{"id":367750,"date":"2026-08-10T20:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T20:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/367750\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T20:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T20:26:12","slug":"americana-hero-jordan-foley-plays-his-last-show-as-an-orlandoan-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/367750\/","title":{"rendered":"Americana hero Jordan Foley plays his last show as an Orlandoan this week"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JordanJordan Foley Credit: Jim Leatherman<\/p>\n

Jordan Foley has been a mainstay of Orlando\u2019s roots-music scene, playing on stages all over town either solo, with his band the Wheelhouse, or in tandem with folks like Terri Binion or Oak Hill Drifters. Now this chapter of Foley\u2019s creative life is coming to a close with a move to Nashville imminent. But before all that, there\u2019s the matter of a\u00a0 goodbye show at (where else?) Will\u2019s Pub this week featuring performances by Foley and The Wheelhouse, a songwriter round and, crucially, tearful goodbyes and community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Foley\u2019s music career started with playing covers at World of Beer in Clermont, then expanding to other World of Beer locations, before meeting scene fulcrum Beth McKee of the Swamp Sistas. \u201cShe was doing a songwriter showcase at the Smiling Bison,\u201d Foley tells Orlando Weekly. \u201cI just went from there and I got hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foley began connecting with other local artists and scene movers, including Frankie Messina, Mike Dunn and Jessica Pawli.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI just got into the right crowd at the right time, and everybody was so welcoming and treated me like family right off the bat,\u201d Foley remembers. \u201cI\u2019ve opened for some really amazing acts along the way, but a lot of the people that have really inspired me \u2026 these folks, you could tell that they\u2019ve been doing it for a bit and they had a really great camaraderie with everybody. I just wanted to be a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soon enough he would be very much part of it at venues all over town, including the storied stage at Will\u2019s Pub. \u201cI\u2019ve gone from playing to two people there on a Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. to almost selling it out at my album release show in 2023,\u201d Foley says. \u201cI\u2019m doing the farewell show at Will\u2019s because the venue has just meant so much to me over the years. Will Walker and the team have always taken such good care of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foley and his wife, Mariah, will be moving to Tennessee for Mariah\u2019s new job opportunity \u2014 and for Foley\u2019s career opportunities as well. \u201cThere have been many times where I\u2019ve said, \u2018Hey, I should probably figure out how to get to the next level,\u2019\u201d Foley says. \u201cAnd it really just came down to my wife having a really great opportunity to go work at the Caverns and knowing that it\u2019s near Nashville and in that area that I can tour around a little bit easier; it\u2019s really hard to get out of Orlando.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Foley and his wife have lived in the area for over 20 years. Mariah has worked in Orlando in the music scene, and will be continuing that as a booker at the Caverns, a music venue inside an actual cave. Foley\u2019s band, The Wheelhouse, and the other half of his duo, Tyler Hood, all live in Orlando, making this an even harder goodbye.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe band\u2019s my family. I don\u2019t look at them as just a band. They\u2019re friends, and they\u2019re family to me. My guitarist, Tyler Hood, we\u2019ve played as a duo for years and years. He was a groomsman at my wedding. Everybody in the band was at the wedding,\u201d Foley says. \u201cI definitely think we\u2019re going to want to incorporate them and include them in the future to be able to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the midst of all the moving and goodbyes, Foley has been working on his upcoming album, which features several songs inspired by not just the move, but how long the move has been a dream for Foley and Mariah. \u201cMy wife and I actually wrote a song together called \u2018Forever and a Day,\u2019\u201d Foley says. \u201cOne night I was just kind of stuck. I was editing it and revising it, and I felt like it wasn\u2019t getting to where I wanted it to go. Mariah came in, sat down and worked with me on it, which is something we\u2019d never done before.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Immediately, the song became a duet, a meditation on their dreams of moving to the mountains and surrounding themselves with the calm and peace nature brings.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cLiterally in the first verse, we talk about moving to Tennessee, being in the mountains, because in our relationship, one of the things that we really focus on was that\u2019s where we want to be,\u201d Foley says. \u201cWandering On,\u201d another song on the new record, is inspired by what-ifs. The song follows what Foley\u2019s life would\u2019ve been had he not met Mariah, imagining Jordan playing dive bars every night until he got tired of doing the thing he loves most: connecting with the community and playing music.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think when it comes to playing in Orlando, when you build the crowd, when you build the following, you build the group of people who want to come and see you over and over again. When they show up, and then they show up again two weeks later, they show up again to see you over and over again,\u201d Foley says. \u201cThat created this sense of confidence and comfort of being able to be like, \u2018All right, well, these people really like what I\u2019m doing,\u2019 and they\u2019re not just fans. They\u2019re friends.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The move doesn\u2019t mean that Foley will never play an Orlando show again; he\u2019s already planning to play as many shows as he can in the City Beautiful when he goes on his next tour.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what to expect when I do these in Nashville or wherever I do them elsewhere. I don\u2019t know what it\u2019s going to look like in the future, but the ones that I\u2019ve done in Central Florida have been the foundation and helped me believe that they\u2019re the way to go,\u201d Foley says. \u201cI think there\u2019s something special about banter and talking with one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 14, Will\u2019s Pub, 1042 N. Mills Ave., willspub.org<\/a>, $22.21.<\/p>\n

\"Stay<\/p>\n

Related Stories<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Americana\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tHe\u2019s leaving us for Music City U.S.A.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"International\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tSinging their rich \u2018Historia\u2019\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Out-there\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\u201dI worked laboriously on them so I hope they get shot to hell\u201d \t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jordan Foley Credit: Jim Leatherman Jordan Foley has been a mainstay of Orlando\u2019s roots-music scene, playing on stages…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[17319,149024,139,7719,141,149025,140,147760,7720],"class_list":["post-367750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-country-music","tag-jordan-foley","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-concert","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-musi","tag-orlando-news","tag-things-to-do-around-orlando","tag-wills-pub"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}