Article Contributed by Win-Win PR
Published on 2026-10-24
Somewhere between a Grateful Dead tape trade and a Berklee practice room lives Love Mischief, the Sacramento jam band that treats a setlist like a suggestion and a wrong turn like a destination. This fall, the quintet points its van toward the Pacific Northwest for a run of Washington and Oregon shows, with a new single and a four-track EP called Birthday Suit waiting in the wings for early winter.
Before the highway turns north, there is a party to throw. Love Mischief plays Liberty Sports Bar & Grill in Mammoth Lakes on October 30, then heads home the next night for a 9 p.m. Halloween show at The Torch Club, the legendary Sacramento room. The costume theme honors Nova Scotia’s prodigal sons, the Trailer Park Boys, so dress accordingly and bring your people. Illustrator Corvo Spective created the tour artwork, a design that catches the spirit of the night. For a band that thrives on improvisation and unpredictable detours, it is one more chance to see where the music leads.
Then the real adventure begins. The Pacific Northwest run opens Wednesday, November 11, at The Chameleon in Spokane, rolls to Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle on Thursday, November 12, and lands at White Eagle Saloon in Portland on Friday, November 13. Saturday, November 14, brings Whirled Pies in Eugene, and the loop closes Sunday, November 15, at Fort George Brewing in Astoria.
The trek builds on a summer of serious road miles behind the band’s debut album, Dissolving Through the Rainbow Gate, released May 26, 2026. Love Mischief celebrated at home, swung through San Francisco, worked its way across Oregon, Washington and Idaho, returned to Colorado for the first time since 2023 and finished with a closing stretch through Utah. In Colorado Springs, the group sat down for an on-air interview and performance with FOX21 TV, and they made a stop at KRFC-FM in Fort Collins, proving it can carry the music and the personality to a camera and radio as easily as to a club. The band also returned to June Lake Jam Fest outside of Mammoth for the fourth time.
Now comes Birthday Suit, a four-track EP written entirely by founder, singer-songwriter and guitarist Brian Curtin in 2012. The title single, the EP’s fourth track, is the front door. Keys, drums and bass lock into a driving groove, then the hook lands: “Who’s that wearing your birthday suit?” It sounds playful, and it is, but Curtin hears a bigger question underneath. Is a person fundamentally a body, a soul or something else entirely? There are as many answers as there are people asking, which fits a band whose larger mission is to open listeners’ minds to new possibilities, in music and in life.
The recording captures one version of the song. Onstage, Love Mischief stretches it roughly seven minutes further across four distinct jam sections that bend with the room and the moment. Bright, celebratory passages can melt into darker, heavier territory well beyond typical jam-band comfort. Curtin traces that approach to watching Grateful Dead members Bob Weir and Phil Lesh reinterpret their catalog, then discovering Phish’s long-form composition in 2012. For someone raised on technical metal and precision, “it opened a new way of thinking about performance, one that balances disciplined composition with the freedom to explore the unexpected,” he says.
That balance runs through the debut album too, a nine-song, 67-minute trip through funk, jazz fusion, psychedelic rock, progressive rock, blues and flashes of metal-infused intensity. Recorded at Q Division Studios in Somerville, Massachusetts, and mixed by engineer Jeremy Bernstein, it glows with vintage instruments, classic amplifiers and rare microphones. The title comes from a lyric in the penultimate track, “Jordan,” though Curtin says the symbolism runs deeper. “To me, it represents a portal,” he says. “A massive shift in perspective, consciousness, or outlook. A true before and after.”
Love Mischief began in 2013 as a deeply personal vehicle for Curtin during a pivotal transition in his artistic life. He and his brother, guitarist and vocalist Colin Curtin, are both Berklee College of Music graduates, a mix of artistic discipline and business savvy that shapes the songwriting and the touring operation alike. After years of rotating players and separate East Coast and West Coast lineups, the current quintet came together in June 2023 with keyboardist Neil Heaton, drummer Alan Gamboa and bassist Bryant Whaley. “It was at that point that it really felt like a solid touring outfit had come together,” Curtin says.
The press has noticed. Features and appearances span Grateful Web, Sierra Wave Media, Sacramento News & Review, KUTZ-FM, Relix Magazine, and RabbleRouse News, who called Curtin “a tonal virtuoso” for his command of effects and layered grooves. Curtin says what sets the band apart is the range of backgrounds in the room. “First and foremost, we’re a live band,” he says. “If you want to dance and forget your worries, you can do that. If you want to explore something deeper, you can do that too. We want people to leave feeling better than when they walked in.”
This November, the band carries that philosophy north. Pack a costume, a sense of wonder and maybe a spare hour or two, because with Love Mischief, the song is never really over.
Love Mischief — Fall 2026 Tour Dates
October 30 — Liberty Sports Bar & Grill — Mammoth Lakes, CA
October 31 — The Torch Club — Sacramento, CA — 9 p.m.; Trailer Park Boys costume theme
November 11 — The Chameleon — Spokane, WA
November 12 — Blue Moon Tavern — Seattle, WA
November 13 — White Eagle Saloon — Portland, OR
November 14 — Whirled Pies — Eugene, OR
November 15 — Fort George Brewing — Astoria, OR
