Butcher Brown bio

Butcher Brown is an up-to-the minute throwback to the great progressive jazz bands of the 60s and 70s. Whilst all members were born after the mid-70s golden age of fusion, their modern, hip-hop-inflected funk has rich echoes of Weather Report, Return to Forever, early Earth Wind and Fire and, perhaps, a pungent whiff of Zappa. Like those bands, Butcher Brown’s unified sound comes from the intertwined talents of the five members, each bringing something unique to the mix.

Whilst each individual member maintains their own illustrious side-projects (working with artists such as Christian Scott, Nigel Hall, Mumu Fresh, Black Thought, Phonte, Rapsody, 9th Wonder), Butcher Brown is a hard-working band in an era where most groups are fleeting assemblages, together only long enough to record. The band cultivate a dedicated audience through combining a conventional, label-oriented approach with releasing “underground” tapes, disciplined rehearsal and engaging, adventurous performance. Recent high-profile performances include touring with Galactic last year & performing alongside bands such as Lettuce, Eric Krasno, Soullive, John Schofield, Tauk, & Motet whilst their future schedule looks packed as they prepare to support Kamasi Washington’s US dates this autumn.

Butcher Brown’s releases to date range from the polished soul/funk of “All Purpose Music” (Ropeadope) (2014) to the 20-track underground groove-laden beats cassette “GrownFolk” in 2015. Both were released to critical acclaim and explains their almost cult status in the music world. The band have come in leaps and bounds in recent times: last year’s “Live at the Vagabond” (Gearbox) record showcases the raw energy of their live shows, whilst the band’s most recent Bandcamp release, Afrobeat-themed “Afrokuti: A Tribute to Fela”, provides further testament to the band’s tight synchronicity as well as the truly unbelievable musical capabilities of each band member.

Multi-instrumentalist Devonne Harris is arguably the visionary of this egalitarian band. His responsive keyboard work shapes the harmonic colors through which the music pulses and flows. Under the name DJ Harrison, he’s created a vast catalog of hip hop beat tapes. He recently released a solo album entitled “Hazy Moods” on Stones Throw Records, the Los Angeles label responsible for releases by Madlib, J Dilla, and many more. Jellowstone Records, his home studio, is a pivotal focus of the vital Richmond music scene, with a growing reputation drawing big name visitors including Nicholas Payton (who recorded his 2014 record “Numbers” there with Butcher Brown). Recently projects include playing keys and synths on Jack White’s latest album “Boarding House Reach,” having selections featured on Phonte’s solo album “No News is Good News,” and taking part in DJ Jazzy Jeff’s 2^nd and 3^rd annual Playlist Retreat

Bassist Andrew Randazzo is arguably the band’s navigator. “He’s the cool one, the calm one. He’s the mortar, binding together the rhythmic and harmonic side of the music. Both onstage and off, he holds everything together and makes everything go smoothly. And he is an amazing player.” In the band’s funk-inflected music, the foundation is foreground; the bass as much a lead as a rhythm instrument.

Drummer Corey Fonville is pure explosive energy. “He’s always ready for battle,” Harris says. “A huge, controlling factor in our sound.”  A percussion prodigy turned international jazz sideman, Fonville’s national performance career when he was just 14, with a 2005 appearance on Late Night with David Letterman. In the years since, Fonville’s taken his propulsive energy around the world, playing with Christian Scott at New York’s The Blue Note and performing alongside Chris “Daddy” Dave in China. He’s the beating heart of Butcher Brown, pumping out fresh, danceable rhythmic complexities aimed at both the brain and the hips.

Guitarist Morgan Burrs is the youngest of the group. Coming from a family of musicians, and being surrounded by all types of music since birth, you could say he was destined to lead a life as a musician. In high school, he was awarded 2 full tuition scholarships to study at Berklee College of Music’s 5 Week Summer program 2 years in a row, & having attended VCU, he’s become a force on the Richmond Music scene. He’s recently performed at Budweiser’s Made In America Festival with hip-hop producer legend 9^th Wonder and rapper Rapsody

Marcus Tenney is a multi-instrumentalist from Richmond, Virginia. Working freelance since 2005, Marcus has been playing trumpet and saxophone with bands such as Foxygen and No BS! Brass. He has also done studio/session  work for Spacebomb Records and records and performs original music with a host of his own ensembles. Marcus has worked with artists such as Braxton Cook, Count Bass D, Matthew E. White, Natalie Prass, Billy Williams and many others.

As a band dedicated to innovation and informed by a love of the past, Butcher Brown’s modernistic fusion is aptly described as “hip hop Mahavishnu.” Impressive as they are individually, together they are something increasingly rare: a real band, playing for their audience and for each other, on the verge of a brilliant future.

-->

Kevin Gordon 2018 bio

Kevin Gordon’s Louisiana is a strange place. In his songs, it’s a place where restless teens road trip to where the highway dead-ends at the Gulf of Mexico; a place where prisoners who are in for life compete in a rodeo in front of spectators; where a man can get lost in the humid afternoon and where religion may not signify hope; where the KKK greets a high school marching band and its African-American teacher along a parade route; where a post-ZZ Top show hang out outside a McDonald’s reveals a hidden gun; where a Pontiac GTO gets stolen, ends up in a lake, and punishment takes precedence over remuneration; where half-Comanche folksinger Brownie Ford can escape death and proffer advice on staying real and free; where Jimmy Reed is the true king of rock & roll; and where rivers, never far away, carry secrets behind levees.

The kicker? All of these songs are based on true stories. Kevin Gordon has been exploring Louisiana for twenty years now, on the eve of the release of his powerful new album Tilt & Shine, out July 27, 2018 on Crowville Media. “One of the things I like about it and am mystified by is that what passes for normal in Louisiana would not make the grade elsewhere,” Gordon says. He continues, “It’s only 4 ½ or 5 hours from Monroe,where I grew up,to New Orleans; the influence of south Louisiana, the Acadian culture, the diverse influences of New Orleans, all that stuff kind of floats around the state.” Gordon’s MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop allows him to capture it with a degree of precision. As the New York Times put it in its headline of a feature on Kevin, “A Musician Or A Poet? Yes to Both.” Lucinda Williams said, "He’s writing songs that are like short stories" and noted music journalist Peter Guralnick has said, "Think of John Lee Hooker tied to the hard, imagistic poetry of William Carlos Williams, and you get a little bit of the picture." With all these accolades, it’s no wonder that Gordon’s songs have been covered by the likes of Keith Richards, Levon Helm, Irma Thomas, The Hard Working Americans (featuring Todd Snider), Ronnie Hawkins, Sonny Burgess, and Southside Johnny.

Echoing Faulkner’s famous line that “the past is never dead; it’s not even past,” Kevin declares, “There’s something about that bouncing back and forth between present tense and past tense that provides a powerful energy to work from. There are so many stories in Monroe and it’s a place that nobody pays attention to. It’s still got a real provincial thing about it that is intriguing because you feel like not everything’s been figured out. For me, you can feel the arc of time passing: you can drive by the house you lived in when you were 12; you remember things that happened there. I’m captivated by the power of strong memories—those films that run continuously in your mind, if you let ‘em.”

