Slap Dragon, the Nashville-bred acoustic funk project led by bassist and songwriter Scott Mulvahill and singer and songwriter Laura Berens, today release their debut album, Mission Statement, out now via No Coincidence Records with distribution by Secretly Distribution.
The 11-song project is an intriguing amalgamation of bluegrass reflexes, R&B blood, funk gravity, and acoustic instruments played by some of Nashville’s most renowned session musicians, arriving declaratively as both a first chapter and an opening argument. Perhaps most alluring is music’s balance, arriving with enough precision to dazzle, enough looseness to let the room breathe, and enough humor to make serious players sound like they are having the time of their lives.
At the crossroads of masterful musicianship and wild spontaneity, Mission Statement finds an unbridled joy that feels less like escape than fuel. Across the record, the groove is not a gimmick, the solos are not filler, and the songs are not a delivery system for chops. Slap Dragon is less a showcase than a conversation, and the project itself is a welcome invite to each and every listener to join in on the fun.
“Mission Statement felt like the right title because it really is our mission statement,” says Berens. “When we play live, there is this agreement with the room: if you give us your energy and your time, and you are in this moment with us, we promise to give something meaningful back. We have our own community onstage, but if the audience is willing, we can all do this together.”
“For me, Slap Dragon gets down to the roots of what music is,” adds Mulvahill. “It is communal. It is a sharing and an exchange. Collaboration takes the music somewhere neither of us could build on our own, and that surprise is what keeps lighting the whole thing up.”
Slap Dragon began when Mulvahill, carrying the seed of an acoustic funk band, heard Berens sing at a Nashville birthday-party jam in the summer of 2023. Their first writing session with Seth Taylor (Zach Bryan, Willie Nelson) revealed a chemistry too strong to ignore, and a subsequent studio jam yielded five songs tied to the record. Soon after, Berens and Mulvahill brought the idea to Blue Rock Artist Ranch and Studio in Wimberley, TX, where they wrote for two days, brought in the players, and captured half the album in a day and a half.
Since then, the project has moved quickly from half-serious ideas to undeniable proof of concept. Following Slap Dragon’s first live show on June 1, 2024 in Nashville, and an early set at Bonnaroo weeks later, the band unveiled their first two singles, “Girl Dinner” and “Already Won.” The songs’ immediate buzz propelled an ambitious Kickstarter campaign across the finish line, supporting recording, production from Tyler Bryant (Larkin Poe, Ruthie Foster), mixing, mastering, artwork, merch, vinyl pressing, and more. In just two short years, the leading tunes have amassed over 100k plays on Spotify, respectively, ensuring the debut release from an exchange-built band arrives with its community fully embedded inside the story.
Across Mission Statement, Slap Dragon avoid the easy traps of genre exercise. This is not bluegrass with drums, or funk in an acoustic costume. Mulvahill, who moved to Nashville in 2010 and soon joined Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, brings speed, precision, and a deep acoustic vocabulary. Berens arrived in Nashville from Phoenix after studying music therapy and logging hundreds of gigs fronting neo-soul project Palo Brea, perfecting her undeniably alluring vibe and seasoned style rooted in soul, funk and jazz. Together they write from the same place they improvise: listening first.
The players around them raise the stakes even higher. On the road, Slap Dragon performs as a five-piece band drawn from a rotating pool of Nashville heavy hitters, with credits alongside Ricky Skaggs, Sierra Ferrell, Cory Wong, Alison Krauss, and Bruce Hornsby. That fluid lineup has become part of the design: a high bar, a living band, and a show built around reaction, improvisation, and surprise. On record, that same spirit runs through the title track’s live-band pact, the swaggering lift of “Mission Statement,” the wink and bite of “Pool Song” and the wide-open frame of songs like “No Solicitors,” “Can Your Man Do This,” “Let Me In,” and “Lost In the Music.”
Slap Dragon will introduce Mission Statement across a busy 2026 run that spans festival fields, club stages, and rooms built for discovery, with stops including Live Oak Music Festival, Levitt Pavilion SteelStacks, Maplewoodstock Music & Art Festival, New York City’s The Bitter End, Nashville’s 3rd & Lindsley, The Caverns’ CaveFest Kick-off Party, Jean McDonough Arts Center (JMAC) in Worcester, and more. For a band still at the beginning of its story, the infrastructure around them is notable. Slap Dragon arrives with two of the most instructive artist-development stories in the modern live-music world, the management team behind Goose and the booking team behind Billy Strings. That context does not replace the band’s own narrative, but it does underline the point: Mission Statement is not merely a debut album, it is a launchpad.
SLAP DRAGON 2026 TOUR DATES
6/21 – San Luis Obispo, CA – Live Oak Music Festival
7/10 – Bethlehem, PA – Levitt Pavilion SteelStacks
7/11 – Maplewood, NJ – Maplewoodstock Music & Art Festival
7/12 – New York, NY – The Bitter End
7/15 – White Plains, NY – Rock The Block
7/16 – Middlebury, VT – Middlebury Festival on the Green
7/17 – Meredith, NH – Surfside Burger Bar
7/19 – Nantucket, MA – Cisco Brewers
7/22 – Worcester, MA – Jean McDonough Arts Center (JMAC)
7/23 – Marshfield, MA – Levitate Backyard & Rexicana Surf Cantina
7/24 – Hiram, ME – Ossipee Valley Music Festival
8/16 – Nashville, TN – 3rd & Lindsley
9/25-9/27 – Salida, CO – Smalltown Gathering
10/9 – Pelham, TN – The Caverns ^
10/10 – Elkin, NC – Milltown Get Down
^ Playing the CaveFest Kick-off Party
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By: Bass Magazine