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.

Ponderosa Stomp artist bios (by Michael Hurtt unless noted)

Gary U.S. Bonds: Down The Mississippi, Down In New Orleans

What can you say about the beatific bombast that is Gary U.S. Bonds? The all time conquering barbarian of Beach Music, along with his sax-honking sergeant-at-arms Daddy G, stormed the Eastern shores beginning in 1961 with such dance hall war cries as “Quarter To Three,” “Twist, Twist Señora,” “Dear Lady Twist” and “School Is Out” — not to mention the shamanistic unreleased masterpiece “I Wanna Holler (But The Town’s Too Small.” And he’s bound to coup the room with Los Straitjackets laying down the sonic blast behind him.

From Houston, Texas, He Can Sing and He Can Dance, He’s Archie Bell

There’s Gonna Be A Showdown! Known for doing the “Tighten Up,” Houston’s Archie Bell will leave you slack-jawed with some of the sweetest soul sides ever to come out of Bayou City. Do whatever you gotta do to see this must-see show and remember Archie’s command that you can “dance just as good as you want.”

Mystical Harp Blues Master

The Blues: you dare not utter the word without mentioning the name Billy Boy Arnold within the confines of the same breath. Transcendent and mystical, Arnold is a snake charmer for the hips, a re-animater of the soul and a lyricist unparalleled, whose hypnotic harp drones and shamanistic rhythms will teleport you to the truth of this much-misunderstood musical art form. Like his former band mate Bo Diddley, Billy Boy helped draft the blueprints of the British Invasion with the stop-time “I Wish You Would,” which the Yardbirds promptly covered. But there’s no substitute for the original.

The Boogie Woogie Country Girl, Linda Gail Lewis

Linda Gail Lewis got her start singing magical duets with her old brother Jerry Lee, including the honky-tonk anthem “We Live In Two Different Worlds,” but her melancholic mayhem couldn’t be contained as a mere harmony singer, and she broke out on her own in 1969 with the Smash Records LP The Two Sides Of Linda Gail Lewis. From piano pounding rock ’n’ roll tempest to country soul chanteuse, Linda Gail Lewis is a stylist whose musical moods encompass all of the intertwining and bittersweet sounds of the South.

Willie Knows How

From the far-flung coastal towns along Bayou Lafourche to the musical boiling point of New Orleans, Willie West is an unsung hero of South Louisiana rhythm and blues if there ever was one. His earliest sides on the Rustone label, such as the smoking dance floor favorite “Willie Knows How” and the eternal swamp pop hit “It’s No Use To Try,” are just the beginning of a career that found him recording with Allen Toussaint, singing in Deacon John’s legendary Electric Soul Train and cutting the wistful funk classic “Fair Child” with the Meters, for whom he was also a vocalist.  

Warren Storm: King Of The Dance Halls

The Soul of the Gulf Coast and the Hardest Working Man In Swamp Pop,  Warren Storm is truly “Cajun Cool,” as he sung during one of his many career high points with Jo-El Sonnier. Along with fellow drummer Jockey Etienne, Warren was the back beat of J.D. Miller’s legendary integrated studio band in Crowley, playing drums on records by Slim Harpo, Lazy Lester, Rocket Morgan and his own 1958 hit “Prisoner’s Song.” His vocalizing continued throughout the sixties in the swamp rock ’n’ roll band the Shondells, formed with fellow South Louisiana star Rod Bernard, and he remains, to paraphrase another one of his hits, the “King Of The Dance Halls.”

Frankie Miller: True Blue Papa

“Well, I was born in a cave/ I was raised in a den/ My chief occupation’s taking women from the men/ I’m a true blue papa/ Gonna have a ball tonight…” When these lyrics came booming out of jukeboxes across Texas on the flip side of Frankie Miller’s hit “Black Land Farmer,” you knew you were hearing the penultimate in hillbilly music. Recording for the renowned Starday label, in “True Blue” Miller scored the imprint one of its biggest hits, and even more importantly, burned the honky-tonk ouvre into the minds of millions worldwide. The song wasn’t one of the best, it was the best.

