Kaia Kater

One of the youngest performers in the Canadian old-time and folk communities, this 20 year-old plays the banjo, sings and has her own unique take on Appalachian and Canadian traditional music.  Kaia is an eclectic traditionalist, having quickly gained the attention as one of the most promising young performers in the North American folk world.

Working with Toronto producer/musician Chris Bartos (Jonathan Byrd, Barr Brothers, Sarah Harmer), Kaia released her debut EP in February 2012. Her distinctive approach to traditional banjo styles caught the attention of Wepecket Island Records, who included two of her tracks on their North American release of their Banjo Babes compilation.  This earned Kaia the #15 spot on the 2013 North American Folk DJ radio charts, including radio play as far away as Louisiana, California and Australia.

Originally from Québec, and now based in Toronto, Kaia spends extensive time in West Virginia, where she is pursuing studies in Appalachian music and culture. In June 2014, Kaia released her first full-length album entitled Sorrow Bound, produced by Chris Bartos. She performs regularly in Canada and in the USA.

"I have just seen the Ola Belle Reed of the 21st Century." -Art Menius, No Depression/The ArtsCentre, Carrboro, NC

"I was struck by her eagerness to learn, her poise, and her fabulous ear..."
-Rhiannon Giddens, member of Grammy award-winning group The Carolina Chocolate Drops

"A wonderful musician, with abilities beyond her years..."
-Riley Baugus, old-time multi-instrumentalist and contributor to 'Cold Mountain' Soundtrack

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros' Announce Live In No Particular Order: 2009-2014, Due Out October 9th.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros will release their debut live album on October 9th via Community Music. The collection includes cuts taken from the band's shows, festivals, and studio sessions.

The band is putting final touches on their fourth LP due out in early 2016 on Community Music. It will be their first completely independent release.




Here's what Alex had to say about the release:

To our amazement, it’s been seven years since our first show. We’ve grown up in that time. Beauty and heartache and joy stretched over that time. Our wills were tested and maybe even bested in that time. But mostly what a triumph that time has been…

We smiled “so much my face hurts”, as you’ll hear. We stressed plenty too, frowned and pained, but mostly we were doubled over laughing or riding our bicycles – and danced – we did a lot of dancing. And we played.

We went from friends to family in that time. We became (and I hold this word as near-sacred) a Band in that time. And here is an album that spans that time.

20 songs from that 7 year frame, as tips of the hat to that time we shared with you – our of appreciators, our co-conspirators, our people.

Live,

- Alex

All proceeds from the album go to the band's not-for-profit 501(c)3 Big Sun Foundation, which is dedicated to facilitating more sustainable and communal living throughout the world.

Pre-order is now available on iTunes and their official online store. iTunes pre-order will include instant downloads of "Better Days" & "If I Were Free" (Daytrotter). For those who pre-order from their online store, the band will randomly select five fans to win a signed copy of their 3-LP gatefold vinyl.


Track Listing:

1. Better Days @ Brixton Academy | London, UK | February 11, 2014
2. 40 Day Dream @ NPR Music's Tiny Desk Concert | Washington, DC | October 2009
3. If I Were Free @ GOTR Daytrotter Session | Troy, OH | August 30, 2013
4. Janglin @ Floydfest | Floyd, VA | July 27, 2013
5. Up From Below @ Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico | March 20, 2011
6. Brother @ Gurtenfestival| Bern, Switzerland | July 12, 2012
7. Please @ Longwood Gardens | Kennet Square, PA | August 28, 2013
8. Mother @ The Box | New York, NY | July 25, 2013
9. Home @ Floydfest | Floyd, VA | July 27, 2013
10. Mayla @ Babcock Theater | Billings, MT | May 28, 2013
11. They Were Wrong @ ?? | Summer 2013
12. This Life @ ????? | Summer 2013
13. Black Water @ ?? | Spring/Summer 2013
14. I Don’t Wanna Pray @ Brixton Academy | London, UK | February 11, 2014
15. Truth @ Big Top | Los Angeles, CA | October 19, 2013
16. If I Were Free @ Floydfest | Floyd, VA | July 27, 2013
17. Fog On The Tyne @ Sirius XM Studios | New York, NY | August 08, 2012
18. Bad Bad Love @ WXPN’s World Cafe | Philadelphia, PA | June 01, 2011
19. Life Is Hard @ O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire | London, UK | February 12, 2014
20. All Wash Out @ KCRW’s Apogee Sessions | Los Angeles, CA | April 05, 2012
21. All Together

***
Tour Dates:

Sept 4-6: Gorge Amphitheatre w/ Dave Matthews band in George, WA
Sept 19: Toronto Urban Roots Fest in Toronto, Canada
Sept 25: Life Is Beautiful Festival in Las Vegas, NV
Sept 27: Oaktopia Music and Arts Festival in Denton, TX
Oct 17-18: American Roots Music & Arts Festival in Raleigh, NC

Little Arrow

Reared in the wilds of St. Davids in Pembrokeshire, Little Arrow bottle up the spirit of their natural surroundings and transpose it into an edgy, grunge folk cocktail. Built around the delicately varied songwriting of William Hughes, their two LPs Music, Mask and Poems (2011) and Wild Wishes (2013) echo the sound of campfires on late-night beaches, stormy waves crashing against rocky coasts and a sense of ethereal yearning.

Following the end of Cardiff indie cult heroes, Frederick Stanley Star, Hughes spent a year ceaselessly writing and recording songs in West Wales. These acoustic templates have since been broadened with the arrival of Dan Messore (guitar), Ben Sharpe (guitar), Callum Duggan (bass) and Richard Chitty (drums). The resultant sound is one borne of the folk tradition, but with both feet firmly camped in more experimentally anthemic territories.

The carefully concocted, poetic alchemy of Little Arrow’s first two releases for Bubblewrap Collective gathered a range of critical plaudits culminating in their second album, Wild Wishes, receiving a nomination for the 2013 Welsh Music Prize. This has since been followed by their third LP, Furious Finite, released in October 2014.

Soon after, in July 2015, Little Arrow released their 4th album, Old Ink as a ‘return to roots’ acoustic album. The album was released both digitally and physically in the form of Zine. Built upon themes of loss, time and memory, Old Ink‘s 11 tracks were gathered from songwriting contributions across the band. Likewise, the 28-page zine itself also includes artwork by band members alongside submissions from a range of artists, designers, writers and illustrators each providing interpretations of Little Arrow’s ever-expanding songbook.

Little Arrow release their 4th album, Old Ink, on the 12th July 2015 through Bubblewrap Collective as a limited edition print Zine with digital download. Following on from the expansive, grunge-folk of last year’s Furious Finite, Old Ink sees the band return to the roots of acoustic music, tracing long-buried pathways in ancient soil. The resultant, relatively minimalist sound is comprised of plucked guitar, ukelele, percussion, bass and cello, with the soaringly powerful vocal of William Hughes in the foreground.