Before you even hear Kevin Gordon’s vivid lyrics, you start feeling the sound of that ’56 Gibson ES-125 tuned down to low, open D, with the tremolo flowing like a river, and an unstoppable groove distilled from swamp blues and Sun Records. “It inevitably provides weird sounds and chords that I would not have figured out on my own,” Gordon says. “You’re just sitting there playing and listening until something accidental sounds interesting.” It’s also a sound that comes of the four-album partnership with producer Joe McMahan (Patrick Sweany, McCrary Sisters, Shelby Lynne & Allison Moorer) , who says, "It still blows my mind how after all these years he continues to bring songs to the table that are as good or better than anything he has written in the past. When the bar is raised to such a high level by songs like these, it mandates that all of us involved demand the highest level from ourselves. I’m very fortunate to be involved.”

Coming of age in fits and starts is a theme to which Gordon has returned several times and he finds a new story here in the unsettling, insistent groove of “Fire at the End of the World,” a tale of friends who ran off with their parents’ car and a stash of drugs to see the point where the highway ends and the backwaters of the Gulf of Mexico begin. “Saint on a Chain” ranks up there with some of the best songwriting around, according to Paste Magazine’s Geoffrey Himes, who witnessed a live version at Americana Fest. It also came out of one of Kevin’s visits to Monroe, talking with an old friend. “We were sitting in his truck one time. He was playing a Springsteen record for me and he was under the influence of something pharmaceutical,” he remembers. Gordon spent years perfecting the song, saying, “I started thinking about the St. Christopher’s medal he wore, and ended up reading the story of how Jesus appeared as a child to the saint, as Christopher was helping people cross a flooded river. The Ouachita River runs between Monroe and West Monroe, and like a lot of rivers, it isn’t exactly crystal clear.” The song’s finale could see the character about to run his car off the road in a fit of self-destruction or perhaps on the verge of redemption.

These same themes play out in a more humorous fashion on rocking album closer “Get It Together” aka “Shit Together.” Sardonically, Gordon says, “It’s easier to talk about yourself when you’re not using the first person point of view. This is a song about what seems to be a constant battle of adulthood—negotiating that gap between knowing what you need to do, and actually doing it.” “Get It Together” also reminds one that Kevin’s no folksinger, launching into a kicking rock and roll groove. Similarly, “Right On Time” rips out of the gate, poking fun at the notion that things happen when they’re supposed to but also accepting the strangeness of the rock & roll road and its little victories.

One of the most powerful songs on the album, “One Road Out (Angola Rodeo Blues)” kicks off with a wicked John Lee Hooker-esque guitar line. Kevin says, “Joe handed me [Delta bluesman] Son Thomas’ fake Strat and I plugged it into one of his little amps and it sounded like Satan coming up from the sewer.” The sound evokes the setting, the infamous Angola State Penitentiary (one-time home to Lead Belly, bluesman Robert Pete Williams, and setting of the recent documentary “Serving Life”), where prisoners engage in a rodeo and a craft fair for a public audience. He adds, “It’s hard to watch, heartbreaking, even though those guys look forward to it.” With Tilt & Shine, Kevin Gordon takes the bitter with the sweet. His eye for a great story and ear for a key turn of phrase makes his songwriting a masterclass in craft, and an unflinchingly honest look at life in Louisiana.

Kevin Gordon short bio

Kevin Gordon’s Louisiana is a strange place. It’s a place where restless teens road trip to where the highway dead-ends at the Gulf of Mexico; a place where prisoners who are in for life compete in a rodeo while the town watches; where a character can get lost in the humid afternoon and where religion may not signify hope; and where rivers, never far away, carry secrets behind levees. “One of the things I like about it and am mystified by is that what passes for normal in Louisiana would not make the grade elsewhere,” he says.

The kicker? All of these postcards are based on true stories. It’s a place that he’s been exploring for twenty years now, on the eve of the release of his astonishing new album ‘Tilt & Shine’ on Crowville Media. It is work that has earned him fans like noted author and Elvis Presley biographer Peter Guralnick; New West Records artist Buddy Miller; journalist, songwriter, and Country Music Hall of Fame staffer Peter Cooper; Todd Snider; head of the Americana Music Association Jed Hilly; and Lucinda Williams, with whom he dueted on the song “Down To The Well” (which was featured prominently on an Oxford American compilation).

Before you even hear his vivid lyrics, you start feeling the sound of that ’56 Gibson ES-125 tuned down to open D, often with the tremolo flowing like a river, and an unstoppable groove distilled from swamp blues and Sun Records. His MFA from the Iowa Poetry Writers’ Workshop allows him to capture it with a degree of precision. As the New York Times put it in its headline of a feature on Kevin, “A Musican Or A Poet? Yes to Both.”

Kevin sums it up, “There are so many stories in north Louisiana and it’s a place that nobody pays attention to. For me, you can feel the arc of time passing. I’m captivated by the power of strong memories—those films that run continuously in your mind, if you let ‘em.” With ‘Tilt & Shine,’ those movies translate into rock and roll poetry.

Kris Gruen - Coast & Refuge

KRIS GRUEN  - COAST & REFUGE

Open heartedness is featured prominently on Kris Gruen’s forthcoming album ‘Coast and Refuge” (out June 22, 2018). This is true in both the themes and the making of the album-- whether in writing about what it takes to keep a relationship or a friendship going-- or in the process of making art in a series of collaborations with new and old friends. It’s an album both about and created by partnerships where the sonic and thematic threads feel constant, equally at home in the old townships of Vermont where the new folk-artist lives, as it is in the new frontiers of Scandinavia, and the California coastline where much of it was written.

That open heartedness led Gruen to creating a cinematic record full of moments of grace and soaring dynamics, but filled with subtle shadings, turning points, and epiphanies. Sometimes it sounds like Gruen is telling a secret between friends, and sometimes he’s reaching epic, mountaintop anthems. The result draws comparisons to Matthew Perryman Jones, Pete Yorn, Elbow, Griffin House, Ryan Adams, and Peter Bjorn and John; in fact, the latter’s Peter Morén appears on the album as vocalist and co-writer of “Every Day and Night Now.”

Gruen and his collaborators pursued some deeply personal topics in these songs. He reflects, “It’s a very intimate process with someone you may not know well.” His first songwriting collaboration was with AM, a singer-songwriter who’s toured with Beck and Air, and Gruen learned that it helps to break down barriers. Gruen says, “AM made sure I was comfortable, got me some tea, and we talked about life. Then we had a connection to build off of. We went into the living room, set some instruments around the room, and he played some records that he was digging. You fall into a vibe. He had me writing on the periphery of my normal sound.” It all comes down to that connection with another human being, that “refuge.” The resulting song “You Say” is a quirky, jangly highlight of the record.

After a seven country European tour supporting Jesse Malin, another coast led him to write with Peter Morén, of Peter Bjorn & John. Gruen says, “We wrote together in an old movie theater turned into an on-again, off-again performance venue. Paint was peeling off the walls and there was an old piano in the corner. We talked about how that lust for life will always call you. He was incredibly generous.” The two paint a vivid image of an “old man wool suit torn from nights of dancing” as reflection turns to catharsis. The duet had special meaning for Gruen for another reason: he played PB&J’s song “Young Folks” for his eldest daughter every night when she was an infant.

Gruen continued to stretch his sound on the epic album openers “Body in Motion” and “What Brings You”. Weepies and Dan Wilson collaborator Brad Gordon co-wrote and produced four songs on the record, including these two. Gruen reflects “When you walk into Brad’s LA studio, it’s lined with old rugs, and hung over the rugs are every instrument under the sun, and he can play all of them. He really is an excellent musician, and what he creates has the soul of a band sound. There’s electricity in the room.”