Concentrated Texas TNT: Roy Head

The horns! The drums! The Screams! Stomping out of the Golden Triangle with one foot in Texas and one foot in Louisiana, the boss prophet of blue eyed soul hath but a single commandment: Treat Her Right! But beyond the explosive show stoppers, Roy’s quadruple threat musical DNA of country, soul, R&B and rock ’n’ roll was recently showcased through his son Sundance’s stunning performance on television phenomenon The Voice. Roy’s entire career is worth a deep dive, beginning with the Gulf Coast Grease of his early TNT sides, compiled masterfully by Norton Records on Live It Up!

That Driving Beat: Don Bryant and the Bo-Keys

Rising through the R&B ranks as the singer in Willie Mitchell’s band, Memphis’s multi-faceted Don Bryant has long been a favorite to soul insiders, and his coveted classics “Doing The Mustang” and “That Driving Beat” have filled dance floors and thrilled listeners for decades. A noted Hi Records songwriter, Bryant penned “Can’t Stand The Rain” for his wife Ann Peebles; John Lennon claimed it as his favorite record. Bryant’s brand new album with Memphis soul brothers and Stomp favorites the Bo-Keys is blowing minds coast-to-coast and worldwide.

Doug Kershaw: The Return Of The Original Louisiana Man

After a career that made him a fiddle-sawing country superstar, the swampland’s prodigal son returns to re-ignite the bayou fire which first took flame with Rusty and Doug’s Cajun rock ’n’ roll classics “Hey Mae,” “Love Me To Pieces,” “Hey, Sheriff” and “Louisiana Man.” It took a mind-melting meet-up with his illegitimate stepchildren Dave Stuckey and Deke Dickerson to convince Doug to revisit these trailblazing Hickory Records sides but there’s no stoppin’ ‘em now: stepping on the swamp gas, fiddle to the floor, like a streak of southern lightning and a bolt of bayou heat, these Cajuns will indeed rage!

Last of the Texas T-Bone Guitar Slingers: Roy Gaines

Direct from the T-Bone Walker school of Lone Star Guitar, Roy Gaines’ first exposure to show business came via his brother, Grady Gaines, noted sax player in Little Richard’s backing band the Upsetters. Roy started out doing sessions for Houston’s Duke/ Peacock Records before hitting the trail to Los Angeles where he became turban-wearing R&B star Chuck Willis’s band leader. Gaines cut his own wild rockers, “Skippy Is A Sissy” and “What Will Lucy Do” before backing artists as varied as Ray Charles and Billie Holiday and later even joining the Jazz Crusaders.

The Crying Man: Gee Gee Shinn

One half of the Boogie Kings’ powerhouse vocal duo the King Brothers (along with Jerry “Count Jackson” LaCroix), blue-eyed soul singer Gee Gee Shinn formed his first band, the Flat Tops, in Franklin, Louisiana in 1956. He joined the Boogie Kings in 1963, and — despite talented alumni such as Tommy McLain and Clint West — immediately became the true voice of this legendary and long-running Gulf Coast institution. The piece de resistance was the album Sam Montel Presents…the Boogie Kings, featuring Gee Gee at the helm of the band’s killer version of “Harlem Shuffle,” the heart breaking favorite “The Crying Man” and the bluesy “Devil Of A Girl,” penned by South Louisiana rocker Vince Anthony. The latter was coupled with the Kings’ Shinn-led treatment of Little Willie John’s “Fever” for a single, and became a huge influence on New Orleans garage band the Royal Pendletons three decades after it was first released. Aside from the Boogie Kings, Gee Gee did a stint with his own band the Rollercoasters on Huey Meaux’s Shane label that resulted in one single as well as a legendary album for Putt Putt Golf Courses in the early seventies on which he did all arrangements and played his first instrument, the trumpet. Nearly ageless, Shinn still possesses the sharp vocal verve and effortless intensity that he did when he was slaying the juiced-up teenage crowd (including a young Janis Joplin) at the Big Oaks Club in Vinton, Louisiana back in the early sixties.

Johnny Knight: The  Epitome of Hollywood Rock ’n’ Roll Cool From Outer Space

Like a blazing comet that scorches the earth every fifty years, Johnny Knight is as enigmatic as he is just plain rare. Appearing out of the shadows of time, he came, he went, and for a brief moment, he is here again. First appearing in 1959 with his blasting ode to the six string, “Rock ’n’ Roll Guitar,” he then vanished only to reappear as the mysterious frat rock phantom the Gamma Goochee Himself during the next decade. Simply not bound by the time/ space continuum of most mere mortals, it would be wise to catch Knight this time around or wait until 2057.  

