From campground jams to Capitol Theatre: Gregory McLoughlin’s long road to a self-titled debut
07 November 2025
Newsdesk
For anyone who spends summers chasing sets, the sight is familiar: dusk settling over a muddy lot, tarps flapping, somebody weaving between cars with an instrument and a hopeful look. Gregory McLoughlin has been that guy for years. Armed with a bass, kick drum, and foot tambourine, he has treated parking lots and festival campsites as his home turf, offering one-song performances that feel less like busking and more like a handshake. On December 12th, he finally bottles that hard-earned connection on his self-titled debut album, Gregory McLoughlin.
The record lands as a culmination of decades spent inside the jam-band community without ever fully stepping to the front. McLoughlin cut his teeth as a side man, apprenticing on bass with BuzzUniverse and soaking up the improvisational ethos that runs through that world. Improvisation, for him, never meant indulgence for its own sake. It meant listening closely: to the room, to the weather, to the people in folding chairs who stick around after a set to talk. That same instinct drives his solo work, where narrative detail and human-scale storytelling push to the center.
Lead single “Businessman,” out now on all streaming platforms with an accompanying video, leans into this sensibility with a sharper edge. Inspired by David McCullough’s The Johnstown Flood, it locks into a taut, guitar-forward groove that never lets its subject off the hook. The track reads like a case study in unchecked power, backed by McLoughlin’s signature foot percussion and bass lines that keep everything moving. It offers a first glimpse at an album that trusts its own scars and keeps the production as handmade as the life that shaped it.
McLoughlin will celebrate the album’s release with a special performance at Garcia’s at The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, NY, on Saturday, December 13th, as part of the “Get The Led Out” pre-show and afterparty. For a musician who came up idolizing that circuit, stepping onstage at Garcia’s feels like a quiet coronation: the side man with the campfire songs finally plugged into one of the jam world’s most storied rooms. In a touring landscape full of spectacle, his bet is simple. Show up with a song, ask honestly, and play like it matters. It has carried him this far.