Megan Henwood

"Some of the songs were months in the writing and refining," says Megan Henwood, "but it's an amazing feeling when they're finished. And it's a really exhilarating thing, sometimes, to stand on stage and sing these things, because you're so vulnerable in so many ways. That's why I do this, I think." 



It's been nearly four years since the award-winning singer-songwriter released her debut album, and while much in her life has changed, the only difference in how Megan approaches her work is that, if anything, she's even more determined to make music that defies the boundaries and boxes others have sometimes tried to place around this most singular and distinctive of new British voices. "This new record is a lot darker," she says, "and there've been times over the last year where I've thought what I was doing was terrifying. I think that comes across in some of the songs."

It's not just Henwood's honesty in conversation that strikes you. She's every bit as open in her songwriting, which finds her dealing, as often as not, with deeply personal - though universal - themes and drawing on sometimes painful experiences. As a writer and performer she belongs to a tradition, though perhaps not solely to the one many expected after she and her brother, Joe, won BBC Radio 2's Young Folk Award in 2009. Instead, the lineage that Henwood can claim is the same one that Bob Dylan tapped in to when he upset folk purists, first by writing his own songs, then by going electric; she is closer in spirit to idiosyncratic singer-songwriters such as her key influences - Elliott Smith, Bill Withers, Anaïs Mitchell - or to those writers who similarly dig down deep into music's roots to find new ways to innovate: Terry Callier, Tom Waits, PJ Harvey.



Megan, now 27, began writing songs at the age of nine. She learned from the greats and absorbed the most important lessons early on.



"I remember a compilation my mum would play in the car," she says. "It was called Every Song Tells a Story, and had Bobbie Gentry's Ode to Billie Joe, Kate Bush's Babooshka, Kenny Rogers' Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town. I listened to it incessantly. I think I always just loved words: I had a fascination for really well written songs, and I hate lazy songwriting. Singing comes naturally to me, though it's taken me a long time to find what my voice is. I can lend it to other things, but it seems most real when I'm singing what I'm feeling."

It was mum who entered Megan and Joe in the Folk Awards, mainly so that the pair would be able to attend the first stage of the competition, which was a weekend of workshops. Their victory came as a complete surprise.



"Suddenly, everything exploded," she recalls. "It was amazing. We were meeting all these people, and I think it was the first time that I felt really confident in my ability - I'd been recognised as a songwriter and my brother had been recognised as a really sensitive instrumentalist. So we had this crazy, amazing year, then recorded the first album."



Making Waves was an impressive opening statement, with songs like the single What Elliott Said - a homage to her songwriting hero - showing that Megan could captivate listeners with a beguiling sense of deeply personal mystery, while Free and Focused found her opening up on the difficulty of maintaining self-worth in a world that rewards relentless drive, where the line between confidence and arrogance is often blurred. But by opting to record with some big names from the folk world, the record may have given too limited a glimpse of her capabilities.



Head, Heart, Hand puts that right. It is an altogether more accomplished work, Megan's formidable and growing writing skills matched by a meticulous production that burnishes the songs until they glow. Whether she is carefully balancing contrasting images in These Walls ("Sick to my stomach, cold to my core"; "Throw me a lifeline, show me the dead"), sketching enigmatic characters in Garden, or telling complicated family sagas with powerful economy of detail (the closing Painkiller deals with the death of her uncle and the astonishing story of her father's adoption), Henwood is in absolute command of her art.



The record was produced by Megan, Joe and their friend, the drum & bass DJ Tom Excell, and recorded in a studio Joe and Megan built inside a renovated farm building in Oxfordshire, where the soundproofing was provided by 580 straw bales. Megan is keen to stress its collaborative nature, and pay homage to the extended family of musicians, artists, instrument-builders and photographers who she enlisted to help bring her ideas to fruition. It may not be "folk" music per se, but there is no doubting its sense of place, its rooting in an artistic and creative community, and its intrinsic and undeniable claim to authenticity.

The album is the culmination of a philosophy about art and life that Henwood has absorbed from birth. She borrowed the album title from her dad, a boat-builder, who had coined the phrase for a book he published in 2012. The idea is something Megan has carried through to her music, which maintains a perfect balance between intellect, emotion and effort.



"I'm not a boat-builder and my dad's not a songwriter, but there's that idea connecting everything," she explains. "It's about working really hard at what you do, and honing your craft and trying to be the best you can at it - not letting your heart completely cover over things, but not letting your head get in the way either." There seems little danger that she will ever let that happen.

Los Lobos

After celebrating their 40th anniversary with the cleverly titled 2013 live album Disconnected In New York City, the hard working, constantly touring band, Los Lobos – David Hidalgo, Louie Perez, Cesar Rosas, Conrad Lozano and Steve Berlin – leaps headfirst into their fifth decade with an invitation to join them as they open fresh and exciting new Gates of Gold, their first full length studio album since 2010's Tin Can Trust (a Grammy nominee for Best Americana Album).

We're a Mexican American band, and no word describes America like immigrant. Most of us are children of immigrants, so it's perhaps natural that the songs we create celebrate America in this way." So says Louie Perez, the "poet laureate" and primary wordsmith of Los Lobos, when describing the songs on the band's new album.

The dynamic songwriting, deeply poetic lyrics, thoughtful romantic and spiritual themes and eclectic blend of styles on the 11 track collection has resulted in an American saga in the rich literary tradition of legendary authors John Steinbeck and William Faulkner. Yet true to form, these typically humble musical wolves started in on the project without any grand vision or musical roadmap. Over 30 years after Los Lobos' major label breakthrough How Will The Wolf Survive? - their 1984 album that ranks #30 on Rolling Stones list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s.

Louie Perez, once called their powerhouse mix of rock, Tex-Mex, country, folk, R&B, blues and traditional Spanish and Mexican music "the soundtrack of the barrio." Three decades, two more Grammys, the global success of "La Bamba" and thousands of rollicking performances across the globe later, Los Lobos is surviving quite well -- and still jamming with the same raw intensity as they had when they began in that garage in 1973. They don't get in the studio as often as they did a few decades ago - Tin Can Trust came four years after their previous album of all originals, The Town And The City - but when they do, the results are every bit as culturally rich, musically rocking and lyrically provocative as they were back in the day.

Joe Ely

Panhandle Rambler is Joe Ely back home, returned to the always dusty, perpetually

windy, generally arid, frequently smoldering, and seemingly barren landscape around

Lubbock where he grew up and first began playing music. A place that has hosted

generations of dry land farmers and wildcatters. It’s where Joe found his calling as a

writer and performer. First located that unmistakable voice. Learned to carry himself

upright and open, to move with determination.

In the rock’n’roll era, the vast spaces of west Texas have been filled with great music.