Midnight Run: James Hand

A late bloomer with an early pedigree, James Hands’ roots were in the right place from the moment he stepped onstage at age twelve in 1964. His dyed-in-the wool brand of hard-edged Lone Star honky-tonk music — and poetic songs such as “Midnight Run” and “Don’t Depend On Me” — has built a devoted and cult-like fan base of artists and critics alike that includes fellow Texan Willie Nelson.

Darrell McCall: The Nashville Rebel

Darrell McCall arrived in Nashville from Ohio in 1958 along with his childhood pal Johnny Paycheck, then still known as Donny Young. Like Paycheck, McCall lent his flawless country vocal harmonies (and bass playing) to Lone Star State sons Ray Price and George Jones as well as Louisiana luminary Faron Young. After a brief foray into rock ’n’ roll with the Benny Joy-penned “Call The Zoo,” Darrell commenced a tour-de-force of honky-tonk brilliance that included standouts such as “This Old Heart,” “Excuse Me (I Think I Have A Heartache)” and “Fallen Angel,” singing the theme song for the countrified cinematic masterpiece Hud in 1963 and appearing in the low budget milestone, Nashville Rebel, alongside Waylon Jennings in 1965.

T.K. Hulin: The Bayou State Tearjerker

If most every great swamp pop song is about a man crying — and indeed they usually are —T.K. Hulin’s eternally epic South Louisiana smash I’m Not A Fool Anymore is a tear-shedding anthem. Backed by the mesmerizing simplicity of his band the Lonely Knights, Hulin delivers his lyrics in the key of heartbreak, just as he does on follow-up tearjerkers (As You Pass Me By) Graduation Night and That’s Why The End Must Begin. Hullin can also rock with the best of ‘em, as he proved with his first record “Little Bittie Boy” and his ‘80s coonass jukebox hit “Alligator Bayou.”

Barbara Lynn: Gulf Coast Guitar Queen The Soul of the Golden Triangle

Discovered by swamp pop king Joe Barry and recorded by his manager Huey “The Crazy Cajun” Meaux, only Barbara Lynn’s left hand can conjure up the mystical swamp mist that fills the room with sounds as sweet as southern starlight on a sultry southern night. With a wise-beyond-her-years songwriting style and Barry’s bayou-ruling band the Vikings behind her, Lynn laid down “You’ll Lose A Good Thing” at Cosimo Matassa’s French Quarter studio in New Orleans in 1962. She followed it with a musical avalanche of stirring sides that included the unforgettable groover “(Oh Baby!) We Got A Good Thing Goin,’” which was soon covered by the Rolling Stones and the intense minor-key dance floor killer “I’m A Good Woman.”

The Master of Reverberation, the Creature With The Atom Brain, the original Thirteenth Floor Elevator: Roky Erickson

From the moment fifteen-year old Austin, Texas rock ’n’ roll misfit Roky Erickson channelled Little Richard and James Brown though his telepathic teenage brain to come up with the primitive acid punk two-sider “You’re Gonna Miss Me” and “We Sell Soul” in 1965, something seismic shifted in the world of music. Released in tiny quantity with his band the Spades on Zero Records, this was truly a disc of epic proportions, from the wild careen of the harmonica, to the clanging reverb of the guitar chords, to the desperation of the vocals, to the transcendence of the screams. Forming the Thirteenth Floor Elevators with electric jug player Tommy Hall, the psychedelic shit-kickers soon arrived in Dallas to record their debut LP. Studio engineer (and former Louisiana Hayride sound man) Bob Sullivan was impressed: “Hell, I’d pay to see anyone play an electric jug!” Other instant devotees were Billy Gibbons and a flabbergasted Jerry Garcia. “Wow, you guys really do play on acid!” he exclaimed upon witnessing the Texas wild men in San Francisco. Their albums The Psychedelic Sounds of the Thirteenth Floor Elevators and Easter Everywhere are still blowing minds to this day, cutting across genres from punk to psychedelic to heavy metal. Having himself legally declared an alien, Roky hooked up with fellow Texas wild man Doug Sahm for the timeless 1975 single “Two Headed Dog”/ “Starry Eyes,” which pointed the way toward a singular output that included the unforgettable autobiographical cult classics “I Walked With The Zombie,” “Don’t Slander Me” and “If You Have Ghosts,” to name only a few! And the future lies unwritten…

