Booking

Durham, North Carolina singer and guitarist Jake Xerxes Fussell’s self-titled debut record, produced by and featuring William Tyler, transmutes ten arcane folk and blues tunes into vibey cosmic laments and crooked riverine rambles. Jake Xerxes (yes, that’s his real middle name, after Georgia potter D.X. Gordy) grew up in Columbus, Georgia, son of Fred C. Fussell, a folklorist, curator, and photographer who hails from across the river in Phenix City, Alabama (once known as “The Wickedest City in America” for its rampant vice, corruption, and crime.) Fred’s fieldwork took him, often with young Jake in tow, across the Southeast documenting traditional vernacular culture, which included recording blues and old-time musicians with fellow folklorists and recordists George Mitchell and Art Rosenbaum (which led Jake to music, and to some of the songs herein) and collaborating with American Indian artists (which led Jake eventually to his graduate research on Choctaw fiddlers.)

As a teenager Jake began playing and studying with elder musicians in the Chattahoochee Valley, apprenticing with Piedmont blues legend Precious Bryant (“Georgia Buck”), with whom he toured and recorded, and riding wild with Alabama bluesman, black rodeo rider, rye whiskey distiller, and master dowser George Daniel (“Rabbit on a Log”). He joined a Phenix City country band who were students of Jimmie Tarlton of Darby and Tarlton; he accompanied Etta Baker in North Carolina; he moved to Berkeley, where he hung with genius documentary filmmaker Les Blank and learned from Haight folkies like Will Scarlett (Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, Brownie McGhee) and cult fingerstyle guitarist Steve Mann (“Push Boat”); he appeared on A Prairie Home Companion. He did a whole lot of listening, gradually honing his prodigious guitar skills, singing, and repertoire. In 2005 he moved to Oxford, Mississippi, where he enrolled in the Southern Studies department at Ole Miss, recorded and toured with Rev. John Wilkins, and, last year, met up with acclaimed artist William Tyler to begin recording his first solo album.

Collaborating with Tyler and engineer Mark Nevers in Nashville was a conscious decision to depart cloistered trad scenes and sonics for broader, more oblique horizons. Tyler, a guitar virtuoso known for his own compositions that untether and reframe traditional six-string forms and techniques, helmed the push boat in inimitable fashion, enlisting crack(ed) Nashville session vets Chris Scruggs (lap steel, bass, mandolin: Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Marty Stuart), Brian Kotzur (drums: Silver Jews), and Hoot Hester (fiddle Bill Monroe, Ray Charles) to crew.

Jason Hawk Harris hit rock bottom during the writing and recording of his debut full-length Love & the Dark. In the last few years, the Houston-born-and-raised, Los Angeles-based musician endured life-altering hardships—illness, death, familial strife, and addiction—yet from these trials, a luxuriant and confident vision of art country emerged.

With an unlikely background, Harris is a singer/guitarist/songwriter who walks his own line, one that touches on Lyle Lovett’s lyrical frankness, John Moreland’s punk cerebralism and Judee Sill’s mysticism and orchestral sensibility. There’s even the literary and sonic audacity of an early Steve Earle, an outlaw unafraid to embrace harmony.

Jason’s grandfather exposed him to country music at an early age, and his family celebrated holidays with group sing-alongs. In his teens, Harris began listening to punk, indie rock, and, notably, Queen. In some part inspired by the instrumental flair of Freddie Mercury & Co., he later took the educational plunge into classical composition and was eventually wait-listed for the master’s program at UCLA, when things took a turn.

While touring and performing in the indie folk band The Show Ponies, Jason started writing his own songs, intuitively returning to his country roots but incorporating his classical and rock ‘n’ roll performance skills. He released his first solo offering, the Formaldehyde, Tobacco and Tulips EP in 2017 and hit the road.

Meanwhile, his world fell apart: his mother died from complications of alcoholism; his father went bankrupt after being sued by the King of Morocco; his sister was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and gave birth to a premature son with cerebral palsy; and—subsequently—Jason got sidetracked by his own vices.

Love & the Dark is not THAT country narrative, though; that of surviving through pain. But it’s not NOT that either. This is his personal narrative on death, struggle, and addiction, of a life deconstructed and reassembled. From the opener, “The Smoke and the Stars,” it’s apparent this album will take you to compelling new places. An ache, a longing, claws its way out of the speakers, the gradual drone blossoming through without rigid genre designs. You can hear the essence of classical music in a long crescendo; you can feel his Houston upbringing in JHH’s soulful and humid inflection; you can sense his Los Angeles home in the sharp and risky dynamics. You can also hear the joy and exquisite desperation when he swings for the fences, belting “Maybe I was just waiting for you, to get through the grapevine, tear down that door, and let me live in those green eyes of yours.

On “Cussing at the Light,” the classic “drink-you-off-my-mind” trope has an updated countrypolitan vibe with its precise harmonies courtesy of Natalie Nicoles, and later a raucous teenage urgency rumbles through the punchy “I’m Afraid.” The buoyant roots-pop “Red Room Blues,” featuring vocals by folk/bluegrass maven Rachel Baiman, touches antecedents stretching from Jason Isbell to Nick Lowe.

In the dark balladry of “Phantom Limb” (also sung with Baiman), when he softly describes his mother’s funeral through keenly personal details, “I got this shirt. Smells like the viewing/ Formaldehyde, tobacco and tulips/ I’ve washed it ten times, and it won’t come out,” he takes us to the bottom with him.

While his music acknowledges mortality, pain, and hardship, it’s also Jason Hawk Harris’s way of working through it. Love & The Dark is a hypnotically convincing album; you can feel the unknown, but you need not fear it.

Jason Hawk Harris hit rock bottom during the writing and recording of his debut full-length Love & the Dark. In the last few years, the Houston-born-and-raised, Los Angeles-based musician endured life-altering hardships—illness, death, familial strife, and addiction—yet from these trials, a luxuriant and confident vision of art country emerged.

With an unlikely background, Harris is a singer/guitarist/songwriter who walks his own line, one that touches on Lyle Lovett’s lyrical frankness, John Moreland’s punk cerebralism and Judee Sill’s mysticism and orchestral sensibility. There’s even the literary and sonic audacity of an early Steve Earle, an outlaw unafraid to embrace harmony.