Joe Ely stands in a tradition born out on these gritty plains. It includes Roy Orbison,

Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Tanya Tucker, Guy Clark, Delbert McClinton,

Don Walser, Terry Allen, Lloyd Maines, his daughter Natalie Maines, and Joe’s enduring

musical partners, Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore.



It is a land where you can see for miles and miles and miles. Only those who don’t know

it find it barren. For it’s full of stories if you know where to seek them. And it has

customs and amusements all its own. Even the forever dipping oil wells have their role.

“In high school, we used to get somebody to buy us a six pack and go out there to the

fields and ride the front part of those oil pumps all night long,” Joe remembers.



Now, Ely lives in Austin and spends much of his life on the road. But when

he’s accumulated enough song ideas, Lubbock is where Joe heads. “Somehow, just

driving for hours down those country roads is still the best place for me finish my

songs.”

Panhandle Rambler is one of the most personal albums Joe Ely’s ever made. It brings

forth this terrain, the spirited people it produces and that special sense of destiny, be it

terrible or glorious, that its very vastness creates. “Wounded Creek” starts the album

with what you might call a Western fantasy, except that the “bushes and the brambles,”

the traffic light, the stray dog and the cold wind are all completely brought to life.



“Sometimes, when I was a kid, you’d look outside and the only things you’d see would

be these huge radio towers, must have been fifty of a hundred feet tall, just swaying

in the wind,” Joe said. “Wonderin’ Where,” perhaps Panhandle Rambler’s most beautiful

melody, pays tribute to those trembling towers, the railroads which carried other things

equally unimaginable distances, the “cross between a river and a stream” where he

played, and the dreams and nightmares that flitted across that kid’s mind and heart,

and the loneliness of bearing such secrets. If it is possible to write a love song for a

place, this is one of the great ones, “trying to find a verse that’s never been sung

to hearts that need relief.”

“Here’s to the Weary” is the story of all the greatmusical refugees, from

Woody Guthrie, Bob Wills and Muddy Waters to the rockabillies—Buddy Holly,

Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, the shadows of the others—who soothed our

“weary and restless souls” with nighttime musical magic.



It’s also typical of all the songs on the album. The place doesn’t necessarily always win,

but, as in “Magdalene” and “Coyotes are Howlin’,” it’s the one thing that carries a sense

not so much of permanence as of inevitably. The two sides are fully summarized in the

almost giddy “Southern Eyes” and the fatalistic “Early in the Mornin’.”



Of course, every Lubbocker album needs its legendary tales. Here that territory is

covered by “Four Ol’ Brokes,” which combines a hobo yarn with the ballad of

a gambling scam, and “Burden of Your Load,” in which true love triumphs over evil, if

just barely, we hope.



Equally legendary, but true in every respect, is the closing song, “You Saved Me,” which

is a love song to Joe’s wife, Sharon. The lyric never mentions her name, but no one

who’s known Joe Ely longer than about a day could mistake her.

Legendary tales and legendary musicians. Panhandle Rambler, largely recorded in

Austin, features some of the most respected local musicians: drummer Davis McClarty,

guitarists Lloyd Maines and Robbie Gjersoe, Jeff Plankenhorm, and Gary Nicholson,

bassist Glen Fukunaga. There were also Nashville sessions, with Music City’s usual

superb playing, led by guitarist Gary Nicholson. Joe wrote all but two of the songs:

“Magdalene” by Guy Clark and Ray Stephenson, and “When the Nights are Cold” by his

original Flatlanders sidekick Butch Hancock.



This is a classic Joe Ely album. It has moved me, every time I’ve heard  it, with a

certain kind of awe. One reason is that, long before you hear “You Saved Me,” he put

everything he has into telling the world about a place in the world, and through

that, reaching his own emotional center. It’s beautiful and it’s inspiring.



— Dave Marsh

July 25, 2015

Gary Clark Jr.

Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter and virtuoso guitarist Gary Clark Jr. will release his second full-length studio album, entitled The Story of Sonny Boy Slim, on September 11th via Warner Bros. Records.

To sum up Gary Clark Jr.is more challenging every day. He’s a musical universe unto himself, expanding at a nearly immeasurable rate, ever more hard to define — as a mind-blowing guitarist, a dazzling songwriter and engagingly soulful singer.

With his debut album Blak And Blu he has just become the first artist ever recognized by the Recording Academy with Grammy Award nominations in both the rock and R&B categories for the same album in the same year, winning the latter: Best Traditional R&B Performance” - “Please Come Home”(from the album Blak And Blu). And the day after claiming those honors he provided one of the highlights of the highlights-filled “The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles,” with sparks flying as he dueled with Joe Walsh on an incendiary “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” Dave Grohl behind them pounding the drums.

But that barely scratches the surface. The album’s a rocket ride from the Mississippi Delta of a century ago to multiple points still out beyond the horizon. Rock and R&B sure, but blues, soul, pop, psychedelia, punk and hip-hop are also in Clark’s expansive musical embrace and insatiable hunger for inspiration, which he’s internalized into music all his own. And his two acoustic blues performances on the soundtrack album for the acclaimed movie 12 Years a Slave show the distinct talent and personality he brings to his music.

That, in turn, has been inspirational to others — including some who inspired him. Just ask Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Jay-Z, Jimmy Page, Alicia Keys, the Roots, Buddy guy, Dave Matthews, Roger Waters, Keith Urban, Sheryl Crow, Jeff Beck, among the many who hailed his arrival as a major talent and cherished chances to perform with him. It’s no accident that he was invited to make more “special guest” appearances on the Stones’ recent 50th anniversary tour than any other artist, including the concluding Hyde Park blowout in which he and band also were the opening act.

Or ask President Barak Obama himself, who seeing Clark command the stage of the PBS White House concert honoring the blues — with Jagger, Beck, B.B. King and Buddy Guy among the veterans performing — declared of the young man, “He’s the future.”

Rolling Stonedubbed Clark “The King of the Summer Festivals” as he captivated audiences from Coachella to Glastonbury, Lollapalooza to the New Orleans Jazz &  Heritage Festival, from Metallica’s Orion Festival to Jay-Z’s Made in America, and of course his hometown Austin City Limits Festival, where he his band set a daytime attendance record. He’s dominated late night and daytime TV with multiple appearances on Leno, Letterman, Kimmel, Conan, Fallon, Arsenio Hall, Queen Latifah, Today, CBS This Morning and so on. Guitar Player magazine made him the first emerging artist to grace its cover in more than 15 years. Rolling Stone proclaimed him no less than “The Chosen One.”

It’s a lot to live up to, but through it all his musical ambition and reach continue to grow. New songs he’s previewed to delighted audiences show him exploring ever further combinations of sounds and styles, all with his distinct stamp.

A man of few words, he’s quietly grateful that the music he makes his way has connected with so many. “To think a weird idea I noodled on at the house has gone to something 40,000 people might hear at a festival is an indescribable feeling,” he told Esquire recently. “As cool as I might try to be, I think, ‘Oh my God, this is real!’”