On the two tracks, Brad plays upright bass, piano, glockenspiel, organ, trumpet, trombone, accordion, and other percussion. “Body in Motion” kicks off with an insistent beat and an expansive guitar sound, embracing the span of life’s experiences in a high-energy mode that will surely inspire crowd sing-alongs. The songs retain folk roots, but bring a contemporary urgency and a huge sound. “You can hear the physical exertion that it takes to make the music. There’s a hiss of real space. We would get through tightening up on song structure. When I would record my guitar part, he would record another instrument with me live, there by capturing a band-like sound.”

Gordon says, “Kris brought an infectious sense of discovery into each writing session. He knew he wanted to write about traveling and what it felt like to be inspired by the people and places he's seen.”

“Lions” is about the courage it takes to deal with change. “It’s about one’s relationship with them self, recognizing that it’s going to take a lot of positive energy to make a change in the world, and at first not looking for it from other people, but starting at home,” says Kris, and change also came with this song, and its insistent beat marks Kris’ most pop-directed sound on record to date, after exploring folk, rock, and indie rock on prior albums. “He took me out of my comfort zone,” remembers Gruen. Co-writer and producer Justin Gray shaped the sound. Gray has written and produced for artists ranging from Dirty Heads to James Bay and John Legend.

Gray said, "I loved working with Kris on our two songs ‘Tightrope’ and ‘Lions.’ His focus on getting the story of the song exactly right lyrically and melodically really helped us cut to the bone in making these records.”

Gray and Gruen teamed up with Gruen’s long time producer, Charles Newman, on “Tightrope”, whose rousing strings rise to find a couple reconciling. Gruen sings “Even if we never see eye to eye, I couldn’t love you more if I tried” about sharing a country life with his wife, where they balance organic farming and creating art. Gruen says, “It’s a struggle-- the work of keeping a marriage inspired, when both people are still committed to exploring their dream work. It’s a very taught line that’s created between us at times, trying to hold the family together when we are required to be in these places elsewhere”.

The subtext of living between the country and city appears on other songs as well, most notably “Big City”, which documents a range of diverse communities: familial, political, artistic, and among New Yorkers. It begins with guitar fingerpicking and moves into  programmed beats, sounding like a journey into the city. Of co-writer and producer Ramin Sakurai, Gruen says, “I was a fan-boy going into the session, because Sakurai was a member of a band I loved, Supreme Beings of Leisure.” Of the song, he says “It’s a conversation between me and my father [photographer Bob Gruen]. He is NYC to me.”

The elder Gruen is one of the most iconic rock photographers in the world. Kris recalls, “I was always drenched in punk rock energy as a kid hanging out with my dad. I saw the Ramones, Blondie, the New York Dolls as a kid, and hanging out with my dad meant staying awake for two and a half days straight”. It instilled a love of music in Kris early on.

His own life defines a simultaneous attraction and aversion to the music business. Moving to Vermont to embrace a slower lifestyle, he says, “There’s a truth about working with the earth that supersedes anything else, and a spirituality about being in a wilderness setting. The intelligence of an agrarian community is more intact in Vermont than almost any place I’ve ever been. People take the time to talk things through.” He puts the music he makes to the same test: is it “sustainable?”

Take for instance his collaboration on “Coming Down Around Me”, with filmmaker Melissa Miller Costanzo, Gruen returns to a timeless folk approach after being asked to compose a custom track for a key scene in the film. Costanzo says, "There was something about Kris Gruen’s voice that made me drop what I was holding. But seeing him perform actually changed me. His energy and vitality instantly took hold and I was lost in his rhythms. He was able to transform my words into something beautiful and I am forever grateful." The song appears in Costanzo’s  feature film “All These Small Moments” starring Molly Ringwald, Jemima Kirke, Brendan Meyer, Brian d'Arcy James and Harley Quinn Smith, premiering at Tribeca Film Festival this year.  

Producer Charles Newman (The Magnetic Fields, The Bones of J.R. Jones) takes the controls on “Coming Down Around Me”; as well as The Peter Morén duet “Everyday and Night Now”; and the album closer, “2008,” a beautifully nostalgic ballad co-written with Los Angeles based JimAndSam. Written in the band’s living room, the intimate song was recorded mostly live in Newman’s Brooklyn studio, as everyone converged on NYC amidst their tour schedules. He also produces the sunny, catchy “Young Hearts”; a duet co-written with fast-rising Finnish singer-songwriter Peppina and there again is that open heartedness that runs so deep through Gruen’s music.

Dharmasoul bio

Drums, guitar, and vocals are the backbone and energy behind the new album LIGHTNING KID, the debut record of New Jersey based power-duo Dharmasoul. With Jonah Tolchin on guitar, Kevin Clifford on drums, and the two singing both lead and backup vocals, this duo brings their songwriting and production chops to their new band Dharmasoul. Audiences who’ve heard the two in concert look around to see who else is playing up on stage due to the fullness of the sound and the sheer energy of these musicians as they pour every bit of creativity and originality into their compositions, improvisatory performance, and expert musicianship.   

       Although Dharmasoul is difficult to narrow down into one genre, they can best be described through their noted influences of contemporary artists such as Medeski Martin Wood & Scofield, Vulfpeck, D’Angelo, Soulive, Snarky Puppy,  and Lettuce as well as throwback influences including The Meters, Staple Singers, Otis Redding, The Allman Brothers Band, and Stevie Wonder.

      Jonah and Kevin have been on contrasting yet complementary musical journeys since childhood, but each time their paths converged, they discovered an inspirational energy that they now bring to the music of Dharmasoul.  Although they both grew up in Princeton, NJ, they met for the first time when they were fifteen at the 2008 National Guitar Workshop in Connecticut, a multi-instrumental camp.   Their cohort had only one drummer (Kevin) and many guitar players, but Jonah and Kevin found themselves playing together on the one night out in a real club—where suddenly the audience got really quiet and listened--and later that summer they got together to jam in Kevin’s basement.

      When Jonah arrived at the camp he was already a passionate blues guitar player.  At the age of 15 he met and jammed with blues legend Ronnie Earl in a music shop in Keene, New Hampshire, and had the first big thrill of his musical life when Earl invited him to sit in at Tupelo Music Hall (Londonderry, NH) a few months later. After graduating from high school Jonah hit the road and started a solo performance and recording career. The first year out of high school he had released one EP (Eldawise) and a full-length record (Criminal Man)  and was performing at the Newport Folk Festival (summer 2012). A year later he was signed to Yep Roc Records and the company released his next two records, Clover Lane (2014) and Thousand Mile Night (2016).  Since 2014 he has had success in the streaming world, racking up over 10 million plays on Spotify. He has also collaborated and worked in the studio with notable list of musicians including Steve Berlin (Los Lobos), John McCauley (Deer Tick), Mickey Raphael (Willie Nelson), Scarlett Rivera (Bob Dylan), Ben Knox Miller (The Low Anthem) Anderson East, Sam Amidon, Greg Leisz, James Gadson, Eric Heywood, and many more.

Jonah has shared stages throughout the United States and Europe with artists including Greg Allman, Tony Joe White, Dave & Phil Alvin, Chris Smither, Justin Townes Earle, Rickie Lee Jones, Tom Paxton, Burton Cummings, Chuck Prophet, Mandolin Orange, to name a few. He has produced albums for Julie Rhodes and Bill Scorzari.