Jason’s grandfather exposed him to country music at an early age, and his family celebrated holidays with group sing-alongs. In his teens, Harris began listening to punk, indie rock, and, notably, Queen. In some part inspired by the instrumental flair of Freddie Mercury & Co., he later took the educational plunge into classical composition and was eventually wait-listed for the master’s program at UCLA, when things took a turn.

While touring and performing in the indie folk band The Show Ponies, Jason started writing his own songs, intuitively returning to his country roots but incorporating his classical and rock ‘n’ roll performance skills. He released his first solo offering, the Formaldehyde, Tobacco and Tulips EP in 2017 and hit the road.

Meanwhile, his world fell apart: his mother died from complications of alcoholism; his father went bankrupt after being sued by the King of Morocco; his sister was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and gave birth to a premature son with cerebral palsy; and—subsequently—Jason got sidetracked by his own vices.

Love & the Dark is not THAT country narrative, though; that of surviving through pain. But it’s not NOT that either. This is his personal narrative on death, struggle, and addiction, of a life deconstructed and reassembled. From the opener, “The Smoke and the Stars,” it’s apparent this album will take you to compelling new places. An ache, a longing, claws its way out of the speakers, the gradual drone blossoming through without rigid genre designs. You can hear the essence of classical music in a long crescendo; you can feel his Houston upbringing in JHH’s soulful and humid inflection; you can sense his Los Angeles home in the sharp and risky dynamics. You can also hear the joy and exquisite desperation when he swings for the fences, belting “Maybe I was just waiting for you, to get through the grapevine, tear down that door, and let me live in those green eyes of yours.

On “Cussing at the Light,” the classic “drink-you-off-my-mind” trope has an updated countrypolitan vibe with its precise harmonies courtesy of Natalie Nicoles, and later a raucous teenage urgency rumbles through the punchy “I’m Afraid.” The buoyant roots-pop “Red Room Blues,” featuring vocals by folk/bluegrass maven Rachel Baiman, touches antecedents stretching from Jason Isbell to Nick Lowe.

In the dark balladry of “Phantom Limb” (also sung with Baiman), when he softly describes his mother’s funeral through keenly personal details, “I got this shirt. Smells like the viewing/ Formaldehyde, tobacco and tulips/ I’ve washed it ten times, and it won’t come out,” he takes us to the bottom with him.

While his music acknowledges mortality, pain, and hardship, it’s also Jason Hawk Harris’s way of working through it. Love & The Dark is a hypnotically convincing album; you can feel the unknown, but you need not fear it.

Devin Tuel may consider herself to be an artist meant for a different time, but she now finds herself inhabiting her own true place. The singer-songwriter is at home in Upstate NY reflecting on her third album, Happier Now, released under her nom de plume, Native Harrow, as well as the difficult sojourn the former ballerina and classically trained singer has had to traverse to become the writer and performer she was meant to be. “This record is about becoming your own advocate. Realizing that maybe you are different in several or a myriad of ways and that that is okay. And further, it is about me becoming a grown woman,” Tuel says.

After nearly two decades of rigorous training in ballet, theatre, and voice, Tuel needed to break out of the oppressive rules of academia and find her natural voice, write from her heart, and figure out what kind of performer she truly was rather than the one she was being molded into from the age of 3. “I spent my early twenties playing every venue in Greenwich Village, recording demos in my friends kitchen, and making lattes. I felt very alive then. I was on my own living in my own little studio, staying up all night writing; the dream I had of being a bohemian New York City artist was unfolding. I wanted to be Patti Smith. I was also heartbroken, poor, and had no idea what I was getting myself into. My twenties, as I think it goes for most, were all about getting up, getting knocked down, and learning to keep going. I never gave up and I think if I told 20 year old me how things looked 9 years later she’d be so excited”.

Happier Now (out April 12 on Different Time Records), is a set of nine songs recorded and mixed by Alex Hall (JD McPherson, The Cactus Blossoms, Pokey LaFarge) at Chicago’s Reliable Recorders. The album was co-produced by Hall, Tuel, and her bandmate, multi-instrumentalist Stephen Harms.

Native Harrow cuts out clear and vibrant narratives on fear, love, the open road, ill-fated relationships, and coping with the state of the world. “I wanted to share that I made it out of my own thunderstorm. I had experienced the high peaks and very low valleys of my twenties. I saw more of the world on my own, got through challenges, reveled in true moments of triumph… but all the while the world around me was growing louder, wilder, and scarier. Music for me is a place to be soft. This album was my place to feel it all.”

Happier Now’s nine songs were written during three back-to-back tours across North America supporting the band’s second album, Sorores. The album was recorded in just three days in March 2018 during what Tuel jokingly calls “downtime” in the middle of the grueling 108 date tour. Tuel approached the sessions like a musicians’ workshop, each morning beginning with the songwriter presenting her collaborators with the day’s material. The trio rehearsed and documented each song live on the floor, tracking as a band through each take. No click tracks, scratch tracks, or even headphones; just three musicians in a small room, captured with Hall’s collection of vintage mics and some subtle retro production techniques. Overdubs, including vocal harmonies, B3 organ, Rhodes, and the rare lead guitar were added to decorate these live performances.  The creative energy of the tightly-knit sessions spilled over into Tuel’s songwriting as well – she skipped lunch on the third and final day of recording to pen the road-weary “Hard To Take”. Four days after arriving in Chicago, Native Harrow was back on the road and Happier Now was complete.

Happier Now oscillates between feeling the sting of uncertainty (“Can’t Go on Like This”), the beauty of California (“Blue Canyon”) and the ache for lavish stability (“Way to Light”). You could say Tuel wears her heart proudly on her sleeve, but that’d be underplaying the exact gravity of her stories. Each starlit image is framed within her warm, enveloping vocals and the careful, profound considerations of Harms’ musicianship. Start to finish, the new record pours forth from her very bones, and you get the overwhelming sense she has never been more daring and honest than right now.

Martin Stephenson has been one of the UK’s most perceptive songwriters and best-loved musicians for over 30 years. Born in Durham and brought up in nearby mining village Washington Tyne & Wear, he has a self-deprecating humour and humility that belie his considerable talents. Stephenson formed The Daintees in his teens with the deliberate intention of showcasing a broad range of musical styles.  Debut single Roll on Summertime was issued by Newcastle’s Kitchenware Records in 1982, becoming single of the week in Sounds having impressed editor Dave McCulloch. This followed with a centre page spread.

