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01.23.2025: Judah and The Lion @ Middle Ages Brewing w/s/g Jonah Kagen

Writer's picture: Paul BransonPaul Branson

The eponymous Judah, of Judah & The Lion
The eponymous Judah, of Judah & The Lion

2025 continues to be off to a strong start for Syracuse’s concert scene. It may have been brisk outside, but with a sold out crowd of around 700 people inside, it was anything but chilly inside Middle Ages Brewing. The show was GA and while it was full, there was still room enough to dance a bit without bumping into your neighbors. Middle Ages may be the oldest brewery in Syracuse, but the venue doesn’t look it. Even if you’re in the downstairs bar, you can still have a view of the show, thanks to piped in sound and their jumbotron fed by numerous cameras around the stage. This proved fortuitous as otherwise I wouldn’t have known that the show had started well in advance of the advertised 8 PM start time.



Luckily, I only had missed the first song and a half of Jonah Kagen’s set. Despite hailing from Savannah, GA this was not his first trip to this city of ours. Having attended Cornell, he had been here before playing against SU in soccer. His solo acoustic set captivated the audience, and there's no denying it was him, there were no guitar changes, and no band or pre-recorded track backing him up. When his set concluded, there were voices calling for him to play one more. His stage presence is endearing. He comes off as approachable, almost shy. His voice is strong with just the right amount of rasp when he gives it the gas. It felt very fitting when he admitted to the crowd that his mom handles his merch sales. He was out in the crowd after the show and was very friendly to everyone who approached him, even offering to pose for photos.


Judah and the Lion’s set was polished to a mirror finish, deftly choreographed from start to finish (at point even literally) to give the crowd everything they could want and more. If you want to clap and sing, they gotchu, if you want a frontman who runs and jumps and leans out over the rail, they gotchu, you want a cover song from the turn of the century (Lit’s “My Own Worst Enemy”), THEY. GOTCHU. Not above pandering, they led the crowd in the Bill’s take on Shout/Let’s go Buffalo. The crowd ate it up. They danced so enthusiastically, the floorboards were literally bouncing and flexing with the rhythm. There are some bands you can tell are just looking to get through their set and get back to the bus. Judah & The Lion seemed genuinely thrilled to be performing. Everyone on stage exuded energy and joy, resonating with and reinforcing the energy of the crowd. The set was undeniably uplifting, rife with songs to bolster those going through hardship, songs to celebrate finding joy having overcome challenges, and simply just the joys of being alive.

It should be noted that the crowd was no small part made of die-hard fans. I was seemingly in the minority seeing them for the first time, especially in the front of the crowd. Many people had custom shirts from the band. I stood next to a cargo pilot who had traded shifts with a coworker in order to fly to the Syracuse show on the clock. I met a woman from Tampa who had flown up just for the show, having spent hundreds of dollars to see a show upstairs from a brewery in our humble city. I lost count of how many fans were following the entire New York leg, traversing up and down the Thruway from Buffalo to Syracuse and off to Rochester today.


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