Joanna Newsom

Divers will become the first new album from Joanna Newsom in half a decade when it's released via Drag City on October 23rd. The musician followed 2010's Have One on Me with appearances in television shows like Portlandia and films like Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice.  

In 2002 and 2003, Newsom recorded two EPs, Walnut Whales and Yarn and Glue. These homemade recordings were intended to serve as a document of her early work; she recorded them on a Fisher-Price tape recorder. These EPs were not intended for public distribution. At the suggestion of Noah Georgeson, her then-boyfriend and recording engineer of the EP, she burned several copies to sell at her early shows. Jon Fellman, co-producer of Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival, claims that Neil Martinson was the first to have booked a show for her at his club, SMiLE!.


A friend of Newsom's passed one of these CDs on to Will Oldham at a show in Nevada City. Oldham was impressed with Newsom's music and asked her to tour with him. He also gave a copy of the CD to the owner of Drag City, his record label. Drag City signed Newsom and released her debut album The Milk-Eyed Mender in 2004. Shortly thereafter, Newsom toured with Devendra Banhart and Vetiver and made an early UK appearance at the Green Man Festival in Wales, returning to headline in 2004, 2007 and 2010.

Her second album Ys was released in November 2006. The album features orchestrations and arrangements by Van Dyke Parks, engineering from Steve Albini and mixing by Drag City label-mate Jim O'Rourke. On a road trip, Bill Callahan recommended she listen to the album Song Cycle by Parks, which led to his being chosen to arrange her work on Ys.


Joanna Newsom at the Sasquatch Music Festival, Washington in May 2005
Newsom is known to debut songs impromptu at her concerts. On March 28, 2009, she performed over two hours of new material at a "secret"[vague] concert in Big Sur, California with fellow Nevada City singer-songwriter Mariee Sioux under the pseudonym The Beatles's. Those in attendance reported that about one-third of her new material was played primarily on piano, with a backing arrangement of banjo, violin, guitar and drums.

Since late 2006, Newsom has performed a solo harp version of the traditional Scottish song "Ca the Yowes Tae the Knowes".

Several of the songs on The Milk-Eyed Mender have been covered by her peers. "Bridges and Balloons" was covered by The Decemberists on their 2005 EP Picaresqueties. "Sprout and the Bean" has been covered by The Moscow Coup Attempt and Sholi. "Peach, Plum, Pear" has been covered by Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett) on the 2006 EP Young Canadian Mothers, as well as by Straylight Run. M Ward has played "Sadie" at some of his live shows.

In 2009, she appeared in the music video for the song "Kids" by the group MGMT.

Newsom's work has become prominent on the independent music scene. Her profile has risen, in part, due to a number of live shows and appearances on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC.

The Milk-Eyed Mender and Ys, from 2007, sold 200,000 and 250,000 copies respectively.

On January 12, 2010, an entry cryptically entitled "@!?*(%$#!!" was posted on the Drag City website. It contained a link which led to a short comic strip titled "Joanna Newsom 'Have One on Me'" with a date of February 23, 2010. Later that day, it was confirmed by Spunk, Newsom's Australian label, that the title and date represented the title of Newsom's upcoming album and its release date. P-Vine Records in Japan announced that Have One on Me, which was recorded in Tokyo in 2009, would be released in Japan on March 3, 2010, as a three-disc CD set, with a total of approximately three hours of new recordings. Newsom was chosen by Matt Groening to perform at the edition of the All Tomorrow's Parties festival he curated in May 2010 in Minehead, England.

On February 11, 2010, Pitchfork Media reported that Newsom would be the subject of a tribute book titled Visions of Joanna Newsom which has now been published by Roan Press. She toured throughout Europe and America in 2010 to promote her latest record, supported by a five-piece band. In December 2010, a tribute album of Newsom covers was released as a digital download. Artists involved include M. Ward, Billy Bragg, Francesco Santocono, Guy Buttery and Owen Pallett, with all proceeds going to Oxfam America's Pakistan Flood Relief Efforts.

On July 19, 2011, Newsom's second single, What We Have Known, was released on 12" vinyl. The single was originally the b-side to her first single, Sprout and the Bean. In June 2011, she filmed her second music video (for the song "Good Intentions Paving Company") with directors Karni & Saul. Newsom was also chosen by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that he curated in March 2012 in Minehead, England.

In late 2011, Newsom contributed vocals to "The Muppet Show Theme" for The Muppets and appeared on the cover of the 10th anniversary issue of Under the Radar with Robin Pecknold.

Newsom began 2012 with television appearances on Austin City Limits (on January 21) and Portlandia (on February 7). On June 25, 2012, Newsom performed at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco with Philip Glass and Tim Fain as part of a benefit for the Henry Miller Memorial Library. She performed a new song at the concert tentatively titled "The Diver's Wife", a love story concerning pearl hunting. On October 14, she performed another new song tentatively called "Look and Despair" at the Treasure Island Festival.

Newsom appeared on a track titled "Kindness be Conceived" on Thao and the Get Down Stay Down's album We The Common, released in February 2013. In March 2013, Newsom contributed to the song "The Man Who Ran The Town" from the album Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear by British skinhead band Hard Skin. Also in March 2013, Newsom participated in a short film for Melissa Coker's Wren clothing line. In the film, Newsom wears Wren clothing and performs a cover of Sandy Denny's "The North Star Grassman and the Ravens".

She appeared in, and narrated, the 2014 film Inherent Vice.

Ruby Amanfu

Ruby Amanfu has been around the Nashville music scene since she could sing but getting noticed is never easy. Releasing some quality songs with Sam Brooker as Sam & Ruby and competing on The Sing-Off gave her a little exposure, however it was playing the foil to Jack White on the emotional “Love Interruption” that really broke open her career.

Now on Standing Still, Amanfu takes the spotlight and owns it, projecting various vocal styles through a wide range of covers. Immediately greatness is achieved as she reinterprets “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)” a track made famous by the irrepressible Irma Thomas. Amanfu’s version keeps the heartbreak of Thomas but raises the emotional stakes to breathtaking heights via a lush soulful beginning, huge climax and almost whispering vocals to close; a take-your-breath-away rendition of the classic.

Standing Still came about when engineer Mark Howard was sent a video of Ruby singing a show stopping version of Bob Dylan’s “Not Dark Yet” from a NYC Dylan Tribute. Howard, who worked with Daniel Lanois on the original, was enamored and signed her up right away. Having been in the Bowery Ballroom on that night I can personally attest that was the moment of a show filled with a few. Her recreation of the Dylan number on Standing Still is a knockout as well.

Those two covers alone are enough to recommend the album but the hits keep coming from a wide variety of areas. Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s “Where You Going” has an excellent mix of bass, drums and chimes while “As The Dawn Breaks” by Richard Hawley is simple and delicate allowing Amanfu’s voice to breathe excellence without restraint.

