Houston’s The Midnight Papers, a garage rock/proto-punk duo consisting of Tiffany Hamilton on guitar and vocals and Tim Richey on drums and vocals, are celebrating their debut self-titled album this Thursday, June 26 at a record release show at White Oak Music Hall.
Hamilton and Richey initially started playing music together in 2017 and after a hiatus or two, they did a side project around Halloween of 2023 which then led to launching the band as The Midnight Papers in 2024. The band has performed 36 shows since then, with another 14 shows lined up including the upcoming record release show.
“We have this policy of just saying yes to everything,” says Hamilton.
The hard work and perhaps a bit of luck has paid off for them as “Quelque Chose,” the demo version of the first single from their new album, was discovered by 6 Towns Radio in the UK and played on the air less than a week after its February 2024 release.
“It was entirely by chance so when we put out the singles, the three original songs back in February we put those on Bandcamp only. It was our intention just to use that to book shows. We weren’t really expecting anyone to listen to it or notice it or anything like that. It was kind of just a means to and end, so we put it out because we had our first show booked and we wanted to have something out there in case people did want to hear what we sounded like before they came to see us live,” explains Hamilton.
“We played the show and then the following morning I got a notification on Facebook that it was from 6 Towns Radio station and Loose Canon radio show and they posted that these are all the bands we are going to be playing on the next show and it tagged us.
“And I was like, ‘surely this is incorrect there must be some British band that has the same name and they just tagged us by accident,’ but then the guy’s name who is the DJ for that show it rang a bell for me. I realized this is someone who actually bought our track on Bandcamp. This guy bought our track in order to play it on his show, he says. I felt like that was the first indication to me that this might actually be going somewhere.”
Being a duo is unique in the world of rock where most bands have at least four members and even a three-piece band is not the norm.
“I think it’s mostly because it’s worked out very well for us; when we first started playing music together in 2017 we were a three-piece, Tim was playing the bass and another friend of ours was on the drums and then the friend of ours who played drums had to leave the project because she had other side projects going on that she wanted to focus on more fully so Tim suggested ‘I’m primarily a drummer so why don’t we just try it as a two-piece and see what happens’,” explains Hamilton.
Richey describes his relationship with Hamilton as a great friendship and he says they get together often to go to concerts and support other bands they like in the local music scene.
On the new album Hamilton wrote the majority of the lyrics, with Richey providing lyrics for one song, “An Accessorized Man.”
The band just recently released a new music video for “Quelque Chose” which was filmed and edited by Ian Leonard.
Of the band’s live performances, Richey says, “I would say it’s loud, it’s pretty straightforward, we certainly don’t have too much of a show, I’m sitting down behind a kit so there’s only Tiffany out front. We just kinda crank up the guitar and let it go from there.
“You’re going to hear that really gritty distorted guitar tone; you’re gonna hear those really deep powerful drums and you’re gonna see us kind of playing off of each other and interacting in a way that gets people excited. I see people out there bobbing their heads, smiling because of our performance style and because of how we interact with each other.
“We are sort of pulling from different influences than most people are pulling from right now. It’s like that late ’70s early ’80s proto-punk and new wave kind of sound but mixing that with newer elements like The Kills and White Stripes and Jack White’s stuff so I think that combination is a little bit surprising.”
The band has been compared to The Velvet Underground, T-Rex, The Stooges and The Pretenders, who the band are fans of themselves.
“I don’t necessarily set out to write songs that sound like a Pretenders song, I’m not like ‘I’m going to write a Kills style song, or a Jack White style song’ but I think it all does naturally come out because that is what you listen to,” says Hamilton.
“We’re already working on the second album so this isn’t like the only thing you’re going to hear from us,” says Hamilton. “We’re putting a lot of our time and our own money and investments into making sure this is a viable project going forward.”
The Midnight Papers perform Thursday, June 26 at 7 p.m. at White Oak Music Hall, 2915 N Main with Committeemen and TV Dolls.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