If ever there was a band ill-suited to an internet listicle it’s The Only Ones. If The Only Ones had written this list they’d have written two amazing entries before punching your girlfriend in the face and falling backwards on the settee in an opiated haze while the best guitar solo you’ve ever heard played in the background.

That’s the story of The Only Ones: amazing feats of brilliance ruined by an anti-social, self-destructive streak that makes Mötley Crüe look like a bunch of guys who just liked a pint.

Formed in 1976 and coinciding with the dawn of punk, The Only Ones’ only real connection to that musical movement was time, place and a genuine nihilism. Singer Peter Perrett was marinated in drug culture. A user and a dealer, he was a genuine outsider, barricading his house to keep out the police and in constant trouble with the law. His caustic world view was balanced by a vocal delivery that is almost twee and child-like and matched with a veteran rhythm section and the elegant, effervescent guitar playing of John Perry

Durham, North Carolina singer and guitarist Jake Xerxes Fussell’s self-titled debut record, produced by and featuring William Tyler, transmutes ten arcane folk and blues tunes into vibey cosmic laments and crooked riverine rambles. Jake Xerxes (yes, that’s his real middle name, after Georgia potter D.X. Gordy) grew up in Columbus, Georgia, son of Fred C. Fussell, a folklorist, curator, and photographer who hails from across the river in Phenix City, Alabama (once known as “The Wickedest City in America” for its rampant vice, corruption, and crime.) Fred’s fieldwork took him, often with young Jake in tow, across the Southeast documenting traditional vernacular culture, which included recording blues and old-time musicians with fellow folklorists and recordists George Mitchell and Art Rosenbaum (which led Jake to music, and to some of the songs herein) and collaborating with American Indian artists (which led Jake eventually to his graduate research on Choctaw fiddlers.)

As a teenager Jake began playing and studying with elder musicians in the Chattahoochee Valley, apprenticing with Piedmont blues legend Precious Bryant (“Georgia Buck”), with whom he toured and recorded, and riding wild with Alabama bluesman, black rodeo rider, rye whiskey distiller, and master dowser George Daniel (“Rabbit on a Log”). He joined a Phenix City country band who were students of Jimmie Tarlton of Darby and Tarlton; he accompanied Etta Baker in North Carolina; he moved to Berkeley, where he hung with genius documentary filmmaker Les Blank and learned from Haight folkies like Will Scarlett (Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, Brownie McGhee) and cult fingerstyle guitarist Steve Mann (“Push Boat”); he appeared on A Prairie Home Companion. He did a whole lot of listening, gradually honing his prodigious guitar skills, singing, and repertoire. In 2005 he moved to Oxford, Mississippi, where he enrolled in the Southern Studies department at Ole Miss, recorded and toured with Rev. John Wilkins, and, last year, met up with acclaimed artist William Tyler to begin recording his first solo album.

Collaborating with Tyler and engineer Mark Nevers in Nashville was a conscious decision to depart cloistered trad scenes and sonics for broader, more oblique horizons. Tyler, a guitar virtuoso known for his own compositions that untether and reframe traditional six-string forms and techniques, helmed the push boat in inimitable fashion, enlisting crack(ed) Nashville session vets Chris Scruggs (lap steel, bass, mandolin: Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Marty Stuart), Brian Kotzur (drums: Silver Jews), and Hoot Hester (fiddle Bill Monroe, Ray Charles) to crew.

Years before Rolling Stone was praising Carson McHone’s rule-breaking roots music, the Austin, Texas native played weeknights in local bars like The White Horse, keeping dancers dancing and drinkers drinking. With her 21st birthday still in the distance, McHone entertained late-night crowds bearing witness to the good times and bad decisions that fill a busy bar. It was a rare, raw education. She pumped her music full of details from an early adulthood spent in the company of the heartbroken and high-toleranced. In 2015, McHone released Goodluck Man which earned her a cover story in The Austin Chronicle as well as the support of local icons like Ray Wylie Hubbard, who said she “writes songs like her life depends on it.” Then she hit the road, touring the U.S. (and beyond) with acts like Shakey Graves, Gary Clark, Jr., and Joe Pug. Her writing style widened and her music evolved.

“There was a time when I wanted to champion traditional country,” says McHone,  “mostly because I wasn’t hearing it in what was being called ‘country’.  I think a lot of roots influenced artists feel the need to defend tradition in this way.  Today though, I want to do more with the form, push myself past where I understand it to be.”

Dark, driving, and evocative, 2018’s Carousel captures this period of remarkable growth, shining a light not only on McHone’s honky-tonk roots, but on her development as a modern, alt-country storyteller. It features newly written songs and updated versions of tracks that first appeared on Goodluck Man, pushing traditional sounds and themes into a modern context.

Playing an instrumental role in the process was Mike McCarthy, the now Nashville based, award-winning producer behind albums for Spoon, Patty Griffin, and Heartless Bastards.  McCarthy is well versed in country music but his work is definitely not defined by the genre, which made him the perfect candidate for McHone’s new record.

Carousel is a latter-day record unconcerned with flying the flag of old-school country, inspired by diverse sources like Dylan, the Velvet Underground, and American novelist Thomas Wolfe. It wears its eclecticism proudly, with McHone singing each song in a voice that is worldly-wise and woozily gorgeous.

Carousel kicks off with “Sad,” a song about the fraught relationship one develops with darkness, but it’s a fast-moving, high-energy song driven forward by fiddle, electric guitar, and pedal steel. This track sets the stage for an album that tackles edgy subjects without losing its bright melodies. McHone creates her own rule book, switching between tempos on “Lucky”, offsetting the acoustic guitar of “Spider Song” with the medieval swell of a harmonium, and fills the piano ballad, “How ‘Bout It,” with a mix of torch-song twang and late-night, jazz-club melancholia.  Originally recorded back in 2015 as a deep-cutting, slow-moving waltz, “Gentle” reappears on Carousel as an anthemic tribute to a love gone cold, with McHone exploring the tension between what we know and what we feel, then honoring a relationship’s fleeting existence rather than despairing it’s demise.

The lyrics are confessional and intensely autobiographical. On “Dram Shop Gal” – one of several Goodluck Man tracks to receive a modern makeover – McHone takes a hard look at the ways in which her worldview has been shaped (for better and for worse) by her many hours in a barroom.

“I was a kid when I landed those residencies,” she says of her days at The Hole in The Wall, where she began playing Friday happy hour as a 16-year-old, and The White Horse, where she eventually took over the coveted Thursday night residency.  “I wasn’t even old enough to be in those bars and they became a home to me.  It’s a dark thing when a bar becomes your home.”