Evie Sands: The Original Angel Of The Morning

“She’s got silver bells in her voice and you’d think she’s got electricity in her fingers the way she plays that guitar left-handed and upside down.” So said Johnny Cash of Brooklyn-born chanteuse Evie Sands, a singer whose oeuvre truly deserves reappraisal. Evie’s recording career started off on a promising note with producer/ songwriter Chip Taylor, and she was soon on the road with the Shangri-Las. A test pressing of her first single, “Take Me For A Little While,” was stolen, resulting in a cover version by Jackie Ross hitting the street before Evie’s original and garnering the lion’s share of airplay. Her next single, “I Can’t Let Go” was lost amongst the chaos and the Hollies’ cover version rose to the top of the charts. Finally, the Chip Taylor-penned “Angel Of The Morning,” had the misfortune of coming out just as Cameo-Parkway Records was going bankrupt and though the song was a radio hit, the records just weren’t available. Finally, in 1969, the stars aligned and Evie hit with Taylor’s “Any Way You Want Me.” A true unsung hero, Evie’s impressive discography goes well past the near-hits and near-misses, and contemporary Dusty Springfield has called Sands her favorite singer.

Winfield Parker: Mr. Clean

Originally a sax player in the Imperial Thrillers, Baltimore’s Winfield Parker was too good of a singer to sit at the back ground, but not before the group was handpicked by Otis Redding to go on the road with him. Moving to the front lines, Parker cut the rural R&B magnum opus “Rockin’ In The Barnyard,” following it up with a slew of singles on Ru-Jac and other labels, including the deep soul masterpiece “A Fallen Star” and the grinding dance floor salute to America’s favorite bald-headed back door cleaning man, “Mr. Clean.” Rising to the top of Parker’s formative recorded works is his biggest hit, a standout version of Edwin Starr’s “S.O.S. (Stop Her On Sight)” with Philly soul star Dee Dee Sharp singing background, but his deep and rewarding discography deserves full immersion.

The Mummies PIONEERS OF BUDGET ROCK are the founders of BUDGET ROCK! Their lo-fi stylings have resonated with thousands of fans worldwide, including the likes of Billy Childish and Jack White. For this year's Ponderosa Stomp they will be making their first ever appearance in the American South! The gauze covered wonders will be performing such "hits" as "(Your Ass) Is Next In Line", "(You Must Fight To Live) On The Planet Of The Apes" and "Stronger Than Dirt". They are brutal and savage and that is what their friends say about them!

-Todd Abramson

The Stompin' Riff Raffs JAPANESE MASKED INSANITY might be the wildest band we've ever seen! Come see A Man and Three Chicks wreak complete havoc! Their interpretations of Stomp approved wonders like Floyd Dakil, Ron Haydock and 2017 Stomp performer Johnny Knight are a sight to behold. Their originals are on par with the great rockers they cover. Hailing from Japan, The Stompin' Riff Raffs style and profile like no other!

-Todd Abramson

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.

Dear American performer bios

Regina Spector is Russian-born, American musician Regina Spektor is an internationally known, Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter. 

Susan Minot is the author of Monkeys, Lust & Other Stories, Folly, Evening, Rapture, a poetry collection Poems 4 A.M. and, most recently, Thirty Girls about children abducted by the LRA in Uganda and how women struggle to cope with trauma. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, O Henry Prize Stories, Granta. New York Times, McSweeney's and Vogue.  She wrote the screenplay for Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Stealing Beauty” and the film "Evening" was adapted from her novel.

Amanda Palmer is a performer, songwriter, and New York Times best selling author. She first came to prominence as the piano-playing songwriting half of the internationally acclaimed punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls.

John Forte is a Grammy-nominated recording artist, filmmaker and activist. First recognized for his work with multi-platinum hip hop group The Fugees, Forté's felony conviction and eventual Presidential commutation cemented Forté's commitment to reforming America's broken criminal justice system.” Forté has released several solo and collaborative projects to-date including, Music Supervisor Brooklyn D.A. (CBS/television), Created inaugural anthem for the Brooklyn Nets (NBA), The Russian Winter (feature film/documentary), Schools Not Prisons Tour.

