Jason Henn said he is used to performing for rowdy audiences in dark venues.
But on Sunday, showgoers filed in between rows of vinyl records to watch his band Honey Radar perform an afternoon show at Landlocked Music.
This was Henn’s first in-store performance, but he’s been a patron of Landlocked for a long time, he said. He grew up in Richmond, Indiana, and often traveled to Bloomington to visit one of his favorite shops.
“It’s just, like, a very good store, and it sprang to mind as an idea to play an in-store when we were booking the Indiana show,” he said.
Jason Nickey, co-owner of Landlocked, said in-store shows are a rarity.
“We end up not doing them too often,” he said. “It’s just when things sort of fall together in a unique way.”
Nickey set up the free Honey Radar concert after the band’s originally scheduled Bloomington show fell through, he said. The band still wanted to play in town, and he said he enjoys Honey Radar’s music.
“There has to be a reason to do it,” he said. “Either we really like the band or the band really wants to play here.”
Landlocked also sells a few of Honey Radar’s seven-inch lathe-cut records, he said.
Henn said he’s been releasing these small samplings of the band’s music for years.
“It’s important to me for there to be a physical object,” he said.
The lathe cuts are like arts and crafts project for Henn and a friend, he said. They only press 20 to 50 records in a batch, so they can become fairly scarce.
Henn said he imagined his work with Honey Radar would die down after the band released its first full-length LP a few years ago, but the album received many good reviews and the group’s popularity picked up steam.
“All of a sudden we just started seeing these orders roll in, and some labels got in touch about doing the next album,” he said.
Honey Radar is now poised to release its second full-length LP, called “Blank Cartoon,” on the label What’s Your Rupture in May, he said.
Henn still writes most of the music himself, but the group is still a collaborative project, he said.
“I don’t feel like I’m a dictator about it or anything,” he said.
The new album will feature more diverse noises than the last releases, he said. It’s like a collage of sound.
“We maybe went all-in with the weirdness a little more than last time,” he said.
Though Honey Radar has psych rock elements, Henn said he’s not sure what genre his band fits in.
Regardless, he’s happy to have more exposure than in previous years.
“I’m just very curious to see how people respond to the album,” he said.
