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On Stage 11/23 – Treva Blomquist

admin — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:45:13 +0000

Once a Seattle resident, Treva Blomquist is now a Nashville local and has quickly risen to the top of an endless pool of talent that inundates Music City. Treva’s ability to seamlessly weave a tapestry of folk and soul, dye it indigo blue, and adorn it with the occasional sparkling sequin of pop has earned her considerable recognition among artists and critics alike. Her songwriting is rock solid and mature, often earning favorable comparisons to Patty Griffin and Mindy Smith. Treva is comfortable and compelling performing as a solo act, in front of a small string section, or shaking the walls of any rock venue in town with her band, The Suits.

Although Treva’s brilliant songwriting and impressive guitar chops distinguish her from other artists in her genre, it is her voice that places her in a league of her own. Treva’s range is wide and her timbre is as focused and as pure as a trumpet, and just as powerful. But it is the integrity and authenticity embedded within her lyrics and the passion and soul conveyed through her voice that are truly the most inspiring. Treva possesses a rare talent that is often sought after but rarely obtained.

Treva spent the latter part of 2007 in the Compass Sound Studio and is now putting the finishing touches on the upcoming EP, “As It Should Be.” The follow up to her 2006 acoustic album “Plain Vanilla Me” finds the folk soprano collaborating with her dapper band, The Suits. The album also features Dan Hochhalter (Gretchen Wilson) on fiddle, Ronda Armstrong on cello, Kenny Hudson on Pedal Steel, and backing vocals by Eric Paslay and Jeremy Lister.

On Stage 11/16 – Sadie Blu

admin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:00:59 +0000

Sadie Blu was born August 6, 1989 in Dothan, Alabama. An only child and daughter of a preacher, she moved around quite frequently with her parents. When she was nine years old, Sadie and her family relocated to Columbia, South Carolina.. While listening to the city’s local college radio station, she discovered a style of music called the Blues. She quickly became infatuated with the Blues and Rock & Roll, a world that had seemingly been hidden away by church hymns. Artists such as John Lee Hooker, T-Bone Walker, Etta James, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix became guiding lights for this young musician.

When Blu was 12, she purchased a new guitar with money she had saved from making and selling her own jewelry. She then took formal lessons for about a year. Before long, she began to write her own songs, but was too shy to share them, even with her parents. During her mid-teen years, while living in Milton, Florida, Sadie would attend hootenannies held at an antique store near her house on weekends. While most teenagers preferred to socialize within their own age group, Sadie spent her spare time learning and sharpening her craft with people decades her elder.

After much encouragement from her parents, Sadie recorded a few of her self penned songs alone in her garage. The four song demo began to circulate and talk of Sadie Blu’s music began to spread around town. Reluctantly, the shy 17 year old agreed to play her first public performance at the local River Walk Festival on the 4th of July of 2007. Soon, there after, Unity Artist Management , based out of Atlanta, picked Blu up.

To Blu’s surprise, opportunities kept pouring in. She was asked to play live on the Blue Plate Special, a radio broadcast from the University of West Florida. By that November she had played famous venues such as Eddie’s Attic, in Atlanta, GA. (noted for acts such as John Mayor, Sheryl Crow, and Sugarland to name a few). Drawing so much attention, Pensacola News Journal published a write up on Blu’s rise, followed by L.A. based magazines and cyberspace publications.

Still moving forward, Sadie Blu is now collaborating with other many other talented musicians.

On Stage 11/2 – Steel String Session

admin — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 08:00:53 +0000

Referred to as “Neo-Classical-Grass” and the “Rhythm Section of the River,” Steel String Session is a dynamic group of acoustic multi-instrumentalists from the Ocoee River region of the Blue Ridge Mountains where three state lines and varied musical genres intersect. They make the most out of what they refer to as regional “schyzo-graphy.”

The musicians of Steel String Session are seasoned artists having shared stages with the likes of David Grisman, The Grascals, Nashville Bluegrass Band, Cherryholmes, Del McCoury Band, IIIrd Tyme Out, and Dr. Ralph Stanley. Their music appeals to all metes of the music-appreciation scale and will make you smile with their sneaky musical asides tucked in at the most unexpected moments. They are as comfortable with hard driving acoustic music as they are with jazz, blues and brazilian choro.

Though the core members of Steel String Session met on the river, they honed their music on the terra firma of local honky-tonks and opry houses. Soon they were playing in front of thousands at festivals… and still at honky tonks, just further a-field. The band is intent on creating a stunningly dynamic acoustic sound that includes original music and songs from the rich heritage of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Kentucky’s bluegrass pastures, as well as the bright lights of Nashville.