A.M. Homes is the author of numerous books including, May We Be Forgiven, and The Mistress’s Daughter and teaches at Princeton University.

Anand Giridharadas is a former columnist and correspondent for The New York Times. Most recently, he is the author of The True America: Murder and Mercy in Texas, about a Muslim immigrant’s campaign to spare the life of the Death Row sentenced white supremacist who tried to kill him.  The book has been optioned to be directed Kathryn Bigelow.  In 2011, he published India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking, about returning to the India his parents left.

 

Maria Popova is a reader and a writer, and writes about what she reads on Brain Pickings (brainpickings.org), which is included in the Library of Congress archive of culturally valuable materials. She has also written for The New York Times, Wired UK, and The Atlantic, among others, and is an MIT Fellow. 

 

Julia Bullock is a versatile soprano. This season, she debuts with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Baltimore Symphony. She also appears as Anne Trulove in The Rake's Progress at The Festival International in Aix-en-Provence and Kitty Oppenheimer in the BBC Symphony’s production and recording of Dr. Atomic, conducted by John Adams.  She has appeared​ as a soloist with orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic,​ New World Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and San Francisco Symphony. 

Ekow Yankah is a law professor whose work focuses on questions of criminal and political theory and punishment.  He has written for publications spanning The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Huffington Post, among others and has been a regular commentator on criminal law issues on television and radio including MSNBC, BBC International.

Mark Warren was raised and educated in southeast Texas, where he worked in Democratic politics, until he realized how that whole situation was playing out and relocated to New York City, where he worked in magazines - first Harper's, then Esquire, where he would stay for 28 years, 19 of them as executive editor. In that time, he had the privilege to work with some of the greatest writers ever. And he wrote a little, too.

Matthieu Aikins is the Schell Fellow at the Nation Institute. He has been reporting from South Asia and the Middle East since 2008. His writing has appeared in US, Canadian, British, and French publications such as Harper's Magazine, Rolling Stone, the New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic among others.

LuxDeluxe bio

It all started when three cousins and two friends got together to play rock&roll in a poster-plastered basement in Northampton, Massachusetts, surrounded by stacks of NRBQ, JJ Cale, and Tom Petty records. Embedded in the Connecticut River valley that legends including DinosaUr Jr. and Pixies call home, LuxDeluxe builds on the valley’s history of musical innovation.  

Churning out high-octane shows that leave audiences sweaty, LuxDeluxe delivers a serious punch of supple Rolling Stones-y grooves, persuasive danceable hooks, and rock-solid old-fashioned craft.  Flaunting like Jagger, with all the sensuality of Bowie, lead singer Ned King creates a spectacle rarely seen since the heyday of rock&roll. 

As the band rapidly gains recognition for their live shows, they’ve been invited to share the stage with the likes of Deer Tick, White Denim, NRBQ, Reptar, Lake Street Dive, Rubblebucket, J Mascis, and Big Al Anderson.  The highlight of last year was warming up a crowd of over 10,000 for VT Senator Bernie Sanders.   

The band released its second album, “It’s a Girl,” last year, with the song “So Far Away” being chosen as Song of the Year on the tastemaker radio station, 93.9 The River as well as being reviewed and labeled a band to watch for by Pitchfork Magazine.  This has been an extremely prolific year.  The recently released one-shot visual EP “Midnight Snack” is only the start of the flood of new music to come from LuxDeluxe in 2017. 

With encyclopedic knowledge of vintage gear, from Gabe Bernini’s Clavinet to Jacob Rosazza’s “Beatle bass” to Caleb Rosazza and Jake Edwards’ collection of vintage guitars, amps, and drum kits, LuxDeluxe’s next release will be their third full-length album, “Let’s Do Lunch.” Comprised completely of songs tracked with vintage equipment on a Tascam Four Track Cassette Recorder and mixed at SpiritHouse Music Studios in Northampton, “Let’s Do Lunch” puts the listener amongst the band during late-night recording sessions, at the center of the synchronicity only family can create, and at the heart of their influences.