McHone explains that Carousel embraces where she’s come from and establishes where her musical interests are leading. “The art I’m making would be lacking if I were to stick to a specific genre.  Carousel is more modern, which is where my interests lie these days, and where my writing is taking me. At the end of the day, it has to be the song that dictates.”

Growing up, McHone rode her horse bareback along the side streets of south Austin, weaving through traffic and empty parking lots to find space to “open up”. For any motorist driving past, she must’ve been a wonderfully unusual sight to behold: a messy-haired young woman riding down the street, bridging the country and the city, the past and the present, the Wild West and modern Austin.

McHone’s 2018 release builds a similar bridge. Purposeful, pointed, and poignant, Carousel is a compelling ride.

Since Tandem Felix re-emerged in 2017 with ’Were You There (When They Crucified The Birthday Boy)?’ – nominated for the Choice Music Prize Song of the Year – the band opened for Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks in Dublin’s Vicar Street, joined Saint Sister on their Irish tour and put the finishing touches on long-awaited debut album, Rom-Com.

The album was recorded in the now-defunct Lamplight Studios and mixed in The Snug at Sonic Studios by engineer Stephen Dunne.

These are classy, country-tinged songs about affairs of the heart, music for grownups, for divorcees, for people who have lived. Tandem Felix rarely break a sweat, let alone rock out or boogie. Maybe that’s why they called themselves that. They weren’t being ironic – they have found their perfect pace, their perfect mood, and for many of you it will be perfect, too.”

– THE GUARDIAN

The Lone Bellow burst onto the scene with their self-titled debut in 2013. The Brooklyn-based band quickly became known for their transcendent harmonies, serious musicianship and raucous live performance — a reputation that earned them their rabid fan base. It’s been three years since the band’s victorious Then Came The Morning was released. Produced by The National’s Aaron Dessner, the album was nominated for an Americana Music Award. The band appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “Late Show With David Letterman,” “Conan O’Brien,” “CBS This Morning,” “Later…with Jools Holland,” and “The Late Late Show With James Corden” in support of the album. In the years since the release, the band left their beloved adopted home of Brooklyn and moved to Nashville. Now, The Lone Bellow is back with Walk Into A Storm, which will be released Sept. 15 on Sony Music Masterworks. Walk Into A Storm was produced by legendary music producer Dave Cobb (Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, and more) and features their lead single “Time’s Always Leaving.” The trio, featuring Zach Williams (guitar/vocals), Kanene Donehey Pipkin (multi-instrumentalist), and Brian Elmquist (guitar), recorded this album in only seven days. The group’s first two albums graced the Billboard 200.

Devin Tuel may consider herself to be an artist meant for a different time, but she now finds herself inhabiting her own true place. The singer-songwriter is at home in Upstate NY reflecting on her third album, Happier Now, released under her nom de plume, Native Harrow, as well as the difficult sojourn the former ballerina and classically trained singer has had to traverse to become the writer and performer she was meant to be. “This record is about becoming your own advocate. Realizing that maybe you are different in several or a myriad of ways and that that is okay. And further, it is about me becoming a grown woman,” Tuel says.

After nearly two decades of rigorous training in ballet, theatre, and voice, Tuel needed to break out of the oppressive rules of academia and find her natural voice, write from her heart, and figure out what kind of performer she truly was rather than the one she was being molded into from the age of 3. “I spent my early twenties playing every venue in Greenwich Village, recording demos in my friends kitchen, and making lattes. I felt very alive then. I was on my own living in my own little studio, staying up all night writing; the dream I had of being a bohemian New York City artist was unfolding. I wanted to be Patti Smith. I was also heartbroken, poor, and had no idea what I was getting myself into. My twenties, as I think it goes for most, were all about getting up, getting knocked down, and learning to keep going. I never gave up and I think if I told 20 year old me how things looked 9 years later she’d be so excited”.

Happier Now (out April 12 on Different Time Records), is a set of nine songs recorded and mixed by Alex Hall (JD McPherson, The Cactus Blossoms, Pokey LaFarge) at Chicago’s Reliable Recorders. The album was co-produced by Hall, Tuel, and her bandmate, multi-instrumentalist Stephen Harms.

Native Harrow cuts out clear and vibrant narratives on fear, love, the open road, ill-fated relationships, and coping with the state of the world. “I wanted to share that I made it out of my own thunderstorm. I had experienced the high peaks and very low valleys of my twenties. I saw more of the world on my own, got through challenges, reveled in true moments of triumph… but all the while the world around me was growing louder, wilder, and scarier. Music for me is a place to be soft. This album was my place to feel it all.”

Happier Now’s nine songs were written during three back-to-back tours across North America supporting the band’s second album, Sorores. The album was recorded in just three days in March 2018 during what Tuel jokingly calls “downtime” in the middle of the grueling 108 date tour. Tuel approached the sessions like a musicians’ workshop, each morning beginning with the songwriter presenting her collaborators with the day’s material. The trio rehearsed and documented each song live on the floor, tracking as a band through each take. No click tracks, scratch tracks, or even headphones; just three musicians in a small room, captured with Hall’s collection of vintage mics and some subtle retro production techniques. Overdubs, including vocal harmonies, B3 organ, Rhodes, and the rare lead guitar were added to decorate these live performances.  The creative energy of the tightly-knit sessions spilled over into Tuel’s songwriting as well – she skipped lunch on the third and final day of recording to pen the road-weary “Hard To Take”. Four days after arriving in Chicago, Native Harrow was back on the road and Happier Now was complete.

Happier Now oscillates between feeling the sting of uncertainty (“Can’t Go on Like This”), the beauty of California (“Blue Canyon”) and the ache for lavish stability (“Way to Light”). You could say Tuel wears her heart proudly on her sleeve, but that’d be underplaying the exact gravity of her stories. Each starlit image is framed within her warm, enveloping vocals and the careful, profound considerations of Harms’ musicianship. Start to finish, the new record pours forth from her very bones, and you get the overwhelming sense she has never been more daring and honest than right now.

It’s hard to believe it was only in 2011 that Joe Nolan released his debut album, Goodbye Cinderella. At that time he was heralded by the Globe & Mail, No Depression and other publications as a roots rock wunderkind, an opinion confirmed by his 2014 Colin Linden-produced follow-up, Tornado. However, along with the acclaim came complications at odds with his creative vision.