On Stage 10/19 – Hudson K

admin — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:00:51 +0000

Perhaps it was the definitiveness of genre with which she started her musical endeavor which lead Christina Horn, a.k.a. Hudson K, to her current style of genre-dissolving anti-pop piano rock. Listening to her music, you can’t help but guess that the classical masters trained her technical eyes and ears. But when she first heard the early sounds of Tori Amos, it occurred to her that she had options beyond teaching piano lessons and accompanying the church choir. Certainly she has been compared to Amos by music journalists in her native Knoxville, and she won’t deny the strength of Amos’s influence on her ambition. Still, she has poured her own earthiness into her style and created a sound that is uniquely hers. This sound found a home first behind the vocals of fellow Knoxville native Matt Urmy in the short lived but loved local indie outfit Teleskope.

The dissolution of Teleskope in 2005 left Horn wondering if it were possible for her to front a band, rather than just support one. It didn’t hurt that her life, at the time of the Teleskope’s parting, was whirling in the heartache and despair of the increasingly common quarter life crisis: the kind of tragedies of which beautiful music is so often made. She wrote what she knew and brought it where she could, usually to the once smoky bars in downtown Knoxville, or any other corner where she could fit her keyboard. It was during this time that she ran into old friend Laura Bost in a dark garage at a party; the two had become acquainted years earlier, in music school, while both were learning to perfect and perform the classical music they were, years later, eagerly leaving behind. Unlike Horn, Bost was a vocalist by training, and was working as a sound engineer. Like Horn, Bost was feeling the compulsion to write and sing something different than what her classical training as a vocalist had been.

It was a surprisingly easy yet unlikely pairing, with Bost’s endearingly sweet southern pitch offsetting Horn’s airy and often haunting growls. Mutual friend Nate (Barrett), already a well-established local musician with regular spots with Artvandalay, Sarah Schwabe and her Yankee Jazz Band, and other Knoxville regulars, soon added percussion, and, during very special occasions, beautiful harmonies to the act. Their first album, Safety Line, was independently released in July 2007, launching a series of performances over the following summer in Knoxville and surrounding southern cities that couldn’t quite be called a tour.

The first live and print reviews were kind to the group’s first effort. But by the fall of 2007, the band had evolved into something distinctly more professional than the talented but naïve trio who had recorded that first album. Horn, Bost, and Barrett were all developing individually, but they were doing so in a way that only brought the band to a smarter and more expressive cohesion. If their sounds of late on the local scene are any indication of what’s to come, Knoxville had better stay tuned: Hudson K may just be pioneering of the emergence of a sound and a scene that this southern city will soon be proud to claim as it’s own original creation.

On Stage 10/12 – Michael Reno Harrell

admin — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:00:09 +0000

Michael Reno Harrell is an award winning songwriter, as well as a veteran storyteller and entertainer, and he’s from the South…the Southern Appalachian Mountains to hone it a bit finer. Four decades of performing have taken him to over forty states and many foreign countries. One could compare Michael’s performances to his granddaddy’s pocket knife, well worn and familiar feeling, but razor sharp and with a point. He gets the job done. His recordings top the Americana Music Association charts year after year and his touring schedule stays full. Michael’s combination of music and storytelling are based in experience, sometimes downright funny, sometimes just plain scary, maybe even with a message worth taking away, but always mesmerizing and entertaining.
Michael has penned hits for Nashville receiving both Gold and Platinum Awards. Michael won First Place in the prestigious Chris Austin Songwriting contest at Merle Fest in 2002. He has recorded with some of the giants in the acoustic field including pals Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas. His storytelling has been described as, “Andy Griffith with an edge” and “…the Appalachian Mark Twain”. Don’t miss an opportunity to immerse yourself in the Southern Experience. As Michael puts it, “You don’t have to be from the South to be Southern, you just gotta live here… and like it!”

On Stage 10/12 – Hannah Miller

admin — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:00:00 +0000

Since writing her first song at age four, Hannah Miller has known exactly what she would be when she grew up. Raised in Dothan, Alabama and educated in the mountains of Asheville, NC, she now calls Columbia, SC, her home.

After her first EP Storms of Summer was released in the spring of 2006, Miller’s reputation as an up and coming singer/songwriter began to solidify, and the doors opened for her to make the trip to Nashville to record with two time Grammy Award-winning producer/engineer Mitch Dane (Jars of Clay). The record boasts an astounding degree of depth and maturity for a freshman LP; on it Dane and Miller have crafted gorgeous sonic landscapes befitting of Miller’s smoky, velveteen vocals. Of the new record Miller says, “I wanted an album that everyone who hears it can find themselves in, and I think we accomplished that. The music is authentic, and listeners immediately identify that.”

Released in January, 2008, the record has already found a wide audience, and is receiving airplay on college and independent radio throughout the Southeast. Miller has also found herself sharing the stage with an impressive cast of characters, including Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion, The Whigs, Danielle Howle, Jennifer Daniels, and Katie Herzig. With features in publications such as The State, Southeast Performer, Skirt Magazine, The Dothan Eagle, and the Free Times, Mrs. Miller is off to a great start, and shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.