- KIMAYA DIGGS

Kevin Gordon short bio

"He’s amazing.” –Jim Lauderdale

 

"Dude's a juke-joint professor emeritus"--Rolling Stone

Kevin Gordon, Louisiana-born songwriter who’s earned raves from media, musicals peers, and fans in equal measure, released his latest, ‘Long Gone Time’  to critical praise from American Songwriter, Pop Matters, Offbeat, & others. Hitting #26 on the Americana Radio Chart, the album also attracted the attention of NPR’s World Cafe and Folk Alley; Gordon performed live as a featured guest on both programs.

Praised by NPR, The NY Times, & USA Today, Kevin Gordon’s songs have been covered by everyone from Keith Richards and Levon Helm to Irma Thomas and Todd Snider. In his illustrious two-and-a-half decade career, Gordon has shared stages with Snider, John Prine, Leon Russell, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, and the Blind Boys of Alabama among others, played the storied New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival multiple times, and earned the respect and admiration of his peers and a slew of musical icons."

Suitcase Junket bio

Long bio:

Matt Lorenz sits alone on a suitcase in the center of a complex construction of upcycled cookpots, saw blades and broken chairs. Artist, tinkerer, tunesmith, swamp yankee. A one-man salvage specialist singing into the hollow of a Dumpster guitar, slipping a broken bottleneck onto the slide finger, railing on a box of twisted forks and bones, rocking till every sound is ragged at its edges, till the house is singing back. Then, unplugging all the amps and letting one mountain ballad soar over the raw strings on that guitar. Every night is a hard-driving, blues-grinding, throat-singing search-and-rescue junket. Sooner or later everything rusts, busts, and gets tossed into the junk heap: iron, bones, leather, hot rods, muskrats, thenight, the heart. The goal is to recover it. To waste nothing. To create new ways from old. This is The Suitcase Junket.
 
Matt Lorenz was raised in Cavendish, Vermont, the son of teachers. He learned to sing by copying his sister Kate. (The siblings are two-thirds of the touring trio Rusty Belle.) Lorenz graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 2004, having taught himself to throat-sing thanks to a South Indian cooking class. On moving day, he pulled his guitar, filled with mold and worse for wear, from a dorm Dumpster. He fixed it up and started pulling songs out of it. That was the beginning.   
The Suitcase Junket is filling rooms and drawing festival crowds all over his native New England and beyond, from Signal Kitchen near the Canadian border to Wisconsin's Mile of Music Festival, from Ireland's pubs to Mountain Jam in the Catskills, from opening nights for Lake Street Dive and Charlie Musselwhite to Mountain Stage in West Virginia. He caught the attention of National Public Radio who chose his video session for "Earth Apple" from his 2015 album Make Time as one of the year's favorite sessions.

On the heels of the widely acclaimed 2015 LP Make Time, Matt Lorenz is releasing an E.P. entitled Dying Star, on Signature Sounds, whose roster includes Lake Street Dive, And the Kids, Eilen Jewell, Chris Smither, Winterpills, Parsonsfield, Barnstar! and alumni Crooked Still, Josh Ritter, Erin McKeown, and Lori McKenna. With Dying Star, The Suitcase Junket is poised to make the jump from one of New England's best kept roots star secrets, to a household name. As one critic aptly summed up, "The Suitcase Junket is a lo-fi, low-tuned, low-down blast of end-times folk blues. It's crude; it's magnificent.... one man band leader Matt Lorenz  incants and intones like a cross between Hound Dog Taylor and a Tuvan throat singer who has swallowed a bird. Take the singer-songwriter idiom, give it a low grade fever and a guitar and this is what you get. Captivating, mesmerizing, and gone ... real gone" (The Rochester Times).

Short bio:

The Suitcase Junket is deep-groove blues, low-fi hard-driving rock, killer sweet ballads rising over wreckage. It's big music, informed by what used to be played on back porches and mountains -- right at home in rock halls. Here's the thing: You've got to see it to believe it. All that mighty sound is coming from one guy -- Matt Lorenz -- sitting there, skinny and big hair, on an old leather satchel in the center of a pile of instruments he built of salvage: rigged-up pots, glass, bones, a box of forks, a beat-up toy keyboard, a pair of ancient amps, a dumpster guitar. The haunting, invented sound of throat singing. Key to the operation is get-gone  songwriting and a single, glorious, ragged, road-worn, powerhouse voice. The Suitcase Junket didn't set out to be a one-man band but it had to happen that way. Yankee thrift. Songs from a new, old place. 