Now the Edmonton, Alberta native is back with Cry Baby, an album that finally opens up what Nolan has kept locked tightly for the past three years. The 10-song collection is a trip through melancholic madness, touching on darkness and depression, broken relationships and endless booze-fuelled evenings. Yet, at its core is Nolan’s unwavering strength as a lyricist, and his wounded-heart delivery that reminds us of our humanity. Cry Baby is, in essence, Nolan unapologetically sharing his story, and through that finding a second chance and a new beginning.

“I’m feeling as if I’m becoming much more myself, and being true to who I am,” he says. “I have become a better listener and I have less fear of what people think. I am doing what I love, making music, and if I can continue to do that then for me, that’s success.”

Having amassed what he estimates to be hundreds of song ideas leading up to recording Cry Baby, Nolan contemplated returning to Nashville where Tornado was made. Ultimately, he chose to remain close to home, holing up over the course of an Edmonton winter with engineer Scott Franchuk at two local studios, The Audio Department and Riverdale Recorders. The process gave Nolan full creative control while also utilizing vintage analog technology.

“Looking at the amount of song ideas I had was kind of scary,” Nolan admits. “The selection process was difficult; I wanted all the songs to flow together in the way an album should sound when you listen front to back. So the biggest challenge for me was not overthinking. We could have gone in so many different directions but I am very happy with how everything ultimately fit together. We actually ended up adding a song I came up with two nights before out first session, ‘Ode To Sturgeon County,’ which I wrote on my grandmother’s old piano.”

If there’s a common thread to Cry Baby, it is indeed a sense of walking back from the edge and recapturing joy—and perhaps personal identity. It can be heard on the heart-wrenching “Music In The Streets” (featuring Lydia Loveless on backing vocals) in which two gun-shy lovers embark on a new relationship. It’s also there on “Dead Ends and a Damaged Heart” and “Stand Up For Your Love,” songs that carry more weight of experience than anyone Nolan’s age deserves. Still, it’s a weight he carries with dignity.

“A couple of these songs are about what’s happened to me over the past five years—being signed to a label at a young age, not knowing how to navigate the music industry, making poor choices, not being able to be artistically free… ‘Another Dead Poet’ is a pretty honest reflection about at the point of almost packing it because I was so sick of the struggle.”

Nolan adds, “My definition of rock ‘n roll is an artist letting their heart bleed on and off stage, without any fear. The imperfections in music are what turn me on the most, even when it’s just a guy or girl on an acoustic guitar being honest to themselves.”

Therein lies the irony of Nolan choosing to call this album Cry Baby. Few other songwriters outside of, say, Ryan Adams and Mark Kozelek consistently demonstrate a willingness to venture as deeply into the dark corners of their psyches. With Cry Baby, Joe Nolan is now ready to live again after gazing into the void.

Durham, North Carolina singer and guitarist Jake Xerxes Fussell’s self-titled debut record, produced by and featuring William Tyler, transmutes ten arcane folk and blues tunes into vibey cosmic laments and crooked riverine rambles. Jake Xerxes (yes, that’s his real middle name, after Georgia potter D.X. Gordy) grew up in Columbus, Georgia, son of Fred C. Fussell, a folklorist, curator, and photographer who hails from across the river in Phenix City, Alabama (once known as “The Wickedest City in America” for its rampant vice, corruption, and crime.) Fred’s fieldwork took him, often with young Jake in tow, across the Southeast documenting traditional vernacular culture, which included recording blues and old-time musicians with fellow folklorists and recordists George Mitchell and Art Rosenbaum (which led Jake to music, and to some of the songs herein) and collaborating with American Indian artists (which led Jake eventually to his graduate research on Choctaw fiddlers.)

As a teenager Jake began playing and studying with elder musicians in the Chattahoochee Valley, apprenticing with Piedmont blues legend Precious Bryant (“Georgia Buck”), with whom he toured and recorded, and riding wild with Alabama bluesman, black rodeo rider, rye whiskey distiller, and master dowser George Daniel (“Rabbit on a Log”). He joined a Phenix City country band who were students of Jimmie Tarlton of Darby and Tarlton; he accompanied Etta Baker in North Carolina; he moved to Berkeley, where he hung with genius documentary filmmaker Les Blank and learned from Haight folkies like Will Scarlett (Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, Brownie McGhee) and cult fingerstyle guitarist Steve Mann (“Push Boat”); he appeared on A Prairie Home Companion. He did a whole lot of listening, gradually honing his prodigious guitar skills, singing, and repertoire. In 2005 he moved to Oxford, Mississippi, where he enrolled in the Southern Studies department at Ole Miss, recorded and toured with Rev. John Wilkins, and, last year, met up with acclaimed artist William Tyler to begin recording his first solo album.

Collaborating with Tyler and engineer Mark Nevers in Nashville was a conscious decision to depart cloistered trad scenes and sonics for broader, more oblique horizons. Tyler, a guitar virtuoso known for his own compositions that untether and reframe traditional six-string forms and techniques, helmed the push boat in inimitable fashion, enlisting crack(ed) Nashville session vets Chris Scruggs (lap steel, bass, mandolin: Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Marty Stuart), Brian Kotzur (drums: Silver Jews), and Hoot Hester (fiddle Bill Monroe, Ray Charles) to crew.

Come 2020, Chatham County Line will have been a staple of the North Carolina music scene for two decades. Embracing an all acoustic instrumentation and the modern songwriting of leader Dave Wilson the band has graced stages all across the U.S. as well as mainland Europe, Scandinavia, Ireland and the United Kingdom. With seven studio albums of original material to pull from, CCL has a sound all their own and a stage show to match. Songwriter, guitarist and vocalist Dave Wilson pulls tunes out of an ether that is inspired by a shelf bending collection of vinyl records from the 20’s to the 20’s. One listen to their all covers release “Sharing the Covers” [Yep Roc Records 2019] will give you an idea of those inspirations, with songs from the likes of Wilco and Beck shared with those of John Lennon, Tom Petty and John Hartford.

With the recent retirement of founding member Chandler Holt (banjo), the band decided to push their sound a little bit more into the modern world and embrace the use of drums onstage. “We’ve had drums on several albums, most notably Wildwood, and our audience always responded well to those tunes” says Dave Wilson. John Teer who rotates from Mandolin to Fiddle all while singing soaring harmony adds “We’ve done an Electric Holiday Tour for the past 12 years that features an expanded group of musicians on the stage so we’re no stranger to a backbeat.”