      When Kevin met Jonah at National Guitar Workshop, he was already an accomplished musician.  At five he started studying piano with his mother, a classically trained pianist, and he began playing drums at ten. In high school he entered the jazz band and pit orchestra, joined a Youth Orchestra, and took marimba and concert percussion under the tutelage of Peter Saleh.

Kevin graduated from Loyola University in New Orleans, where he was inspired by Brian Blade and Stanton Moore, jazz and funk drummers who had attended Loyola. Experiencing music in New Orleans opened him to worlds of hip-hop, neo-soul, traditional/modern jazz, Brazilian, and Afro-Cuban styles. At Loyola, he was featured in masterclass sessions with trumpeter Sean Jones, saxophonist Miguel Zenon, drummer Henry Cole, and percussionist Pedrito Martinez. At 19 he performed at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival with the Loyola Jazz Band and later with Mikayla Braun. He became an in-demand multi-stylist drummer playing with gypsy jazz groups, electronic/hip-hop, indie-folk, and singer/songwriter acts.  In addition to songwriting and playing with Dharmasoul, Kevin currently teaches private percussion lessons to all ages in Princeton, NJ.

It was Jonah’s album Clover Lane that brought Jonah and Kevin back together again in 2014.   During Kevin’s senior year in college, he received a Facebook message from Jonah asking if Kevin could accompany him at the SXSW festival to support Jonah’s solo release Clover Lane. The synergy between them that they had experienced years before at that Hartford bar was reignited. By 2017 the two musicians had formed a true musical brotherhood and were touring throughout the country backing up other artists as well as playing Tolchin’s original solo work.

      July 1st, the duo Dharmasoul was formed and in August 2017 they recorded their debut album, LIGHTNING KID at Verdant Studios (Pete Weiss) in Athens, VT, with friends Brendan Moore (keys), Matt Murphy (bass), and Laurence Scudder (viola). The crew recorded the full record live, with minimal overdubs. Following the session at Verdant Studios, they added overdubs with Cindy Walker and Marie Lewey (who Jonah had worked with when he produced both “Bound to Meet the Devil” by Julie Rhodes, and “Through These Waves”, for Bill Scorzari). who recorded background vocals at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama; engineered by John Gifford III (who engineered Jonah’s “Thousand Mile Night”).  The album will be released in Spring 2018.  When it comes to what Dharmasoul means for them, Jonah and Kevin both reference not only their great respect for one another’s talents but also their friendship.

       This project feels like something that’s been waiting for ten years," comments Tolchin. "Yet it couldn’t have happened any sooner than it did.  LIGHTNING KID represents a culmination of our collective influences throughout our years as music appreciators and players, ranging from folk and world music to funk, jazz, blues, rock, hip-hop, R&B, and gospel.  Adds Clifford, "We don’t think about fitting into specific genres. That’s what makes our partnership so special.  We have an openness and a clarity that respects and honors freedom of musical expression."

Eric Andersen bio

"Eric Andersen is one of our finest singers and songwriters, in the most literal sense of that tradition… the most elegant of singers." David Fricke, (Rolling Stone Magazine)
'
“A singer and songwriter of the first rank.” (The New York Times)

“An American master.” Robert Palmer, Ghosts Upon the Road liner notes.

“Eric Andersen is a great ballad singer.” (Bob Dylan – live on stage at the Oslo Spektrum)

Eric Andersen first came to prominence as a performer in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s
and immediately became part of the Village folk and songwriter scene along with Phil Ochs, Tom
Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, Bob Dylan, and was at the epicenter of the American Greenwich Village
singer-songwriter explosion.

Aside from his own classics, he’s co-written songs with Bob Weir (The Grateful Dead), Townes
Van Zandt, Rick Danko, and Lou Reed.

His songs have been covered by many artists including Mary Chapin Carpenter, Judy Collins,
Fairport Convention, Rick Nelson, John Denver, Linda Ronstadt, The Grateful Dead, Peter, Paul
& Mary, The Blues Project, Gillian Welch, Linda Thompson, and Rick Danko. Bob Dylan’s
version of Eric’s song “Thirsty Boots” was released as a single on Record Store Day and also
appears on the Dylan CD Another Self Portrait .

Over the past 50 years, Eric has toured the world and released over 30 CDs of original music
including Blue Rain (Appleseed Recordings) his first live concert recording in Oslo with the band
Spoonful of Blues, released in 2007.

In the early 1990s Andersen recorded 2 trio-harmony albums with The Band’s Rick Danko and
Norwegian singer Jonas Fjeld. He’s featured in the Joni Mitchell American Masters documentary,
the Wildflower Festival DVD with Judy Collins, Tom Rush, and Arlo Guthrie, the rock film
Festival Express and the documentary Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation.
In 1990 Eric won the New York Music Award for his album Ghosts Upon the Road,
in 1992 the Spellemannprisen (Norwegian Grammy) for “ Danko/Fjeld/Andersen ” and in 2003
The Premio Tenco award with Patti Smith in San Remo, Italy, which is an award given to
outstanding songwriters. Previous Premio Tenco awards have gone to Randy Newman, Tom
Waits, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and Lou Reed.

The Eric Andersen and Friends Webcast was launched in June 2011 by Nevessa Productions
Woodstock with special guests Happy Traum, John Sebastian, Joe Flood and Inge Andersen.
Featured songs performed in the webcast were from his album The Cologne Concert (Meyer
Records) which was released on CD and Vinyl in April 2011. The live album features Eric’s wife
Inge Andersen on back-up harmonies and he is accompanied on violin by Michele Gazich.
Mingle With The Universe: The Worlds Of Lord Byron (Meyer Records) was released in May
2017 on CD and Vinyl formats. “Byron was a born songwriter whose ceaseless waves of rhymes presented an endless sea for the ships of song.” All songs on the album featured the romantic
poet’s stanzas with Eric’s music. Included are two original Andersen tracks: “The Curled
Darling” and “Albion” which describe for the listener a taste of Lord Byron’s controversial and
sometimes scandalous life, travels and writings.

In September, 2017 an expanded long-play version of the Birth of a Stranger: Shadow and Light of Albert Camus (Meyer Records) was released with two new tracks. The four-song EP was originallyreleased in 2014 on Vinyl and in 2015 on CD. Eric extrapolated new lyrics from Camus’ novels. Of the original EP version, he said in an interview, "From the rolling vineyards of Camus I tried to capture four bottles of good wine that tasted deep and true."

On March 30, 2018, Sony/Legacy Recordings issued THE ESSENTIAL ERIC ANDERSEN – a 42-track digital release and 33 track double CD release retrospective release covering fifty years of his recorded history from Today is the Highway to Blue River, and Ghosts Upon the Road and Beat Avenue and on to The Cologne Concert album and unreleased New York
recordings.

Work continues on The Songpoet – a new eight-year-in-the-making documentary about Eric
Andersen to be released in 2018. The Songpoet follows Eric’s remarkable 50-year journey in
America and Europe that continues today as he writes and records with a poetic passion. With
unprecedented access to Andersen’s life and his personal archives the film will be a study on the
culture of fame, the fragility of an artist’s career and the integrity of the artist as it reveals the
indestructible energy that drives the artist and writer Eric Andersen in short -- a glimmering
mirror and portrait of his times -- The Songpoet.

