A Reimagining of Frank Ocean's "Blonde"
LowDown
August 29, 2026
Waiting for new Frank Ocean music is just part of loving Frank Ocean music. As our collective waiting continues, Frank Ocean lovers united at LowDown last weekend for a long-awaited concert: some of Tulsa’s most imaginative musicians interpreting his 2016 album Blonde front to back.
I started hearing rumors of this idea years ago, but having the gig materialize in time for the record’s 10th anniversary (nearly to the day) made it extra poignant. Blonde is one of those albums that, with its liminal cinematic beauty, lodges right into a specific time and place in your heart. The 10-years-younger versions of ourselves who heard that record for the first time seemed to be in the room with us at LowDown for the first of the night’s two shows, getting tender hearts busted open all over again as our adult selves sipped NA beer and silently sang along.
The musicians in this group—KYD, Olivia McGraw, Annie Ellicott, Johnny Polygon, Briana Wright, Bobby Moffett Jr., Josh Nanna, Matt Magerkurth, and Chris Combs, buoyed by Scott Bell’s sensitive live mix—delivered a version of Blonde that wove between faithful homage and innovative interpretation. They treated this one-of-one record just like they do iconic standards of every genre in gigs all over town, with equal parts reverence and curiosity. Out of all of us, they were the most skillful Frank Ocean lovers in the room: devoted, playful, passionate, and occasionally transcendent.
The vocalists cycled in and out throughout the set, with Combs on guitar and Magerkurth on bass laying down two edges of a smooth, rolling road that everyone else could travel on. The first notes hit hard as McGraw and KYD doubled their voices to render the vocal effect that opens the album; the band’s sound spilled out over the edges at the end of “Nikes” after five full minutes of pristine restraint. In a classic meme tee (“She said me or Frank Ocean / sometimes I miss her”) KYD was the only artist in the group I hadn’t heard before. His beautiful voice, whether rapping or singing, mingled with a shy energy as knowing and kid-like as some of the teenagers Ocean conjures in his songs.