Julia Anrather photo and bio

Above: 'Quentin' EP cover

Above Credit: Julia Anrather

​Julia is an actress, musician, and producer from NYC. She just played a Dandy Minion in Taylor Mac's 24 Decades of Popular Music at St Ann's Warehouse this fall, which will culminate in a 24-hour long performance. On screen she most recently played a vegan caterer in The Pioneers, a comedic web series which is an official selection of the Brooklyn Web Fest and has been featured on the homepage of Funny or Die. Other favorite roles include Liz in Stuart Ruston's short film The 9th Annual Brooklyn Pickle Bowl, Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream with director Christopher Hirsh & FoxWolf Productions, and an Angel in the Drama Desk Award winning show The Mysteries directed by Ed Iskandar at The Flea Theater. Julia writes and performs her own music and has a new EP coming out in 2017. She just finished filming her first music video and plans to release it this November. She is also the founder of the Near Thing Productions, a company based in Brooklyn and the Catskills.

Kingsley Flood bios

KINGSLEY FLOOD SHORTER BIO

Kingsley Flood is a Boston and Washington, DC - based sextet with a "Billy Bragg-like folk-punk sound" (Washington Post).  They have played the main stage at the Newport Folk Festival, have been featured on the History Channel, opened for Josh Ritter, Grace Potter, Lucius, Langhorne Slim and have been been covered by NPR, New York Times, Esquire Magazine, Wall Street Journal, American Songwriter, among others.  This year they have released two EPs and are releasing a third this fall. 

KINGSLEY FLOOD LONGER BIO

With “signature high energy” (Rolling Stone) and a live show that “could thrill Folsom Prison in ‘58 or CBGB in ‘76” (Boston Herald), Boston and Washington D.C.-based Kingsley Flood began 2015 with lofty goals: release three EPs.  The ambitious volume of output recognizes that the music business has changed and moved on from the era of the traditional album cycle. It also represents a shift in leader Naseem Khuri’s songwriting, channeling his personal journey as a Palestinian-American trying hard to do good and repeatedly coming up short.

Since their breakout set opening the Newport Folk Festival in 2013, Kingsley Flood has opened tour dates for Lucius and Josh Ritter; earned raves from AV Club, Paste, Rolling Stone, Billboard, NY Times; played a session for Esquire; and premiered a video with NPR Music.

To The Wolves continues songwriter Naseem Khuri’s obsession with stagnation in our lives, and exploring why things don’t change.  While January’s To The Fire EP chronicles his own experience as a wide-eyed son of immigrants wanting to change the world, To The Wolves suggests greater change is harder when we can’t even change ourselves.  

The title track looks at the big dreams and small circumstances of an outsider on the inside. "Blind" finds him back home plotting an escape, but this too is a dream that never manages to leave his bedroom. "All Night Dynamite" asks just how much choice we have in our choices, a theme carried over to "Salt of the Sea," where a child sees in his own path a mirror of his father's.

To The Wolves continues Kingsley Flood's ongoing collaboration with producer Paul Kolderie (Pixies, Radiohead, Morphine) and 1867 Recording Studio, the onetime Masonic temple in Chelsea, MA where To the Fire was created. The results showcase the band's signature and wide-ranging dynamics, from the scorched-earth guitar riff anchoring the title track to the contrasting plaintive violin and hard rock release of the deceptively upbeat “Blind,” the frenetic punk drive of “All Night Dynamite” and the pensive intimacy of “Salt of the Sea.”

To The Wolves follows January’s To The Fire, which earned praise from NPR’s World Café, the Wall Street Journal, Relix, PopMatters, the Boston Globe, and more. After a run of sold-out shows in early 2015, the History Channel featured their track “Waiting On The River to Rise” in an ad for a new series “Mississippi Men,” triggering close to 200,000 plays on Spotify and YouTube.

Kevin Gordon bio

 "Dude's a juke-joint professor emeritus"--Rolling Stone

In September 2015 Kevin Gordon releases Long Gone Time, the long-awaited follow-up to
2012’s critically acclaimed Gloryland. Produced by Joe V. McMahan, the new record further
explores an awkward post-Civil Rights Act American south, with narratives and meditations
based on Gordon’s own Louisiana upbringing. Recorded live, half of the tracks are recorded
with only acoustic instruments(featuring Lex Price and Bo Ramsey). The “electric” tracks,
again recorded live with minimal overdubs, feature Gordon with his stalwart band of 20 years:
McMahan, Ron Eoff, and Paul Griffith.