Eric Andersen’s poetical songs have entertained and captivated audiences worldwide. He plays
acoustic guitar, electric guitar, harmonica and piano/keyboards in concert and often performs with
his great bands in America, Japan, and Europe. He performs songs which span across all his
albums, including his early classics “Thirsty Boots” “Violets of Dawn” and “Close the Door
Lightly,” as well as exciting new material from his recent projects like Camus and Lord Byron.

Marie/Lepanto Tenkiller (Big Legal Mess, January 26, 2018)

In the sunken lands of Arkansas along I-55, there’s a road sign that directs you to a pair of tiny, hardscrabble towns in the Delta. It reads: Marie/Lepanto.

Situated roughly between Southeast Missouri and Western Arkansas -- the two points where singer-songwriters Will Johnson and Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster grew up -- that dual appellation seemed a perfect handle for their new collaboration. It’s especially fitting as their debut, Tenkiller, is an album permeated by a sense of place.   

“I’ve seen that sign forever, and always had those words, Marie/Lepanto, in the back of my mind,” says Kinkel-Schuster. “With it having the spatial/physical/psychological proximity to both of us, we figured there wouldn’t be a better time to bring it into play.”

For Johnson, the veteran singer-songwriter and longtime leader of Centro-matic, his union with Kinkel-Schuster, of Water Liars and Theodore, fits a pattern. In his work with South San Gabriel, Monsters of Folk, and Overseas, collaboration has long been the cornerstone of his creativity. Like his other endeavors, Marie/Lepanto was born out of a musical kinship and personal respect.

“I’ve been a huge fan of Will’s writing and singing playing, admired him from a far for a number of years,” says Kinkel-Schuster. That admiration grew closer and became mutual after Water Liars toured with Centro-matic during the band’s farewell run in 2014. “Water Liars kinda became a soundtrack for me during that time,” says Johnson.  

A couple years later Johnson and Kinkel-Schuster decided to do a joint living room tour of the U.S. They were on the road a week together sharing stories and swapping favorite records. Musically, the duo’s Venn diagram of influences included lost albums like Jim Sullivan’s 1969 curio U.F.O. to the revered catalog of Minneapolis alt-rock scrappers The Replacements.

It wasn’t long before the notion of a more serious collaboration was in the air. “I’d already secretly hatched this plan for us to make a record together,” admits Kinkel-Schuster with a laugh. “The trust and respect between us had reached a level where it was kind of a no-brainer,” notes Johnson.  

The flashpoint came when the pair stopped in Memphis to see producer Jeff Powell (Big Star, The Afghan Whigs) and tour the famed Sam Phillips Recording studio. Powell had previously worked with Centro-matic and mixed Kinkel-Schuster’s solo debut. After Powell casually suggested they all cut something at Phillips, “it became very obvious that this should be it,” says Johnson, “that we should meet in Memphis and make a record together.”

The Austin-based Johnson and the Arkansas-based Kinkel-Schuster did just that in the fall of 2016, traveling to the Bluff City to record with Powell, resulting in the 10-track Tenkiller. The intimate sessions found Johnson and Kinkel-Schuster sharing writing, playing and vocal duties, yielding an album that falls in the great tradition of indie rock team ups – from Nikki Sudden and Dave Kusworth to Vic Chesnutt and Lambchop, Peter Buck and Kevn Kinney to Kim Gordon and Lydia Lunch.     

Nearly every aspect of Tenkiller seemed to be affected by that notion of place, starting with the studio itself. Opened in September 1960, Sam Phillips Recording is like some strange, magnificent dream: a mélange of jet-age technology, pyramid facades and pastel-colored walls, all sprung from its creator’s fevered imagination.

“We were fascinated with the building, and when we walked into that room, it felt like we were projected back in 1960s,” says Kinkel-Schuster. “Not much has changed in there since then, and that was very appealing to us. Not to mention the idea of working with Powell again.”

The sessions began unencumbered by the weight expectation or agendas, but with a surfeit of material. “Usually, I’d try avoid coming into a situation like that armed with too much,” says Johnson, “but with the two of us, the songs we were bringing in, it felt like they fit in a good way. The puzzle made sense.”

Tenkiller evinces both the individual identity of its authors, as well as the alchemy of their union. The haunting harmonies of opener “Patient Man” ushers in an album of beautiful laments and finely-etched narratives. Offering a darker more austere vision of Americana, the record moves between the widescreen majesty of the waltzing “High Desert,” the discordant guitar crunch of “Inverness” and the meditative melancholy of “Rest Be Mine” with a seamless grace.

A kind of emotional geography figures heavily in the record for Johnson, who visited Memphis regularly as a child growing up in nearby Kennett, Missouri. “Memphis was the closest city of any importance,” he says. “Knowing I was coming back there, my old hometown started to creep into my psyche.” The album’s centerpiece, “Famished Raven,” is a semi-autobiographical tale about the scales falling from Johnson’s young eyes: “And as the night, it starts to chase you, always in silent ways you flee/Far from the cries all who need you, and who you need.”

“My mother and I were on our own for a long time, then she remarried and I had two new, older step brothers and it changed my life,” says Johnson. “Through them I learned about drugs and the challenges of adolescence, and even young adulthood. Some of the innocence of the time started to fade, and I tried to capture that with that song."  

For Kinkel-Schuster the album’s title track and closing number are also rooted in the real. “It comes from name of a lake in Oklahoma, not that far from where I grew up,” he says. Its lyrics were spurred by his reading of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown’s devastating account of the effects of westward advancement on native peoples: “Tenkiller, tenkiller…what else could they take?”

 “It’s about the way Native American culture was basically destroyed and appropriated by history and white people from the word go,” he says. “I was trying to imagine what it’s like to live with that as a reality.”

Marie/Lepanto will be out in support of Tenkiller, beginning in early 2018, with Johnson and Kinkel-Schuster touring in a two-man configuration. “We’ll start with just us and see who we pick up along the way,” jokes Johnson.

“The truth,” says Kinkel-Schuster, “is the sound we make is something unique, something that happens just between the two of us. That’s what feels special about it and these songs.”

Kris Delmhorst 'The Wild' bio

I burned my eyes on the moon last night
I was looking for a reason to shine
Reaching out past my second body
Reaching out past my mind
Into the darkness, into the darkness
Into the darkness of what we don’t know
Into the place behind the place we never go

* * * * * * *

THE WILD – the moving, emotionally charged new album from Kris Delmhorst – comes to terms with what Greg Brown memorably called “All this terror and grace.” The stakes rise as we go along. Our babies arrive and disappear into children, friends die or get weird, our parents distill. We lose the path – to our story, our partner, to the muse – and must reckon the way back.

And The Wild, where has it gone?

Kris Delmhorst locates it here, in twelve songs “Of life getting long / And the music of the way things are:” inside as much as outside, vital in both places, whether or not you intend to visit.

The blurred growl of a bottleneck slide is abruptly broken by four sharp floor-tom shots to announce ‘All the Way Around,’ the opening song in which Delmhorst traces the arc of life lost and found in a confiding alto that hovers above ominous washes of pedal steel and electric guitar tremolo, singing, “I burned my eyes on the moon last night / I was looking for a reason to shine.” The hushed, eerie title track locates the ever-beating animal heart just beneath the surface of our well-mannered, modern lives. “Do you remember what you do it for? / When you get done the prize is more / You’re the horse and the cart, the pimp and the whore / Can you even find your way anymore / To The Wild?” From the country-tinged R&B of ‘Color of the Sky’ to the Faces-inflected ‘Rules to Games,’ THE WILD gestures towards genre without ever inhabiting it, moving confidently beyond imitation or nostalgia to deliver a record that sets out its own terms, and fulfills them.

