Landry Butler to debut new piece at Kindling Arts Festival in Nashville

Landry Butler will premiere a new spoken-word performance at the 2026 Kindling Arts Festival in Nashville from July 23-26. The piece ties into this year’s Utopias theme by exploring how advertising and wellness marketing shape personal meaning and self-improvement.

Why it matters: - Landry Butler’s new performance adds a locally relevant, concept-driven work to a festival built around experimental art. - The piece uses satire to examine how consumer culture sells health, wellness and personal transformation. - The 2026 Kindling Arts Festival will feature more than 150 artists across 22 shows at eight venues, giving the premiere a sizable audience.

What happened: - Landry Butler will debut a new performance piece at the 2026 Kindling Arts Festival in Nashville, Tenn., from July 23-26. - The festival’s theme is Utopias. - Butler’s piece focuses on the ubiquity of advertising and the way health and wellness are marketed to the public. - The performance uses archetypes including a timeshare or snake-oil salesman, a radio preacher and an infomercial host. - The work presents the placebo effect as a scientifically proven remedy with the power to help audiences create a personal utopia one intention at a time.

The details: - Butler works across visual art, spoken word and music. - Butler’s influences include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Cage and Mark Rothko. - Butler has been a founding member and master wordsmith of the underground art music collective Inglewood Social Club for almost 20 years. - In 2025, Butler and Inglewood Social Club performed at OZ Arts Nashville with a live soundtrack to a large-scale projected supercut made from archival, original and stock images. - Butler received the Tanne Foundation Award in 2024 for multidisciplinary work. - Butler’s book I Have Nothing to Say and I Am Saying It marked a return to publishing after Fire Walk in 2010. - Butler has also acted in FIX, Nashville’s Original Rehab Rock Opera and in the film FOGG: Diary of a Sociopath. - Kindling Arts says the festival supports experimental artists working in contemporary forms that challenge conventional art and performance. - The 2026 festival runs Thursday, July 23 through Sunday, July 26. - The lineup includes more than 150 artists, 22 shows and eight venues. - Individual tickets and passes are available at the festival website.

Between the lines: - Butler’s new work fits the festival’s interest in art that questions systems, identity and possibility. - The Utopias theme gives the performance a broader frame than a simple stage debut; it positions the piece as a critique of how people build meaning inside consumer culture. - The festival’s scale suggests Kindling Arts is using the theme to anchor a wide-ranging, multi-venue program rather than a single showcase.

What's next: - Butler will premiere the new piece during the festival’s July 23-26 run in Nashville. - Audiences can buy tickets and passes now ahead of the event. - The festival will likely reveal how Butler’s premiere sits alongside the rest of the Utopias programming once the full schedule is experienced live.