“Out At Sea” by The Heartless Bastards is one of the few covers that doesn’t mesh well here, while Amanfu has made a revisit to Kanye West’s “Street Lights” a must as she adds a warmth to the 808s & Heartbreak track Yeezus could never muster. The gospel placed into Wilco’s (via Woody Guthrie) “One By One” moves things along swimmingly before Amanfu’s only original “I Tried” ends the album. The haunting energy of Brandi Carlile’s “Shadow on the Wall” is an excellent showcase for Ruby’s talents and when she sings “I will make no sound at all” listeners everywhere should be grateful that she went against that feeling and created Standing Still, an album that should help make her a star.

Written by Shawn Donohue

Véronique Labbé - En Louisianne

via Last.fm http://ift.tt/1Ukh5hu

The Waifs

“It was all very exciting,” says Vikki. “We probably hadn’t sat together in a room like that for 15 years. We got out pens and paper and guitars. It felt like it should be an easy thing … but it wasn’t. We tried in earnest to jam and shape songs. We tried going through ‘what’s the worst Waifs song you’ve ever written?’ Even that became awkward because we couldn’t all agree which were the worst ones. It was all very intimate and personal. Then Donna one day got the shits and went off and wrote a song.”

We can be glad she did. That moment of frustration opened the floodgates to what has become The Waifs’ seventh studio albumBeautiful You, an exquisitely crafted collection of songs from the three songwriters that bears all the hallmarks of a Waifs classic.

“I thought, ‘I’m just going to walk outside and write something'”, Donna recalls of that false start. "It just kind of comes to me that way. It came and just kept rolling.”

In January 2015, aided by their regular rhythm section of drummer Dave Ross Macdonald and bassist Ben Franz, The Waifsentered 301 Studios in Byron Bay, NSW with producer Nick DiDia (Bruce Springsteen, Rage Against the Machine, Powderfinger) and emerged several weeks later with Beautiful You. The emotionally raw but musically buoyant Beautiful You demonstrates the easy chemistry that has bound The Waifs together for more than two decades, as well as celebrating the depth of songwriting talent they have at their disposal.

The 12 new tracks - four from Donna, three from Josh and five from Vikki - play to the strengths of one of Australia’s most enduring and lauded folk, pop and roots outfits. There’s a familiar mix here of celebration and reflection, combined with that easy musical energy and intuition spawned from so many years of touring, whether in the pubs of rural Australia in the early days or on the road internationally ever since then. Beautiful You boasts abundant choruses, intoxicating instrumental exchanges and joyful harmonies, the characteristics that make so memorable the band’s noughties hits London Still, Bridal Train and Sun Dirt Water.

The title track, Donna’s aching vocal drifting over a simple guitar motif, has a deeply personal undertow, a plea to a friend struggling with addiction: “You gotta change the road you’ve been taking,” sings Donna, “lay down your weapons and surrender. ”

Simpson’s shuffling, alt country ballad When a Man Gets Down, another personal account, this time of a relationship breakdown, is equally emotive. “I sat bawling my eyes out when I wrote that song,” she says. “It was something real that was happening in my life.”

Josh’s country stroll Dark Highway is a gentle prod at humanity inspired by the night his van broke down and no one stopped to help him. He wrote the song in the back of the van to kill time until assistance arrived (“obviously I eventually got out of there” he says).

Then there’s the overtly poppy Blindly Believing, complete with a killer hook that explores the fleeting nature of love. Vikki wrote the song with WA singer Bex Chilcott, better known as Ruby Boots, in a session in Utah that marked Vikki’s first attempt at co-writing and that produced several co-writes for Ruby Boots’ debut album, Solitude.

Donna’s Rowena and Wallace is a bluesy coming-of-age romp punctuated by Vikki’s harmonica stabs and Josh’s piercing electric guitar, while Josh’s Born to Love echoes the folk/blues swagger of his hit song Lighthouse from the band’s breakthrough, ARIA Award winning album Up All Night (2003).

Home has been in a variety of places for The Waifs during their career. Donna lives in Fremantle after spending eight years in Minneapolis, where the band recorded Temptation four years ago. Josh splits his time between California and the NSW south coast, where he’s building a house for his family. Vikki is based in Utah. It’s no accident that what inhabits Beautiful You most of all is that attachment to home, wherever that might be.

Twenty-three years after Donna and Vikki set off from Albany to play music across Australia to anyone who would listen, teaming up with Josh en route, the three have come to appreciate the places they left behind. It’s hardly surprising then that Vikki, who with her sister grew up at Cosy Corner Beach near Albany, WA, steeped in the simple, rural traditions of their salmon-fishing family, should reflect on and celebrate those things on the new album. This she does beautifully and longingly on the pulsing, heartfelt album opener, Black Dirt Track. “The longer I am away from Australia the more connected I feel to Australia and I keep writing songs about that,” Vikki says. “I grew up near the salmon camp where my grandfather fished, my father played there as a kid and when I go back there now I do the same things with my children. I physically feel connected to that place when I’m there. It’s almost a spiritual thing. It’s where I grew up. It’s where I learned to play guitar, where my husband proposed to me. I’ve had all these deeply personal moments and significant things happen in this one place.”

There’s a similar bent to 6000 Miles, on which Vikki contemplates the distance between her old home and her new one.

The closing February, a sparse acoustic ballad that develops quickly into a full-tilt rocker, has Vikki anticipating warmer, brighter days: “February hitches up her skirt and rolls her stockings down,” she sings.
There are plenty of brighter days ahead for The Waifs. As Josh notes, “the relationship deepens”. Beautiful You is a powerful statement of the individual songwriters’ skills, their beliefs, their passions and their dreams. Bound together by expert musicianship and the love and respect that have developed between them since the early 1990s, it’s also a moving, entertaining and ultimately joyful statement from a group of musicians dedicated to each other and to their craft.

“It’s still great to look across at each other and know where we are going to go with the music,” says Donna. “That has never changed. And we get along better now than we ever have.”

Dave Rawlings Machine

Nashville Obsolete coming September 18th

Acony Records proudly presents Nashville Obsolete, the highly anticipated second album from Dave Rawlings Machine.
Recorded on analog tape at Woodland Sound Studios in Nashville, TN, Nashville Obsolete features seven original compositions written by Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. Produced by Rawlings, Nashville Obsolete highlights the brilliant musicianship of Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch on lead vocals and guitar, Paul Kowert (Punch Brothers) on bass, Willie Watson on vocals and guitar and guest appearances from Brittany Haas (fiddle) and Jordan Tice (mandolin).