Like the moon rising, THE WILD reveals itself by degrees, slowly baring a remarkable depth of soul. Panoramic sonic landscapes frame elegantly turned, incisive phrases to paint scenes of wonder, discord, and joy. The album shows Delmhorst in the fullness of her powers, with restraint and maturity in equal measure, a songwriter of range and clarity who can imbue the day-to-day struggle of ordinary living with visceral immediacy. Twenty years into a career, thirteen into a marriage, nine years into motherhood, Delmhorst has gained access to new floors in the tower of song. Far up the winding stair from kids writing journal entries about trying out love, she takes aim at the bones of life, our connection to each other and to the world.

The result, while a deeply personal album, looks upon universal human situations with unflinching compassion. “Did you shake like a mountain?” Delmhorst asks, in ‘Temporary Existence,’ “Did you lie like a lamb? Did you cry like a fountain? Fail like a man? If you tell me your story, I’ll tell you my story too.”

Unwilling to choose between a life and a career, Kris Delmhorst has pursued both at once, a winding path that’s put her eclecticism and wanderlust at the forefront of each. Raised in Brooklyn, NY, Delmhorst studied classical cello and the 80’s FM dial before decamping to rural Maine to work as an organic farmer. Laid up with a broken ankle with no electricity in the dead of winter, she taught herself to play fiddle, and later guitar, eventually writing her own songs. The chance decision to play an open mic became the inflection point that would eventually take her across the country and overseas in the course of a critically-lauded, musically versatile career.

Hailed as “Bold and brilliant” by the Boston Globe and “Captivating” by Allmusic, Kris Delmhorst has released six full-length records on respected indie label Signature Sounds, albums that range from intimate and acoustic to rock quartet; from found-sound home recordings to classic poetry refigured and set to music, as well as a variety of EPs and side projects and a sky-larking album of acoustic covers of new-wave masters The Cars. A constant collaborator and consummate musician, Delmhorst has appeared on upward of 75 albums, contributing vocals, cello, fiddle, and bass to the work of artists as various as Anais Mitchell, Lori McKenna, Peter Wolf, Mary Gauthier, and Chris Smither. THE WILD finds her once again in good company, creating and inhabiting the stillness at the center of the storm, illuminating her own humanity, and ours.

Although married since 2004, Delmhorst and her husband, fellow songwriter Jeffrey Foucault (“Contemporary and timeless” - NY Times) have run their careers largely along separate lines, maintaining domestic privacy and raising a daughter while trading home and away. THE WILD represents their first foray into the studio together, with Foucault co-producing and contributing guitars and vocals. The rest of the players weave together multiple threads of the two artists’ careers: drummer Billy Conway (Morphine, Treat Her Right) played on and produced Delmhorst’s early records and has performed with Foucault for the past decade, while bassist Jeremy Moses Curtis (Booker T) began working live and in the studio with Foucault after having known Delmhorst from their early years in the Boston music scene. Pedal steel guitarist Alex McCollough has been the mastering engineer on records for both artists, in addition to playing with Foucault in the band Cold Satellite. The deep and comfortable familiarity of the players is apparent in the patience of the performances, and the companionable silence around which the best music is made. Nothing is pushed, everything revealed. 

They say that in show business you get one shot for being young and one for being good. Early chances flower up like fireworks and fade as quickly, and then the long work of craftsmanship begins, separating the dabblers from the disciples. The second shot may never come, but the best find that it doesn’t matter. They go about their work, in The Wild.

David Wax Museum bio

“Suz and I started this band as friends,” says David Wax, “but now we’re married and have a child and have our family on the road with us. The stakes are different.”

Those stakes are what lie at the heart of David Wax Museum’s fourth and boldest studio album to date, Guesthouse (to be released October 16 on Thirty Tigers). It’s the sound of a band reconciling the accountability of marriage and parenthood with the uncertainty and challenges of life on the road; of coming to terms with the limitations of the “folk” tag that launched their career and pushing past it into uncharted musical territory; of reimagining their entire approach in the studio to capture the magic and the bliss of their live show. In typical David Wax Museum fashion, the songs on Guesthouse are simplistic and sophisticated, elegant and plainspoken all at once. Rather than succumbing to the weight of the newfound responsibilities that landed on their doorstep, the band has leaned into the challenges to capture a brilliant portrait of the messy beauty of it all.

The roots of David Wax Museum stretch back nearly a decade, and all the way from New England to Mexico. As a student at Harvard, Wax began traveling south of the border to study and immerse himself in the country’s traditional music and culture. Back in Boston, he met fiddler/singer Suz Slezak, whose love of traditional American and Irish folk music fused with Wax’s Mexo-Americana into a singular, energetic blend that captivated audiences and critics alike. Their 2010 breakout performance at the Newport Folk Festival made them the most talked-about band of the weekend, with NPR hailing them as “pure, irresistible joy.” They released a trio of albums that earned escalating raves everywhere from SPIN and Entertainment Weekly (who described them as sounding “like Andrew Bird with a Mexican folk bent”) to the New York Times and The Guardian (which dubbed the music “global crossover at its best”). They earned an invitation to return to Newport, this time on the main stage, as well as dates supporting The Avett Brothers, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Buena Vista Social Club, and more.

It was on the road over these past few years as the band and audiences grew, though, that Wax could feel their exuberant live show evolving beyond its formative roots.

“I felt empowered to start the band because of my time in Mexico studying folk music,” Wax explains. “In Boston, the term ‘Americana’ or ‘folk’ was just this catchall to describe what everyone was doing. It was helpful to use that to talk about our music at first, but we’ve found that our hearts feel most shaken, and the band fires on all cylinders, when we’re putting on a rock show. What we’ve tried to retain about our folk origins is the warm sound of people playing acoustic instruments together in a room. But, by embracing more of an indie rock approach, we’ve colored this record with synthesizers, layers of percussion, and adventurous sonic processing. The mental shift of it helped us feel like we could do anything we wanted. There were no rules that we had to follow in terms of what was ‘authentic.'”

Part of the inspiration for the shift was the presence of guitarist and producer Josh Kaufman, who sat in with the band on tour and added new sounds and textures that the they’d never experimented with before. When it came time to record Guesthouse, the band knew he had to helm it in the studio.
“The songs entered this Technicolor, 3D world with Josh,” explains Wax. “Aside from his contributions to the arrangements, he really wanted us all to be in a room playing the music together live so that the groove would be central. We brought in two other drummers, and there was a real focus on having as much percussion happening at the same time as possible. We gravitate towards that naturally because of the Mexican influences, all of the syncopations and 6/8 dance rhythms and the energy that that gives us, but we really embraced it this time around.”

That emphasis on groove sucks you in from the opening seconds of the kickoff track, “Every Time Katie,” a whispered come-on that roils and pulses like an anxious heartbeat and features gorgeous call and response vocals from David and Suz. It’s followed by “Dark Night Of The Heart,” which pushes the sonic envelope further than any previous David Wax Museum track, blending chamber strings, psychedelic vocal filters, explosive drums, and swirling synthesizers.

