Bumpin Uglies bring Shwayze and Kat Hall to Terra Fermata in January

The Grammy-nominated Annapolis reggae-punk band plays Stuart's open-air tiki bar on Thursday, Jan. 28 — an early, under-the-oaks start.

There's a particular kind of Treasure Coast winter night that the snowbirds come down for: low seventies, a breeze off the river, and a band playing under the oak canopy at Terra Fermata before the sun's fully gone. Bumpin Uglies just booked one of those.

The Annapolis band plays Terra Fermata Tiki Bar in Stuart on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2027, with Shwayze and Kat Hall on the bill. The show starts at 6 p.m. — early by club standards, about right for this room — and tickets run $27.50 to $32.50 through Eventbrite. The date was announced Oct. 28, which gives you the better part of three months, but a Thursday with three acts at that price tends not to sit around.

If you know Bumpin Uglies already, you probably know them from a beach parking lot or a festival side stage. If you don't, the band has been at it out of Annapolis, Maryland, since 2008, mixing reggae, ska and punk into something frontman Brandon Hardesty's bandmates have described as Johnny Cash meets Sublime. It's not a joke description. The songs are built on the sing-along bounce of Southern California reggae-rock, but the writing leans on storytelling and a working-class edge that comes from more than a decade in a van.

The band's profile jumped with Mid-Atlantic Dub, a 2022 record stacked with guests that put Bumpin Uglies in the Best Reggae Album category at the 65th Grammy Awards. They followed it in June 2024 with Lyrics Over Everything, their eighth studio album, a 14-track set produced by Howie Spangler and released on Controlled Substance Sounds. The title is a fair statement of intent: for a genre that can coast on groove, this is a band that wants you to catch the words.

Shwayze, who shares the bill, gives the night a second draw, and the pairing is not a one-off for this corner of Florida — the same three names are listed together for another Florida date that weekend. Kat Hall opens.

For a genre that can coast on groove, this is a band that wants you to catch the words.

Then there's the room, which is half the reason to go. Terra Fermata sits at 26 SE 6th St. in downtown Stuart, an open-air tiki bar that local TV has filed under hidden gems and that Stuart Magazine's guide to the local scene slots squarely into its "Jam Band Central" section. It runs live music most nights and a long-standing Thursday blues jam, and it has quietly built a touring calendar that brings jam, reggae and roots acts to a town most bands used to drive straight past on the way to Miami. It's 21-and-up, it's outdoors, and on a good night the crowd spills from the bar to the stage and back without anyone really noticing the line between.

That's the setting Bumpin Uglies music was made for. Bring cash for the bar, a light layer in case January remembers it's January, and plan to get there close to the 6 p.m. start — the early slot means the opener plays to whoever showed up on time.

See you under the oaks.

Sources: Bumpin Uglies — Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Terra Fermata Tiki Bar — WPTV Hidden Gems (wptv.com); Guide to the Local Music Scene — Stuart Magazine (stuartmagazine.com); Terra Fermata — ReverbNation (reverbnation.com); Shwayze at Jannus Live, Jan 30, 2027 — JamBase (jambase.com); Bumpin Uglies tickets — Eventbrite (eventbrite.com)