The beloved duo will add another accolade to their career accomplishments as they accept the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting from the Americana Music Association. The award will be presented at the association’s 2015 Honors & Awards ceremony held September 16th at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, which will be taped to air on PBS later in the year. Nashville Obsolete marks the 7th studio album on which Welch and Rawlings have collaborated together in their acclaimed two decade long creative partnership, including their most recent offering, the GRAMMY nominated Gillian Welch release The Harrow and the Harvest (2011), the 2009 Dave Rawlings Machine release A Friend of a Friend which MOJO hailed as “the best Americana debut of the year” in their 4-star review, and the 2001 Gillian Welch masterpiece Time (The Revelator).

Dave Rawlings Machine, whose rousing live show has prompted critics and fans alike to call them “one of the hottest string bands on the planet” (SF Weekly) will support Nashville Obsolete with a world tour to be announced soon. In the meantime, the duo will make a handful of special appearances as Gillian Welch, including the closing slot at the inaugural AmericanaFest concert at the new Ascend Amphitheater in downtown Nashville on Saturday, September 19.

Maddie & Tae

Maddie Marlow and Tae Dye never intended to strike a nerve when they sat down on St. Patrick’s Day and wrote “Girl In A Country Song.” Merely expressing their honest reaction to the reductive tilt of today’s “Bro Country,” the pair along with co-writer Aaron Scherz, shamelessly skewered its Xeroxed stereotypes. “Girl In A Country Song,” as much a lark as meaningful social commentary, proved they weren’t alone in their feelings of the current state of Country music.

After the song’s release last summer, the response from critics and fans was so instant and intense that there was no denying its power. NPR’s All Things Considered praised Maddie & Tae for “turning heads in different ways with their very first single” and Rolling Stone cited them as one of “10 New Artists You Need to Know.” David Letterman couldn’t get the plucky duo to New York fast enough for their late night debut. Even The Atlantic marveled, “Cheekily appropriating much of the sound of modern Country, the two young women directly quote well-known Bro-Country lyrics and titles…”

Maddie & Tae didn’t set out to be the revolutionaries of the Country main stream. They just wanted to write songs about life the way two 18-year old young women (now 20 and 19) were living it. Songs include themes about bullying (“Sierra”), clueless boys (“Shut Up & Fish”), the power of friendship (“After the Storm Blows Through”), heartbreak (“Smoke”) and coming of age (“The Down Side of Growing Up”).

“Honesty’s always the best policy,” says Tae. “We’re telling our stories and hope people can relate.”

“To open up strangers, that’s the power of a song,” Maddie continues. “Music lets people pour out their hearts and be vulnerable. When people meet us in the meet and greets, it’s like we’re already friends…We know each other through music! It’s hard to drop your guard, but somehow music makes it safe. If we give every person in the audience a voice, we let them know they’re not alone in these situations.”

Laughing, Tae admits of the process, “And honestly, we both had to learn to be vulnerable. It’s not natural to just put your feelings out there. But when you do, you find out you’re not the only one.”

Following the visceral response to “Girl In A Country Song,” their second single “Fly” is a heartfelt ballad that supports someone’s right to dream and doubt – and make mistakes along the way. In being honest, they galvanized fans in a very grounded way.

No one was more surprised than the natives of Sugar Land, Texas and Ada, Oklahoma to the response their real Girl Country evoked in even the most established music industry veterans. They signed with Dot Records Dann Huff had even finished the first single.

“We wanted to write the songs from a girl’s perspective” says Tae. “You know, (in ‘Girl In A Country Song’) how does she feel wearing those cut-off shorts, sitting on the tailgate?”

“Boys, we love you, we want to look good, but it’s not all we’re good for,” Maddie cautions with a laugh.  “We are girls with something to say. We were brought up to know how we should be treated.”

Simple as that. But there’s so much more than the song that’s a feminist declaration, an echo of Janet Jackson’s rebuke “I’ve got a name, and it ain’t ‘Baby’,” or this year’s feel-good finger-wag to dumb boys. NPR’s esteemed music critic Ann Powers agrees, “Maddie and Tae are more. They’re songwriters, powerful harmonizers, and in the video for ‘Girl In A Country Song,’ natural comediennes.”

One listen to START HERE demonstrates that. The reeling mean-girl send-up “Sierra,” with its bending steel and trotting acoustic guitar, boasts harmonies that turn in on each other and the kind of truth that’s hilarious and straight-up.

“There was this beauty-queen bully from high school who sent my friends and I home in tears every day,” Maddie explains. “To get over it, I had to write a song. So I brought the idea of ‘Sierra,’ and started singing, ‘I wish I had something nice to say…’ Tae and our co-writer Aaron Scherz lit up and ran with it.”

Any one who’s suffered through and survived high school can relate. But the ability to rhyme “Sierra, Sierra, life ain’t all tiaras…” and taking the rejoinder “you’re gonna find out karma’s a…” to the brink sets these teenagers apart. Effervescent and savoring every moment, Maddie & Tae laugh when they lean into the cautionary “That high horse you’re riding… can buck you off clean,” then let their harmonies swoop free and high on the outro.

Like a lot of young people, Maddie & Tae grew up on the Dixie Chicks’ full-tilt acoustica. Both dreamers who knew what they wanted early, the pair met at 15 through a vocal coach and came to Nashville for a publishing summer camp. They met Big Machine Label Group’s SVP of A&R Allison Jones – and fate stepped in.

As Tae recalls, “She said, ‘If you really want to pursue this, you will need to move to Nashville.’ I knew that was what I wanted. Moving to Nashville meant I had to figure out how to graduate from high school early, and Maddie had to turn down college.”

By 2013, it was done. The pair relocated and never looked back. Publishing deal in hand, they were immersed in creativity, seeking a voice that was both authentic and truly their unique. Like Taylor Swift, the 2015 Academy of Country Music Vocal Duo of the Year nominees knew by speaking their truth, their authenticity as real girls would set them apart.

As Marlow told Rolling Stone Country, “Our whole project revolves around keeping it real. We didn’t filter anything, because we felt like when it comes from an honest place, the truth will resonate so much better. The thing about Taylor, everything is real and relevant to what she’s going through, and that’s why people connect with her.”

Listening to the double harmonies over an acoustic guitar hope-strung-over-doubt mid-tempo “Fly,” Maddie & Tae’s conviction is evident. Will what’s been built be betrayed? How do you keep the faith when you’re so unsure? Where is the courage to maintain your place when you’re afraid of what can go wrong?

Not since “Wide Open Spaces” has an act embraced the will to grow so unabashedly. In perfect synchronization, Maddie & Tae sing, “Keep on climbing, though the ground might shake, keep on reaching through the limb might break/ we’ve come this far, don’t be scared now ‘Cause you can’t learn to fly on the way down…”

“’Fly’ hits home every time we listen to it,” Tae offers. “We really wanted to write a song that was, ‘You may not have anything figured out, but it doesn’t matter. Just try…’”

Townes Van Zandt wrote, “To live is to fly…” For Maddie & Tae, their wings are the music. What they feel, how they live, what they dream – this is where they rise. One listen to the tumbledown hoedown “Your Side of Town,” that’s all high jinx and higher spirits as they pair warn off a no-good man for the last time, to understand: these two mean business.