Written partially in Mexico and partially in western Massachusetts, the lyrics on Guesthouse find Wax writing with more direct, personal honesty than ever before.

“I had felt really reluctant to talk about personal stuff in the past,” says Wax. “I was writing personally, but there were lots of things I was obfuscating or filtering through a character to protect myself from putting too much out there. But it got to a point where it was taking a lot more energy than it was worth to maintain that privacy. When we had our daughter, Calliope, it felt like this sudden release because talking and singing about our lives was becoming more and more integral to what we were doing as artists and who we were as people.”

The title track, which draws on several traditional Mexican songs for musical inspiration, is a tongue-in-cheek reflection on the life of a traveling musician hunting for a free place to crash, while “Lose Touch With The World” faces down the reality of living a life far removed from that of your friends and family, and “Young Man” is an earnest musing on growing older.

“It’s about being a parent and coming to terms with what your ambition is,” explains Wax. “What part of that is essential to who you are, and what part can you let go of? We have to check in with ourselves and ask what we’re doing and why we’re doing it more often now because we’re not just us putting ourselves through the mental and physical sacrifices of touring anymore,” he continues. “Now Calliope is going through it with us, and Suz’s dad and my cousin Jordan are going through it with us on the road. And because we’re constantly checking and making sure we’re doing this for the right reasons, that we feel honest in our hearts about it, I think that’s brought new life to what we’re doing and a new energy and a new level of commitment.”

It’s a sentiment brought beautifully to life on “Everything Changes,” as Wax and Slezak sing, “Everything changes / when two becomes three.” The song was written in response to all of the good-natured warnings about what having a child would mean for the couple, the freedom and sleep and sanity they might lose out on. Instead, they choose to focus on everything they’ve gained: a beautiful daughter, a stronger bond with their families and fans than ever before, and without a doubt, the most exciting album of their career. For David Wax Museum, the stakes may be higher, but that just means the rewards are even bigger.

Bette Smith bio

-->

Born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Bette Smith reconnected with her musical roots in Memphis and Mississippi – and fulfilled a promise to her late brother in the process. Recording her debut full-length album in Mississippi brought her to the roots of the gospel she sang in the church and the soul music she heard on the block on hot summer nights music growing up on the corner of Nostrand and Fulton. The powerful ‘Jetlagger’ comes out September 29 on Big Legal Mess, a Fat Possum subsidiary. “The south came to me and grabbed me and pulled me down there. The southern migration came up and got me. My neighbors in Bed-Stuy influenced me,” she says.

She recalls that Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn was a very different place when she was growing up. “It was rough back then!,” she exclaims. “There was lots of gang activity. One gang came after my brother and my dad came out with a lead pipe to protect him. It was really hairy. My older brother Junior protected me from all of that. He would intimidate all of the other guys.”

She owes even more to Junior. Several years ago, on his deathbed suffering from kidney failure, he made her promise not to give up on a career as a singer. Those last days of his, she sang while he tapped his foot on the hospital bed at Kings County Hospital. “I didn’t know how else to comfort him,” she recalls. He told her, “I want you to sing; don’t give up” and she’s kept that promise, playing gigs from One Penn Plaza in New York to the Boogie Woogie Festival in Brussels, Belgium, always wearing yellow on stage to honor him. “It’s all for Junior now,” she affirms.

Jimbo Mathus produced the album at Water Valley’s Dial Back Sound and sent roughs to Bruce Watson, who swiftly signed Smith on for a full-length. He’s become a secret weapon for Fat Possum and Big Legal Mess Records; in addition to being a solo artist and a founding member of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, Mathus has also produced Shinyribs, Luther Dickinson, The Seratones, and played on records by Valerie June, Buddy Guy, and Elvis Costello. “You exceeded all expectations,” Mathus told her.

The trip was also Smith’s first to the deep south. She recalls, “It took me out of my comfort zone. I got lost in a swamp one time and kind of freaked out! I’m a quintessential city girl.”

Smith beams when talking about the sessions. “It was really wonderful. Everything was recorded live. I felt like I was Tina Turner and Etta James. I do well when I’m performing. It was a real performance that had never been captured before.” Anyone who’s ever seen her live knows how absorbed she gets on stage and these sessions put her in that same place. She continues, “There’s New York aggressiveness and passion. I get to a fever pitch. I’m gone. I’m not even there anymore. Something else takes over.”

Mathus dug deep into the Mississippi and Memphis soul bags, unearthing “Flying Sweet Angel of Joy” by Famous L. Renfroe, a song with which Smith particularly connected. “I believe in guardian angels. Jimbo picked up on that. I feel that I was giving voice for Famous. because he never really got a chance.” Mathus also picked Isaac Hayes’ “Do Your Thing,” which simmers with Memphis heat.

The raucous soul-rock of “Man Child,” the spare funk of “Shackles & Chains,” and Blaxsploitation soundtrack feel of “Durty Hustlin’” were all written or co-written by

Mathus specifically for Smith. She gets rough, wrestling the title track to the ground; the song captures the late nights and lack of sleep inherent in a musician’s life. First-call Memphis horn players Marc Franklin (Robert Cray, Lucero and Kirk Smothers (Don Bryant, Melissa Etheridge, Cyndi Lauper, Buddy Guy) were summoned to complete the album’s sound.

‘Jetlagger’s’ closer, the Staple Singers’ “City In the Sky,” connected her back to Bed-Stuy. She remembers, “My father was a church choir director. I was singing since I was five years old. I take it to church. I just break out, start speaking in tongues.” She also heard gospel around the house every weekend. “My grandmother listened to nothing but gospel,” she recalls, citing Mahalia Jackson and Reverend James Cleveland. “Every Sunday morning, she would get up and put on these records while dressing and praising the Lord. The furniture was plastic-covered. After lunch, it was more gospel music,” she says. Bed-Stuy block parties would also have revivalist-style gospel acts. “I’m steeped in it!,” she adds. Though a Seventh Day Adventist as a child, Smith is now a member of the Church of God in Christ.

Several years ago while singing in Los Angeles, Bette’s voice drew the attention of another artist who came up in the church – Ray Charles, who invited her to collaborate with him shortly before his passing. “It was the first inkling that I had greatness in me,” she says.

Reviewers have noticed, too. On the strength of a 2016 EP, Bitch Magazine compared her to Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu, praising her “stunning voice [and] powerful but pliable tone” saying that her songs “cut deep” and calling her music “remarkable.” Bitch continues, “[Smith’s] individuality keeps her story in her own hands and gives her firm ground from which to leap into her career. And with that voice, she can aim high.”

Soul Tracks said simply, “Steaming… That voice though!”

No Depression said, “Show stopper… Finally, a woman with the blues power of both Big Mama Thornton and Bessie Smith, the smooth, classiness of jazz/blues singer Joe Williams, the dynamics of Koko Taylor and the energy of Janis Joplin all wrapped up tight in a relevant Billie Holiday look… No lame, whiney female vocals here. It’s all confidence and power. The sexy slur and slide of Bette’s voice, her roll of syllables, the phrasing and intonation all on target, all polished with gratifying verve. But the true sting is in Bette’s ability to know exactly how to interpret a song -- her songs, or anyone else’s.”