With the upcoming Spring 2020 Yep Roc Release of a yet to be named studio album, look for the core of CCL; Dave Wilson, John Teer, and Greg Readling [Bass, Pedal Steel] as well as a rotating cadre of drummers to keep traveling the highways, byways and airways to share their special canon of songs with the world.

With a  steady sequence of highly acclaimed albums and an ever-expanding fan base, Eileen Rose has established herself as a brave, eclectic artist who defies easy categorisation. Her richly melodic but starkly emotive songs, offbeat arrangements, rye, canny humour and electrifying live shows have gained her fans from Boston to London, Rome to Nashville. Now, with an extraordinary new collection of songs, Eileen is not only poised to release her best album yet but is thrilled to announce that, she, along with collaborator/producer/partner in crime, The Legendary Rich Gilbert, in association with the Cadiz Music Distribution, will launch their own record label, Holy Wreckords.

HOLY WRECKORDS
Eileen’s new album, ‘Be Many Gone” is out now in the UK and will be available worldwide in Spring 2014.  The label will see follow up releases by The Legendary Rich Gilbert and is developing several, soon to be announced projects from other great artists throughout 2014.

BE MANY GONE
‘Be Many Gone’ was recorded in Nashville with a veteran band of star musicians including fiddler, Buddy Spicher (Bob Dylan, Linda Rondstadt, Emmylou Harris), drummer, Johnnie Barber (Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Paycheck), bass player, Brad Albin (Vince Gill, Time Jumpers), and guitar virtuoso Rich Gilbert (Jack White, Wanda Jackson), known for beautiful pedal steel AND jaw-dropping telecaster solos. The record includes a fantastic guest duet with Pixies frontman, Frank Black/Black Francis/Charles Thompson, an album highlight and an honour for me.  (Charles does not duet with many people.

Jason Hawk Harris hit rock bottom during the writing and recording of his debut full-length Love & the Dark. In the last few years, the Houston-born-and-raised, Los Angeles-based musician endured life-altering hardships—illness, death, familial strife, and addiction—yet from these trials, a luxuriant and confident vision of art country emerged.

With an unlikely background, Harris is a singer/guitarist/songwriter who walks his own line, one that touches on Lyle Lovett’s lyrical frankness, John Moreland’s punk cerebralism and Judee Sill’s mysticism and orchestral sensibility. There’s even the literary and sonic audacity of an early Steve Earle, an outlaw unafraid to embrace harmony.

Jason’s grandfather exposed him to country music at an early age, and his family celebrated holidays with group sing-alongs. In his teens, Harris began listening to punk, indie rock, and, notably, Queen. In some part inspired by the instrumental flair of Freddie Mercury & Co., he later took the educational plunge into classical composition and was eventually wait-listed for the master’s program at UCLA, when things took a turn.

While touring and performing in the indie folk band The Show Ponies, Jason started writing his own songs, intuitively returning to his country roots but incorporating his classical and rock ‘n’ roll performance skills. He released his first solo offering, the Formaldehyde, Tobacco and Tulips EP in 2017 and hit the road.

Meanwhile, his world fell apart: his mother died from complications of alcoholism; his father went bankrupt after being sued by the King of Morocco; his sister was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and gave birth to a premature son with cerebral palsy; and—subsequently—Jason got sidetracked by his own vices.

Love & the Dark is not THAT country narrative, though; that of surviving through pain. But it’s not NOT that either. This is his personal narrative on death, struggle, and addiction, of a life deconstructed and reassembled. From the opener, “The Smoke and the Stars,” it’s apparent this album will take you to compelling new places. An ache, a longing, claws its way out of the speakers, the gradual drone blossoming through without rigid genre designs. You can hear the essence of classical music in a long crescendo; you can feel his Houston upbringing in JHH’s soulful and humid inflection; you can sense his Los Angeles home in the sharp and risky dynamics. You can also hear the joy and exquisite desperation when he swings for the fences, belting “Maybe I was just waiting for you, to get through the grapevine, tear down that door, and let me live in those green eyes of yours.

On “Cussing at the Light,” the classic “drink-you-off-my-mind” trope has an updated countrypolitan vibe with its precise harmonies courtesy of Natalie Nicoles, and later a raucous teenage urgency rumbles through the punchy “I’m Afraid.” The buoyant roots-pop “Red Room Blues,” featuring vocals by folk/bluegrass maven Rachel Baiman, touches antecedents stretching from Jason Isbell to Nick Lowe.

In the dark balladry of “Phantom Limb” (also sung with Baiman), when he softly describes his mother’s funeral through keenly personal details, “I got this shirt. Smells like the viewing/ Formaldehyde, tobacco and tulips/ I’ve washed it ten times, and it won’t come out,” he takes us to the bottom with him.

While his music acknowledges mortality, pain, and hardship, it’s also Jason Hawk Harris’s way of working through it. Love & The Dark is a hypnotically convincing album; you can feel the unknown, but you need not fear it.

Years before Rolling Stone was praising Carson McHone’s rule-breaking roots music, the Austin, Texas native played weeknights in local bars like The White Horse, keeping dancers dancing and drinkers drinking. With her 21st birthday still in the distance, McHone entertained late-night crowds bearing witness to the good times and bad decisions that fill a busy bar. It was a rare, raw education. She pumped her music full of details from an early adulthood spent in the company of the heartbroken and high-toleranced. In 2015, McHone released Goodluck Man which earned her a cover story in The Austin Chronicle as well as the support of local icons like Ray Wylie Hubbard, who said she “writes songs like her life depends on it.” Then she hit the road, touring the U.S. (and beyond) with acts like Shakey Graves, Gary Clark, Jr., and Joe Pug. Her writing style widened and her music evolved.

“There was a time when I wanted to champion traditional country,” says McHone,  “mostly because I wasn’t hearing it in what was being called ‘country’.  I think a lot of roots influenced artists feel the need to defend tradition in this way.  Today though, I want to do more with the form, push myself past where I understand it to be.”

Dark, driving, and evocative, 2018’s Carousel captures this period of remarkable growth, shining a light not only on McHone’s honky-tonk roots, but on her development as a modern, alt-country storyteller. It features newly written songs and updated versions of tracks that first appeared on Goodluck Man, pushing traditional sounds and themes into a modern context.