Even in the hardcore throw-down, all bucking backbeat and bee-sting guitar, there’s a romp and a plucky audacity that shows the duo have no interest in letting anything break their spirits. Just as importantly, they fear no fiddles, no banjos, no steel guitars, even as they have bulked up drums that crash and guitars that slash and sting like the big boys.

“We are Country,” says Maddie. “We love all music, but we’re girls from where Country comes from. It’s who we are; it’s how we live. And that’s the music we want to make. It makes us happy, but like what we write about, it’s also who we are.”

“It’s a little more raw,” Tae admits. “But you can leave it like that, it cuts through.  Those organic instruments, the acoustic guitar, the mandolin, the fiddle… When you hear them, you know. And people respond! For us, it’s about the live show, and how it hits.”

“And the stories…” Maddie adds. “The stories make Country cool.”

While Rolling Stone observed, “Sugar and spice and everything nice over hooks sharp enough to draw a little blood,” there is even more to Maddie & Tae. Independent thinkers, strong livers, hardcore dreamers – the pair are reaching for the sky – and winking at us all while they do it.

Whether it’s the sweeping “Waiting for a Plane,” the languid bittersweet “Down Side of Growing Up” or the shining “No Place Like You,” Maddie & Tae are always in the moment and embracing the possibilities. Tae confesses, “I still have the notes (for ‘No Place Like You’), because we come to all these beautiful places… We’re never there for very long, but the people who live in our hearts, they don’t get to see any of it or share it with you… Some days, you’d trade the one for the other, and I wrote it down.”

“Or ‘Downside of Growin’ Up’,” Maddie adds, “I was having a tough night, knowing no one in a new place. It hit me: being grown up is hard! I got my guitar to make me feel better, because that’s where I sort this stuff… When I went in to write, Tae really responded.”

Maddie & Tae are deeply invested in the music. A strong emphasis on harmony, they evoke the Everly Brothers’ tandem vocal style with a nuance and control to their singing unseen in today’s over-vocalizing Country.

“We like singing in two parts,” Maddie affirms. “Tae and I understand the harmonics so well and each others’ styles. People don’t realize how tricky it is, but when you pull it off, it’s the most fun kind of singing there is.”

Sometimes it’s the freshest faces and brightest sounds that pull us in. For Maddie & Tae, who embrace real Country, it’s that merge of what’s right now and what they love that sets them apart and captures our imaginations in the best possible way.

On August 28, after a journey more than 25% of their lives, Maddie & Tae – and everyone who loves their roots-positive sound – can START HERE.

Tia McGraff

Tia McGraff is an internationally renowned and award winning Americana/Country songstress from Port Dover, ON, Canada. With Scottish/Transylvanian roots running through her songwriting and voice, Tia’s talent has been described as “haunting and soul-gripping.”

6 international cd releases, 4 videos on CMT Canada, various film/tv placements, and numerous nominations and awards (including 2010 Hamilton Music Awards), have earned Tia a respect in the music industry and a global fan base that continues to stretch beyond demographics.

Tia’s latest cd release, Crazy Beautiful, was released in spring 2015, and immediately impressed Americana and Country radio programmers in the USA/Canada/ Europe, resulting in significant chart action.

Produced by Colorado native, Tommy Parham, Crazy Beautiful is being described as “Tia’s break- through album.”

Tommy moved to Nashville, TN in 1998, with a staff songwriter deal in hand, and soon became one of music row’s sought after hit melody makers. His catalog credits include cuts with major label artists, including Lee Greenwood (Rocks You Can’t Move), and film placements in movies starring Ashley Judd, etc.

After moving to Music City, USA in 1999, Tia was introduced to Tommy by his music publisher. They began songwriting together, broke their rule of “never date a co-writer,” and on June 4, 2006 the couple were married in Savannah, Georgia. In Tia and Tommy fashion, they celebrated their wedding by performing a concert for their fans!

Their love and passion for each other- their music -their fans, continue to grow, win hearts, and make them one of Americana Music’s favorite sweethearts.

Angela Easterling

With her new album, “Common Law Wife,” acclaimed Americana singer-songwriter Angela Easterling – once hailed by Byrds co-founder Roger McGuinn as “a bright shining star on the horizon” – clearly spells out the direction her life has taken in recent years. “Now I’m a common law wife, living out my life/I ain’t got no license, I’m a common law wife,”

Easterling sings on the classic country-styled title track, joyfully explaining the relationship she
now has with her longtime musical collaborator Brandon Turner.
Recorded with Joe Pisapia (Guster, k.d. lang, Drew Holcomb) at his Middletree Studios in
Nashville, “Common Law Wife” – in addition to sparkling multi-instrumental performances by
Turner – features some of Music City’s finest musicians, including Will Kimbrough, Fats
Kaplin, Dave Jacques and Paul Griffith.
In her typical straightforward fashion, Easterling further reveals how she and Turner arrived at
their “common law” arrangement with such lines as “You’d think I’d learned my lesson ‘bout
those birds and those bees/Well, imagine my surprise then, when the stork came to my door.”
Easterling lives with her partner and their toddler son on the Greer, S.C., farm that has been in
her family since 1791, specifically in the house that her World War II veteran grandfather built
on the property several decades ago.

Motherhood, Easterling says, “is definitely the biggest inspiration for songwriting I’ve ever had,”
a statement that’s evident throughout “Common Law Wife,” which collectively offers quite a
few lyrics that celebrate the arrival of her first child, and explore the complexities, struggles and
joys of her experience.
But don’t think for a moment that becoming a mother has softened Easterling’s musical
perspective. “Common Law Wife” is also loaded with songs that tackle plenty of non-gentle
subjects ranging from murder to civil rights.
Among the album’s highlights is “Isaac Woodard’s Eyes,” which Easterling was inspired to
write after learning about the real life story of an African-American World War II veteran who
was savagely beaten and blinded by police officers in South Carolina just hours after being
honorably discharged from the U.S. Army in 1946.
“Civil rights history is something that’s always touched my heart and hit home for me,”
Easterling says. “That story, which happened in my home state, is something that seems
unimaginable, yet I believe it’s still relevant in our modern life.”
And then there’s the leadoff track, “Hammer,” the writing of which was completed on the day
that folk music icon Pete Seeger died and was inspired by the work ethic of both him and
Easterling’s aforementioned grandfather, Harold Hammett.
“It’s really hard to sit around and binge-watch Netflix when you’re living in a house that Harold
Hammett built!” Easterling says. “Whenever I’m here, I feel like I need to get up and do
something, to get to work.”
“And I found Pete Seeger, who was someone I looked up to as a hero, to have a similar spirit to
my grandfather in that he was always out there working for the things he believed in.”
“Common Law Wife” also features Easterling singing a duet with Will Kimbrough, who
produced two of her previous albums. The song, “Aching Heart,” by the way, is her young son’s
favorite. Another sweet spot is “Table Rock”, a joyful celebration of life only getting better as
one gets older.