She already can’t wait for her next trip down south, when she’s going to meet soul legends Al Green and Don Bryant. She says, “It feels like the circle is coming around. The gospel roots remain the same. This is timeless music – soul, rhythm and blues – Mississippi is the birthplace. When you’re down there, you feel something.”

About Applewood Road

In September 2014, three songwriters met for the first time in a cafe in East Nashville. By the next morning they had put the finishing touches to their first song, ‘Applewood Road’, which they recorded live to tape at Nashville’s all analogue studio, Welcome to 1979.

The song’s nostalgic air, along with the clear, sparse arrangement of three vocals accompanied by double bass, drew immediate positive response, and they decided to expand the idea into a full album.
Six months later, they reconvened to write, rehearse and record songs for the self-titled album Applewood Road. The songs were again performed live around a single microphone at Welcome to 1979 and recorded to two-track tape with minimal accompaniment from some of Nashville’s finest session players, including Aaron Lee Tasjan, Josh Day,  Fats Kaplin, Jabe Beyer, and Telisha Williams.

The tapes were assembled at London’s most exclusive high-end mastering suite, Gearbox Records, mastered through their vintage analogue outboard, and lacquers cut in-house on their own Haeco lathe.

Applewood Road is Emily Barker, Amber Rubarth and Amy Speace.

About Amy Speace:

Amy Speace is a folk singer, timeless and classic, and a bit out of her own era. “She has one of the richest and loveliest voices in the genre and her songs are luxuriously smart,” writes Craig Havighurst (host of Nashville’s “Music City Roots). “She’s profoundly personal yet also a bit mythic.”  Since her discovery in 2006 by folk-pop icon Judy Collins, Speace has been heralded as one of the leading voices of the new generation of American folk singers. Her latest release, “That Kind Of Girl”, received rave reviews by Billboard Magazine, The New York Times and NPR.  Recorded live in 3 days with her longtime collaborator/producer Neilson Hubbard,  with a small combo featuring Will Kimbrough (Emmylou Harris) and Carl Broemel (My Morning Jacket), Girl is spare, direct and brutally honest and is her most personal collection of songs yet.

Born in Baltimore, Amy Speace studied classical acting in New York City after graduating from Amherst College and then spent a few years with The National Shakespeare Company and other Off-Off Broadway classical rep companies, doing guerrilla Shakespeare in Lower East Side parking lots, working backstage on Broadway, writing poetry in cafes and feeling increasingly like success as a theater artist was just out of reach. In that season of doubt, she bought a cheap guitar at a pawn shop in the East Village and began putting her poetry to music and in short time was appearing at local folk clubs The Sidewalk Cafe, The Bitter End and The Living Room. Judy Collins’ manager caught a set of Amy’s at the 2005 SXSW conference and brought her demo back to Collins, who had just started her own imprint, Wildflower Records and immediately signed Amy.  Her Wildflower Records debut “Songs For Bright Street,” was released to rave reviews in 2006 and featured E-Street band fiddler Soozie Tyrell and a duet with The Jayhawks Gary Louris.  That year she was nominated as Best New Artist by the International Folk Alliance.  In 2009 she released “The Killer In Me,” recorded in North Carolina with Mitch Easter (REM, the db’s), which had NPR comparing her to a young Lucinda Williams.  That record's bonus track, an acoustic version of her song "Weight of the World" was recorded later that year by Judy Collins herself, who named it “one of the best political folk songs I’ve ever heard.”  WFUV, NYC's premier AAA radio station, awarded "Weight of the World" the #4 Folk Song of the Decade.  Seeking new inspiration, in late 2009, Speace moved to Nashville, changing management and labels, and began collaborating with producer/songwriter Neilson Hubbard on a collection of songs that would become  the  cinematic “Land Like A Bird,” released in 2011 on Thirty Tigers.  In 2013, she received the best reviews of her career with the epic "How To Sleep In A Stormy Boat,” a string-laden song cycle inspired by Shakespeare, winning 4 stars from Mojo Magazine and a feature on NPR’s “All Things Considered”.  Rock critic Dave Marsh, long a fan, who contributed the album's liner notes, wrote "Amy Speace’s songs hang together like a short story collection, united by a common vantage point and common predicaments…it’s a gift to hear a heart so modest even when it’s wide open." 

An accidental side project was born in East Nashville in 2015, when Applewood Road was formed.  The trio of Speace, Amber Rubarth and Emily Barker  met in 2015 at a coffeeshop in East Nashville and, after writing one song together, were signed to a deal with the London-based Gearbox Records. Their eponymous debut was recorded in 4 days around one microphone at Nashville's analog studio Welcome To 1979 and was released in the UK in February 2016 to astonishing 4 and 5 star reviews. The Sunday London Times called the album “a flawless set that has to be the most haunting release of the past year” and The Telegraph wrote “There’s a Moorish magic to the harmonies of this country-folk trio that recalls the vintage appeal of the Everlys and the Andrews.”  Applewood Road appeared that summer at Glastonbury Festival, The Cambridge Folk Festival and on the Andrew Marr Show. 

About Amber Rubarth:

"Part of the new old-soul generation." - HUFFINGTON POST

"She has developed a unique gift of knocking down walls with songs so strong they sound like classics from another era." - ACOUSTIC GUITAR MAGAZINE

Amber Rubarth has a playful simplicity and insightfulness to her musings on life that has connected with people around the world.  She has performed in villages across South Africa and small clubs in Japan, at Carnegie Hall, and backed up by a full chamber orchestra, as well as hundreds of clubs and theaters throughout Europe and the US. "She has developed a unique gift of knocking down walls with songs so strong they sound like classics from another era." -Acoustic Guitar Magazine.  The word has spread organically around her independently released albums, attracting glowing features from The Huffington Post, NPR, and BBC Radio.  She has been hand-picked to open tours for songwriting legends Emmylou Harris, Kenny Loggins, Richie Havens, Marc Cohn, Loudon Wainwright III and Dr. Ralph Stanley and was awarded Grand Prize in NPR's Mountain Stage New Song Contest.  A live recording of Rubarth from Memphis' legendary Sun Studio is currently airing on PBS.Rubarth's forthcoming record, Wildflowers in the Graveyard, is a collection of songs centered around the theme of of life/death/rebirth in nature and relationships.  It opens with her raw vocals and a finger-picked guitar, "There are wildflowers springing up at the graveyard / An oak tree that's been standing here so long / And dandelions pretty in the sunshine / 'til the wind blows and they're gone." All songs are self-penned and recorded analogue straight to 2" tape with engineer and co-producer Matt Andrews (Gillian Welch, Dave Rawlings, Dawes) in her hometown of Nashville.  The record has a bold magnetic energy that draws you in to each nuance and detail, revealing layers with the elegance of a wildflower in a land consumed by fireworks.In addition to her solo music, Amber recently made her acting debut co-starring alongside folk troubadour Joe Purdy in the new feature film American Folk, which won Best of at the Cleveland International Film Festival and will release in the Autumn 2017.   She has also scored and composed for films including the highly acclaimed Sundance Film Festival winner Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (with Paul Brill) and the award-winning documentary Desert Runners.  She also is the founder of two collaboration projects, Brooklyn indie band The Paper Raincoat, an iTunes Indie Spotlight featured in commercials for Google and Aquafina, and the UK-based harmony folk trio Applewood Road, whose debut album was named The Telegraph's Best Albums of 2016.

Wildflowers in the Graveyard will be released worldwide Summer 2017.