Oliver Hazard to bring Waterville sound back to Union Stage
- Jun 22
- 3 min read
There is a town in northwest Ohio called Waterville. A few thousand people live there, pressed against the Maumee River, far enough from Toledo to feel like its own thing. Most people have never heard of it.
Oliver Hazard has spent the better part of a decade making sure that changes.
The trio of Michael Belazis, Devin East, and Nate Miner play indie folk rooted in that small-town geography OH, and the name of their current tour makes the connection literal: The Waterville Tour kicks off July 28 at Union Stage, where Corner Circuit last caught them in October 2024.
The band formed by accident. Belazis came home for a winter holiday, signed up to play 20 minutes at a local venue, and the same week won a recording contest at a local studio. Rather than record the one song they’d won, they played their entire debut album straight through in a single take. That record, 34 N. River, named for the address of the house where East and the band’s original keyboardist lived, landed with The Fader, which called it a folk-pop masterpiece. Bonnaroo and Mountain Jam came shortly after.
What followed was the kind of growth story that feels increasingly rare: no viral moment, no algorithmic shortcut. Oliver Hazard has been killing it the old-fashioned way, squeezing into a van and winning over fans one city at a time. They launched a Living Room Tour, playing acoustic sets in fans’ houses across the country. They started their own music festival in Waterville, which now draws artists from across North America. They’ve played Newport Folk Festival and Austin City Limits amassing nearly 600,000 Spotify monthly listeners.
The music has grown alongside the audience. With their Raindrop River EP, released in December 2024 and produced by Grammy winner Jacquire King (Kings of Leon, Tom Waits, Dawes), Belazis said the goal was to merge the rawness of the first album with the clarity of the self-titled record from 2023. King came into the band’s orbit after attending one of their living-room gigs. The result is a six-track set that sits comfortably in their catalog without repeating it.
The Waterville Tour takes its name from the band’s most recent EP, released in April 2026 and featuring five tracks: “Vampire,” “Hold On,” “Sentimental,” “The Market,” and “Without You.” Several of those singles dropped in the months leading up to the tour, building out the setlist piece by piece. Where Raindrop River leaned into solitude and quiet reckoning, the Waterville EP reads like a homecoming, the band circling back to the place and feeling that started everything.
At their core, Oliver Hazard are three earnest, harmonizing musicians who make you turn your head and feel like not giving up just yet. That’s a hard thing to manufacture.
See below for a full list of tour dates:
July 28, 2026 @ Union Stage in Washington, D.C.
July 29, 2026 @ Ardmore Music Hall in Ardmore, PA
July 30, 2026 @ Sony Hall in New York, NY
July 31, 2026 @ The Sinclair in Cambridge, MA
August 1, 2026 @ Portland House of Music and Events in Portland, ME
August 2, 2026 @ Colony in Woodstock, NY
August 4, 2026 @ Higher Ground Showcase Lounge in South Burlington, VT
August 6, 2026 @ Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, ON
August 7, 2026 @ The Pyramid Scheme in Grand Rapids, MI
August 8, 2026 @ SPACE in Evanston, IL
August 15, 2026 @ Oliver Hazard Day in Waterville, OH
August 28, 2026 @ Tønder Festival in Tønder, Denmark
August 30, 2026 @ Stanford Hall in Lutterworth, UK
September 1, 2026 @ The Lexington in London, UK
December 3, 2026 @ TBD in Hastings, NE
December 4, 2026 @ Marquis Theater in Denver, CO
December 5, 2026 @ The Urban Lounge in Salt Lake City, UT
December 7, 2026 @ TBD in Seattle, WA
December 8, 2026 @ TBD in Portland, OR
December 10, 2026 @ TBD in San Francisco, CA
December 11, 2026 @ TBD in Los Angeles, CA
December 12, 2026 @ TBD in Phoenix, AZ