In “Throwing Strikes,” Easterling, a diehard Boston Red Sox fan, uses baseball imagery to help
paint a picture of the despair felt in communities where once-thriving mills have been
abandoned. The baseball concept, she says, was inspired by a lyric (“a vandal’s smile, a baseball
in his right hand”) in Jason Isbell’s song, “Relatively Easy.” She calls her own song, which has
an early Steve Earle/Bruce Springsteen vibe, a “David and Goliath story.”
“Goliath isn’t necessarily the mill but the powers-that-be that move these jobs overseas, and also
the workings of the universe that lead some people to be successful and some not to be
successful,” she says. “It’s that helpless feeling, like you’re up against a brick wall, and you’re
trying your best and not getting anywhere.”
Throughout her career, beginning with her 2007 debut album, “Earning Her Wings,” which was
chosen as “Americana Pick of the Year” by Smart Choice Music,” Easterling has embraced her
heritage in a big way as a writer and an artist.
Her second album, 2009’s “BlackTop Road,” debuted on the Americana Top 40 chart, where it
remained for seven weeks, and it was chosen as a top pick in both Oxford American and Country
Weekly. One of its songs, “The Picture,” was named the year’s “best political country song” by
the Boston Herald.


Easterling’s other albums include 2011’s “Beguiler,” which featured special guest Byron House
(Robert Plant’s Band of Joy), and 2012’s “Mon Secret,” which is notable for being sung entirely
in French with original songs by Easterling and her co-writer, Marianne Bessy.
Recognized as a top-notch songwriter in roots music circles, Easterling was selected for an
official Americana Convention Showcase and is also a three-time Kerrville New Folk Finalist
(2009, 2010, 2015), a Telluride Troubadour (2011) and a two-time Wildflower Performing
Songwriter Finalist (2012, 2015).
Easterling was invited to appear on the WSM-hosted stage at CMA Music Festival/Fan Fair,
where her entire set was broadcast live, and she has appeared on the nationally broadcast public
radio program, “Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know,” the popular ETV show, “Making It
Grow,” and has been interviewed by noted NPR journalist Bob Edwards.
Over the years, Easterling has opened for or appeared on stage with the Carolina Chocolate
Drops, Sarah Jarosz, Lucinda Williams, Charlie Louvin, Elizabeth Cook, Robbie Fulks, Mary
Gauthier, Ray Price, Suzy Bogguss, Ellis Paul, Radney Foster, the Oak Ridge Boys and Lori
McKenna.

Nikki Talley

As 200,000 miles click over, Nikki Talley just smiles.

Out From The Harbor is a collection of 10 songs recorded at Asheville’s Echo Mountain Studio. With only a few other additions to the record, including Michael Ashworth (Steep Canyon Rangers) on bass & tasteful percussion, the stage is set for Nikki’s soulful vocal and storied lyrics while Jason Sharp’s guitar soars alongside.

After 3 1/2 years of hard touring, 150-200 shows annually, Nikki continues traveling on, bringing her gorgeous voice & thoughtful songs all across the nation. Hailing from the mountains of western North Carolina, it’s only fitting that her songs are as eclectic as the state that boasts the mountains and the sea. Along with her guitar & clawhammer style banjo, her musical partner & husband Jason Sharp adds resonant lush guitar tones as well as harmonies to round out the duo’s sound.

Out From The Harbor is a collection of 10 songs recorded at Asheville’s Echo Mountain Studio. With only a few other additions to the record, including Michael Ashworth (Steep Canyon Rangers) on bass & tasteful percussion, the stage is set for Nikki’s soulful vocal and storied lyrics while Jason Sharp’s guitar soars alongside.

As expected Out From The Harbor often travels through the element of water be it the sea, rivers, rain or tears. Nikki’s silken voice is on full display. The album opens with “Rainy Day”, a song about how sometimes you need a rainy day and that ‘all the sunshine in California couldn’t make this go away’. “Let’s Go Out On The Water” recalls a day of fishing with friends, a pastime Nikki & Jason enjoy while making musical tracks throughout the U.S. Whether it’s from the hills of haunted Appalachia, the seashores of the Gulf or the dry dusty heat of the desert, each song takes the listener along on the journeys that sometimes mirror the everyday adventures of the musical couple especially on the track “Travelin On” with lyrics “Travelin on just like we were kids on a merry go round and round / We’re somewhere in the middle of chasing our tails and chasing our dreams down”.

You can find Nikki & Jason chasing their dreams down in their van, Blue Bell all across the country playing festivals, venues & house concerts.

One thing she isn’t: afraid of the microphone. Talley has undeniable stage presence…     –Mountain Express

Talley’s always silken, yet adaptable voice is on full display on this album, whispering sweet nothings to the listener on some songs, belting out her passion with full desperate power on others and crooning out her heartache honky-tonk style.    –Bold Life Magazine

Caddy Cooper

Caddy Cooper is a West Australian acoustic blues, country and folk singer/songwriter and a traveling soul at heart.

After training at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Music Theatre, Caddy played featured roles in musicals such as The Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof and A ChorusLine.

Caddy has performed in major theatres across the UK, Ireland and Australia and for the likes of Sir Richard Attenborough, Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall, the West Australian Agent General Kerry Sanderson and a number of BBC television personalities.

She was the lyricist and composer behind Australian pop sensation ‘ENVY’s singles Fever Fever Fever and Monster in Me and was awarded a prestigious Honourable Mention in the International Song of the Year Competition for her urban composition Tender Heart (Teenage Girl) in 2012.

In March 2012, Caddy published the first of a series of children's sign language songbooks called 'Sign & Song' (short-listed for the Rhinegold Publishing 'Best New Resource' Award 2013) which incorporates the use of Makaton signing in a bid to encourage language development and cohesion between children in the mainstream, those with English as a second language and children and young adults with special needs.

Caddy released ‘Acoustic EP’ in 2011 which quickly gained momentum and led to the international release of Caddy's debut album, 'Snapshot'. After touring nine countries in 2014 (including UK tour and festivals tour, a British military tour in Afghanistan, Australia, and across Europe - to name a few highlights) promoting the critically acclaimed 'Snapshot', Caddy released her next album 'Outside the Wire'  on March 6th, 2015

Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors - Medicine

The fifth long player from the Nashville-based singer/songwriter and his talented neighbors, Medicine picks right up where 2013's excellent Good Light left off, offering up warm and inviting twelve track set that skillfully blurs the lines between rock, country, folk, and pop. An introspective, romantic, and occasionally raucous collection that feels tailor made for long drives, early mornings and late nights, the aptly-titled Medicine aims to cure what ails you, or at the very least, dull the pain.