionary acts can bring about a better future, more than anything.”

“Southern Progress” is available now on streaming services or from Needlejuice Records.

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