Playing an instrumental role in the process was Mike McCarthy, the now Nashville based, award-winning producer behind albums for Spoon, Patty Griffin, and Heartless Bastards.  McCarthy is well versed in country music but his work is definitely not defined by the genre, which made him the perfect candidate for McHone’s new record.

Carousel is a latter-day record unconcerned with flying the flag of old-school country, inspired by diverse sources like Dylan, the Velvet Underground, and American novelist Thomas Wolfe. It wears its eclecticism proudly, with McHone singing each song in a voice that is worldly-wise and woozily gorgeous.

Carousel kicks off with “Sad,” a song about the fraught relationship one develops with darkness, but it’s a fast-moving, high-energy song driven forward by fiddle, electric guitar, and pedal steel. This track sets the stage for an album that tackles edgy subjects without losing its bright melodies. McHone creates her own rule book, switching between tempos on “Lucky”, offsetting the acoustic guitar of “Spider Song” with the medieval swell of a harmonium, and fills the piano ballad, “How ‘Bout It,” with a mix of torch-song twang and late-night, jazz-club melancholia.  Originally recorded back in 2015 as a deep-cutting, slow-moving waltz, “Gentle” reappears on Carousel as an anthemic tribute to a love gone cold, with McHone exploring the tension between what we know and what we feel, then honoring a relationship’s fleeting existence rather than despairing it’s demise.

The lyrics are confessional and intensely autobiographical. On “Dram Shop Gal” – one of several Goodluck Man tracks to receive a modern makeover – McHone takes a hard look at the ways in which her worldview has been shaped (for better and for worse) by her many hours in a barroom.

“I was a kid when I landed those residencies,” she says of her days at The Hole in The Wall, where she began playing Friday happy hour as a 16-year-old, and The White Horse, where she eventually took over the coveted Thursday night residency.  “I wasn’t even old enough to be in those bars and they became a home to me.  It’s a dark thing when a bar becomes your home.”

McHone explains that Carousel embraces where she’s come from and establishes where her musical interests are leading. “The art I’m making would be lacking if I were to stick to a specific genre.  Carousel is more modern, which is where my interests lie these days, and where my writing is taking me. At the end of the day, it has to be the song that dictates.”

Growing up, McHone rode her horse bareback along the side streets of south Austin, weaving through traffic and empty parking lots to find space to “open up”. For any motorist driving past, she must’ve been a wonderfully unusual sight to behold: a messy-haired young woman riding down the street, bridging the country and the city, the past and the present, the Wild West and modern Austin.

McHone’s 2018 release builds a similar bridge. Purposeful, pointed, and poignant, Carousel is a compelling ride.

Jesse Malin— whom the London Times says “writes vivid songs with killer tunes and sings them with scary conviction”— and Lucinda Williams— the southern troubadour once named “America’s best songwriter” by Time magazine— first met in the early 2000s at a jazz club in NYC’s West Village. In a joint 2017 Rolling Stone interview, the two discussed their “shared love of miscreants, misfits, the misunderstood and the mysteries of everyday lives binds them across the Mason-Dixon line.”

“From the early frontier days of hardcore in New York to all the punk rock and singer/songwriter touring,” says Malin, “it’s all been about survival and reinvention. I wanted to make an open-sounding record with the space to tell these stories. I like to write about characters and people I meet along the way. The dreamers, schemers, hustlers, romantics, lovers, leavers and believers.” Many of the dreamers, schemers and so on from Jesse’s own life contribute to Sunset Kids, his new album of highly personal songs being released August 30 on Wicked Cool Records.

Sunset Kids first took shape at The Hollywood Bowl, when Jesse accepted Lucinda’s invitation to see her open for what turned out to be Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers’ final concert. The bittersweet experience inspired one of the new album’s highlights, “Shining Down,” a rainy day jangle about “keeping alive the spirits of the ones we’ve lost.” During that same visit, the idea came about of three-time Grammy-winning Lucinda producing Jesse’s next record.

“Lucinda has a great eye for finding the beauty in broken things and a knack for always picking the right take. Once she started dancing in the control room, we knew we had it.”

In addition to this rare turn in the producer’s chair for Williams, she co-wrote and sang on the evocative Country-flavored “Room 13,” which Malin calls “the heart of the record in a lot of ways, about those meditative moments far away from home, where you’re forced to reflect on the things that really matter.”

  The album also features “Chemical Heart,” an upbeat pop basher located at a mythical point on Queens Boulevard where Paul Simon and The Ramones intersect, name-checking Bernie Taupin and Jake LaMotta among others. “Shane” is a gentle ballad about one of his heroes, the lovably shambolic Shane MacGowan of The Pogues.

“My first album, The Fine Art Of Self-Destruction, was about finding glory in the wreckage,” says Malin of the album which was upon release Uncut’s “Album of the Month.” “Sunset Kidsis about owning it. The failures, the victories, the moments. And moving up from there.”

After reflecting on his life while walking the streets of London, jamming riffs in an East Village basement and writing songs in Florida hotel rooms while visiting his ailing father, the ambitious 14-song album was recorded on both coasts between the two artists’ touring schedules.

It opens with the pre-apocalyptic confession “Meet Me At The End Of The World Again,” which includes backing vocals by Malin confidante and collaborator Joseph Arthur. Another key guest contribution comes courtesy of Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, who co-wrote and sang on “Strangers & Thieves.”

“Billie Joe was in town and I showed him where we hung out when we were kids in the hardcore days,” Malin recalls. “A couple days later, I got a text and he had finished the song. He went into the details of his experience in the Bay Area with that scene, and also my experiences, which were very parallel in New York.”

Those early days found a young Jesse “riding the subway trains from Queens to the record stores and nightclubs in dirty, pre-Disney New York City” and never looking back. His band Heart Attack put out the first New York hardcore single “God Is Dead” when Malin was 14 years old. He later went on to acclaim as the frontman for the fast and loud D Generation, whose albums were produced by Ric Ocasek, Tony Visconti and David Bianco.

Bianco is one of the Sunset Kids referenced in the album’s title. The engineer who won a Grammy for his pristine sonics on Tom Petty’s Wildflowers and produced the first major-label release of Jesse’s career passed away suddenly after overseeing the initial sessions for Sunset Kids in his L.A. studio.

  “Playing music is something I need to do. Singing under those hot lights every night is a great exorcism. We get to put together this pirate ship of characters and go around the world making trouble and singing our guts out.”