Over the course of twenty-five years of writing, recording and touring, Gordon has built an
impressively consistent catalog of songs, a critically-acclaimed stack of albums, and a
reputation for dynamic live performances. His 2012 release, Gloryland, received significant
critical praise and media attention: a front-page Arts section feature in The New York Times, an
appearance on NPR’s “Here and Now”, and great reviews in Rolling Stone, USA Today, and
others. Author Peter Guralnick said this about Gloryland:

"There's nothing else around today quite like Kevin Gordon’s music. I'm a huge Kevin Gordon
fan. Think of John Lee Hooker tied to the hard, imagistic poetry of William Carlos Williams, and
you get a little bit of an idea. . . you just have to listen. And listen again. For the pure emotional
pleasure of it. For the unmistakable, hard-driving passion of words and music, rocking together
in rhythm."

From The New York Times: "'Gloryland' [is] an often harrowing tour of the back-roads South
with scenes of burning churches, a serio-comic brawl after a ZZ Top concert in Shreveport, La.,
and — most memorably — the time the Klan showed up when his seventh-grade marching
band performed about 90 miles from there in Colfax."

Gordon's songs have been recorded by Keith Richards, Irma Thomas, Levon Helm, Hard
Working Americans, and others. His duet with Lucinda Williams, “Down to the Well”, was
featured on the Oxford American Southern Music Sampler.

Antibalas short bio

Antibalas is recognized as the preeminent contemporary afrobeat ensemble in North America. Since its founding in Brooklyn in 1998, the 12-14 member ensemble has performed over 1700 shows in 30 countries and is a fixture at the premiere jazz, world music, and rock festivals around the world. The group's scope, repertoire, and expertise of its large family of musicians is not limited solely to one genre: Antibalas has rooted itself at the center of contemporary New York music, serving as a connector and collaborator through the city's disparate music scenes from Afro-Cuban, avant classical, funk, rock, reggae, and pop music. In the past few years, the group has collaborated with artists including Jovanotti, Mark Ronson, My Morning Jacket, The Roots, Medeski, Martin and Wood, David Byrne and St. Vincent and recently served as the house band at Carnegie Hall performing the music of Paul Simon. In 2008, Antibalas formed the nucleus for the Broadway musical FELA directed by Bill T. Jones, and members of the Antibalas horns served as the show's musical directors. Antibalas's most recent self-titled album was recorded at the Daptone House of Soul in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and released in late 2012 on the Daptone label.

Kristin Andreassen short bio

‘Gondolier' finds songwriter Kristin Andreassen juxtaposing deep traditional roots with modern Brooklyn indie influences. Featuring guests (Aoife O'Donovan, Jefferson Hamer and Punch Brother Chris Eldridge to name a few) from the exploding New York folk scene, but written largely on a remote island in New Hampshire, the lyrically and instrumentally rich arrangements on Andreassen’s first studio album explore secret passageways connecting the outer edges of disparate notions – urban and rural, childhood and old age, expectation and reality. 2015 sees Andreassen performing on syndicated radio shows Woodsongs, Mountain Stage, and Music City Roots while earning raves from the UTNE Reader, Pop Matters, and CMT Edge. Before embarking on her solo journey, Andreassen toured the world with the stringband Uncle Earl, with her folk-noir trio Sometymes Why, and as a clogger with Maryland's Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble. Along the way, she's performed and recorded alongside such maverick talents as John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin), Dirk Powell (Joan Baez, Cold Mountain), Sufjan Stevens, Aoife O'Donovan, Black Prairie and New York anti-folk icon Jeffrey Lewis. Her debut CD Kiss Me Hello was a collection of kitchen recordings that made fast friends with those who stumbled upon it, including Garrison Keillor of NPR’s A Prairie Home Companion. The album kicks off with the John Lennon Song Contest Grand Prize-winning "Crayola Doesn't Make a Color for Your Eyes," which has been covered by dozens of diverse artists ranging from Tyne Daly to more than one high school marching band.