Lily Vakili, photo by Bill Heuberger
(FRELINGHUYSEN, NJ) -- Building on the success of her 2026 Live Wire EP, 2025 album release Oceans Of Kansas, and two successful tours across the US, NJ singer / songwriter Lily Vakili will be doing a three-day residency at the beautiful Woodland Stage at Marksboro Mills in Frelinghuysen - August 22 (duo with Eric Burns), August 27 (Songwriting Workshop), and September 26 (full band show).
For more information and tickets go HERE.
Vakili released her intimate six-song Live Wire EP on May 8, an old-school, live in-studio, audio and video recording of songs named for what fans and critics alike say is a perfect description of her charismaticperformance style. The collection includes four re-recorded fan favorites along with two new ones, the Joni Mitchell-esque "Heart's Afire" and "Anybody Knows".
For the EP, Vakili wanted to capture the distinctive sound of performing this collection of songs with her touring band: Eric Burns on guitar (Super Yamba Band, Robert Finley), Joseph Yount on drums (Super Yamba Band), and Drew Hart on bass (The National Reserve). The timing felt right because she'd just come off touring with the same group of musicians, so she called upon her collaborator, the Grammy-Award winning, Emmy-nominated producer/engineer Reed Turchi, to produce the EP at Voyager Sound (formerly Second Take Sound).
With Live Wire, Vakili reimagines old favorites and introduces two new songs showcasing her emotionally raw,live sound – a genre-blending fusion of blues, rock, and art rock elements, backed by poetic storytelling. "What makes my music most compelling is when I perform it live with a band," says Vakili. "This is the message audiences have been telling me for a long time, so I decided to try to capture that sound in an in-studio session recorded the way jazz and vocalist performances used to be made, with everyone in one room with no headphones, no click track just like we would on stage. It either works or it doesn't, but when it does, it's electric and authentic."
Vakili released Oceans Of Kansas on October 17, 2025. It features Blues-soaked guitar riffs that crash against delicate ballads, fiery rock anthems that surge alongside hushed, intimate confessionals and strikingly seductive Bossa Nova rhythms. Vakili's voice moves effortlessly between grit and grace, roaring with ferocity one moment and whispering with vulnerability the next.
A lifelong observer, chronicler, and creative force, Lily Vakili has spent years gathering fragments of the world – memories, landscapes, voices, losses, joys – and transforming them into urgent, electric songs. She was raised across Honduras, Florida, Thailand, Puerto Rico, and Iowa – absorbing pieces of each place, each culture, along the way. This international upbringing shaped her worldview, her voice, and her lifelong search for connection. The past decade has seen her channel that force through six studio albums – released both as a solo artist and with her successful Vakili Band – each one experimenting with the wide, untamed possibilities of rock.