As the line in crucial cut “When You’re Young” says, “Don’t waste your life on things that don’t get better.” Malin concludes: “It’s about finding ways to survive and navigate through all this stuff. Being compassionate and loving in a world that will break your heart. But you’re still here. You wake up again and put one foot in front of the other and live every day like it could be your last.”

It’s hard to believe it was only in 2011 that Joe Nolan released his debut album, Goodbye Cinderella. At that time he was heralded by the Globe & Mail, No Depression and other publications as a roots rock wunderkind, an opinion confirmed by his 2014 Colin Linden-produced follow-up, Tornado. However, along with the acclaim came complications at odds with his creative vision.

Now the Edmonton, Alberta native is back with Cry Baby, an album that finally opens up what Nolan has kept locked tightly for the past three years. The 10-song collection is a trip through melancholic madness, touching on darkness and depression, broken relationships and endless booze-fuelled evenings. Yet, at its core is Nolan’s unwavering strength as a lyricist, and his wounded-heart delivery that reminds us of our humanity. Cry Baby is, in essence, Nolan unapologetically sharing his story, and through that finding a second chance and a new beginning.

“I’m feeling as if I’m becoming much more myself, and being true to who I am,” he says. “I have become a better listener and I have less fear of what people think. I am doing what I love, making music, and if I can continue to do that then for me, that’s success.”

Having amassed what he estimates to be hundreds of song ideas leading up to recording Cry Baby, Nolan contemplated returning to Nashville where Tornado was made. Ultimately, he chose to remain close to home, holing up over the course of an Edmonton winter with engineer Scott Franchuk at two local studios, The Audio Department and Riverdale Recorders. The process gave Nolan full creative control while also utilizing vintage analog technology.

“Looking at the amount of song ideas I had was kind of scary,” Nolan admits. “The selection process was difficult; I wanted all the songs to flow together in the way an album should sound when you listen front to back. So the biggest challenge for me was not overthinking. We could have gone in so many different directions but I am very happy with how everything ultimately fit together. We actually ended up adding a song I came up with two nights before out first session, ‘Ode To Sturgeon County,’ which I wrote on my grandmother’s old piano.”

If there’s a common thread to Cry Baby, it is indeed a sense of walking back from the edge and recapturing joy—and perhaps personal identity. It can be heard on the heart-wrenching “Music In The Streets” (featuring Lydia Loveless on backing vocals) in which two gun-shy lovers embark on a new relationship. It’s also there on “Dead Ends and a Damaged Heart” and “Stand Up For Your Love,” songs that carry more weight of experience than anyone Nolan’s age deserves. Still, it’s a weight he carries with dignity.

“A couple of these songs are about what’s happened to me over the past five years—being signed to a label at a young age, not knowing how to navigate the music industry, making poor choices, not being able to be artistically free… ‘Another Dead Poet’ is a pretty honest reflection about at the point of almost packing it because I was so sick of the struggle.”

Nolan adds, “My definition of rock ‘n roll is an artist letting their heart bleed on and off stage, without any fear. The imperfections in music are what turn me on the most, even when it’s just a guy or girl on an acoustic guitar being honest to themselves.”

Therein lies the irony of Nolan choosing to call this album Cry Baby. Few other songwriters outside of, say, Ryan Adams and Mark Kozelek consistently demonstrate a willingness to venture as deeply into the dark corners of their psyches. With Cry Baby, Joe Nolan is now ready to live again after gazing into the void.

Come 2020, Chatham County Line will have been a staple of the North Carolina music scene for two decades. Embracing all-acoustic instrumentation and the modern songwriting of leader Dave Wilson the band has graced stages all across the U.S. as well as mainland Europe, Scandinavia, Ireland and the United Kingdom. With seven studio albums of original material to pull from, CCL has a sound all their own and a stage show to match. Songwriter, guitarist and vocalist Dave Wilson pulls tunes out of an ether that is inspired by a shelf bending collection of vinyl records from the 20’s to the ’20s. One listens to their all-covers release “Sharing the Covers” [Yep Roc Records 2019] will give you an idea of those inspirations, with songs from the likes of Wilco and Beck shared with those of John Lennon, Tom Petty and John Hartford.

With the recent retirement of founding member Chandler Holt (banjo), the band decided to push their sound a little bit more into the modern world and embrace the use of drums on stage. “We’ve had drums on several albums, most notably Wildwood, and our audience always responded well to those tunes,” says Dave Wilson. John Teer who rotates from Mandolin to Fiddle all while singing soaring harmony adds “We’ve done an Electric Holiday Tour for the past 12 years that features an expanded group of musicians on the stage so we’re no stranger to a backbeat.”

With the upcoming Spring 2020 Yep Roc Release of a yet to be named studio album, look for the core of CCL; Dave Wilson, John Teer, and Greg Readling [Bass, Pedal Steel] as well as a rotating cadre of drummers to keep travelling the highways, byways and airways to share their special canon of songs with the world.

With a  steady sequence of highly acclaimed albums and an ever-expanding fan base, Eileen Rose has established herself as a brave, eclectic artist who defies easy categorisation. Her richly melodic but starkly emotive songs, offbeat arrangements, rye, canny humour and electrifying live shows have gained her fans from Boston to London, Rome to Nashville. Now, with an extraordinary new collection of songs, Eileen is not only poised to release her best album yet but is thrilled to announce that, she, along with collaborator/producer/partner in crime, The Legendary Rich Gilbert, in association with the Cadiz Music Distribution, will launch their own record label, Holy Wreckords.

HOLY WRECKORDS
Eileen’s new album, ‘Be Many Gone” is out now in the UK and will be available worldwide in Spring 2014.  The label will see follow up releases by The Legendary Rich Gilbert and is developing several, soon to be announced projects from other great artists throughout 2014.

BE MANY GONE
‘Be Many Gone’ was recorded in Nashville with a veteran band of star musicians including fiddler, Buddy Spicher (Bob Dylan, Linda Rondstadt, Emmylou Harris), drummer, Johnnie Barber (Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Paycheck), bass player, Brad Albin (Vince Gill, Time Jumpers), and guitar virtuoso Rich Gilbert (Jack White, Wanda Jackson), known for beautiful pedal steel AND jaw-dropping telecaster solos. The record includes a fantastic guest duet with Pixies frontman, Frank Black/Black Francis/Charles Thompson, an album highlight and an honour for me.  (Charles does not duet with many people.