A Vineland, N.J., roadside attraction built of mud and scrap metal inspired Cosmic Guilt‘s ‘Palace of Depression’

Back in 2019, after James Everhart had left Low Cut Connie after touring for six years, and while he was leading the raucous (now on hiatus) garage-rock band Scantron, he started inviting Philly musician friends over on Sunday mornings.

“We called it the ‘cosmic brunch,’” says Everhart of the gatherings in his Queen Village house. This was the gestation period for Cosmic Guilt, the psychedelic folk-rock band he fronts and which will celebrate the release of its new album, Palace of Depression, at the sanctuary of the First Unitarian Church on Friday.

“People would bring over records, and a few of them worked in the clothing industry as designers, so we started making sequined Nudie suits and western wear. That first batch of songs had that cosmic country vibe, like [the Byrds’] Sweetheart of the Rodeo.”

Soon Everhart and guitarist George Murphy realized they had a band — and a 10-piece one at that, complete with backup vocalists Hannah Taylor and Jillian Taylor (who are not related), and pedal steel guitar player Pat Kane.

And then they had a name. “We were walking through the Italian Market having a coffee and smoking a joint, and came up with that phrase,” says Everhart, 35, who now lives in Fishtown and works as a graphic designer for Florida cannabis company Jushi Holdings and Philly brewery Human Robot.

He and Murphy were “overwhelmed with work that week and were talking about how it seemed like people in our generation always feel guilty that we’re not working hard enough. That it hangs over you, in a cosmic sense. We took that back to the band and everybody liked it.”

Cosmic Guilt played its first gig shortly before the pandemic, and became a Philly buzz band once they started gigging regularly in 2021. Their self-titled debut was released in 2021, and they’ve now followed that up with Palace of Depression, a song cycle loosely inspired by a Vineland, N.J., roadside attraction built out of mud and scrap metal by eccentric former Alaska gold miner George Daynor during the Great Depression.

The album’s 11 original songs mix a taste of country with 1960s British psychedelic folk — a natural inclination for Everhart, who says the artists he listened to most growing up in Delaware were Uncle Tupelo and Richard Thompson. He counts Fairport Convention as his favorite band.

Daynor’s Palace of Depression struck him as “a really cool story of someone picking up the pieces of their life and building something beautiful out of the ugly. I liked the ring of it, going off The Gilded Palace of Sin by the Flying Burrito Brothers.”

The album has “an overarching theme of initial failure and deprivation, until you slap yourself out of it and starting looking to the cosmos for answers. And we tried to tie it together into what I would imagine the Palace of Depression to be if it were a kind of weird acid-trip Disney movie.”

Cosmic Guilt and Leon III at the First Unitarian Church sanctuary, 2125 Chestnut St. at 7:30 p.m. Friday. $25-$25. davekisspresents.com

In 2016, Canadian broadcaster and musician Talia Schlanger replaced David Dye as host of World Cafe, the syndicated radio show produced out of WXPN-FM (88.5). She left in 2019 to follow other creative pursuits, and made good on that ambition with her affecting and wide-ranging debut album, Grace for the Going. She’s back in Philly for a show at Johnny Brenda’s on Thursday.

Shannon & the Clams’ The Moon Is in the Wrong Place is a heartbreaker. It was recorded in the wake of the death of Shannon Shaw’s fiancé, Eric Moore. Out of grief, the psych-garage band made its most vibrant music yet. They’re at Union Transfer on Friday, after playing Free at Noon during the day.

The Ladybug Music Festival takes over Wilmington on Friday with music on eight stages, including Philly bands Catbite, Velvet Rouge, and Humilitarian. The fest is free and promises “100% Women-Fronted Magic,” with over 30 acts, not one of them fronted by a dude.

It’s Unlimited Devotion weekend at Ardmore Music Hall, with three nights of high-class Grateful Dead tribute action starting Friday, with musicians including Don Was, and Anders Osborne and Marc Brownstein of Philly’s Disco Biscuits.

Alex Savoth and Dan King of Philly band Stereo League are hosting League Night Vol. 2, their second annual Johnny Brenda’s showcase, on Saturday, also featuring vibraphonist Angelo Outlaw and multi-instrumentalist Bo Rains.

Brooklyn rapper and songwriter Yaya Bey comes to World Cafe Live on Saturday in a show that would have fit right in at the Roots Picnic that’ll be happening a couple of miles way. She’s supporting her sad and beautiful new album, Ten Fold, which was written and recorded after the death of her father, the rapper Grand Daddy I.U. from the hip-hop group Juice Crew. Philly rapper Ivy Sole opens.