On Stage 10/5 – Stephen Simmons

admin — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 08:00:33 +0000

Stephen Simmons was raised in the small town of Woodbury, Tennessee. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father held a factory job. In his family, they were the first generation that didn’t work the farm. Now a singer-songwriter based in Nashville, Tennessee, Stephen’s vision entails more than just reflections of rural America. The songs on his new recording, Something In Between, deal with existential realities that are familiar to country and city dwellers alike: redemption, heartbreak, hangovers and the loneliness of the road.

Like Stephen’s previous records, The Superstore, Last Call and Drink Ring Jesus (which were compared to everyone from Johnny Cash to Ryan Adams), Something In Between combines virtuosic songcraft and musicianship with unparalleled artistic honesty. “Don’t Mind Me,” for example, turns a jaded eye toward the perils of drunken conversation and the frustrations of a barroom troubadour. “And don’t mind me,” he sings, “Just keep it moving along/ The last thing in this world that I need/ Is a bar full of yapping jaws/ And don’t mind me/ Man I’ll pay when I’m done/ Already owed everybody/ Before I ever begun.”

Something in Between differs somewhat from Stephen’s previous work. If anything, the new recording focuses more on the microcosm of human relationships and less on the broader questions of faith and redemption that defined Last Call and Drink Ring Jesus. The title track, for instance, articulates the shifting emotions felt at different times during a relationship. In “We’ll See,” there’s a dark cloud hanging over a new connection. Then there’s the worn and weary lover and his collection of new scars in the rocker “New Scratches,” which is perhaps Stephen’s most confessional work to date.

An all-star cast backs Stephen on Something In Between. Produced by Richard McLaurin (Maura O’Connell, Matthew Ryan) at David Briggs’ legendary House of David studio, the recording makes the most of that facility’s live-in-your-living-room sound. Joining Stephen and Richard are guitarist Joe McMahan (Allison Moorer, Kevin Gordon), steel guitar great Al Perkins (Crosby Stills & Nash, The Rolling Stones), fiddler Tammy Rogers (Reba McIntire, Trisha Yearwood), bassist Billy Mercer (Ryan Adams, Todd Snider) and drummer Ken Lewis (Holly Williams, Amy Grant). David Briggs himself plays on several tracks. The pianist, who’s best known for his long stint with Elvis Presley, has played on recordings by a virtual Who’s Who of pop and country, including Linda Ronstadt, Eric Clapton and Loretta Lynn.

Something In Between is available on Americana Records and Rounder Records Europe.

On Stage 9/14 – Angela Easterling

admin — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 08:10:55 +0000

Angela Easterling was raised in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the daughter of a Baptist minister. Much of her childhood was spent on the farm that has been in her family since 1791. While country roots run deep for this Taylors, South Carolina native, it wasn’t until she moved to Los Angeles, that the country calling in her soul became a siren’s song. A performer all her life, Angela had begun playing guitar and writing songs while studying at Emerson College in Boston. More and more her music returned to the place her heart called home. As Angela began honing her writing and playing live, other artists began to spark her imagination, artists like Emmylou Harris, Loretta Lynn, the Carter Family and Johnny Cash.
All those honky-tonk Saturdays and gospel-drenched Sundays have paid off for Angela, who has embraced her heritage in a big way on her debut album, Earning Her Wings. Working “bit by bit” over a period of two years at various SoCal studios, Angela had amassed a lot of material. In 2006, she took all the pieces to James O’Connell, drummer and producer of L.A. roots-rock band West Coast Grand and owner of Silverlake’s Monkeyden Studios. Together, they waded through her tracks, recording new songs and remixing old ones. “This record represents such a slice of my life for the last few years!” she says. “The songs and the recordings are a visceral piece of me. All my friends (who just happen to be stellar musicians) helped me make this album. It was a real family affair and I think you can hear that in the final product”.
Tracks include River Jordan; about the music that’s “in my blood”. Angela wrote The Accordion with Shawn Davis, but the story is true: “My dad really did trade a truck for an old accordion! That’s so country I had to sing about it.” The 1940’s-era When I Wake Up, is the only non-original on the album. Angela had cherished the song for years but only recently discovered that it was written by distant relative (and prolific gospel song writer) Marion Easterling. “He had songs recorded by the Kingsmen, the Gaithers, Johnny Cash and Ralph Stanley. I’m so proud to share his name and sing his song.”
Angela’s unique sound and soulful writing caught the attention of DJ Doc Holiday and later, Chris Morris, who soon began airing her songs on the “Watusi Rodeo” alt-country show on radio station Indie 103.1. Even with no label backing her, songs such as “River Jordan” and “Earning Her Wings” still resonated with Watusi listeners. After making a few live appearances on the “Rodeo”, Angela went on to perform on the same bill as Lucinda Williams, Deana Carter, Victoria Williams, Dave Alvin, John Doe and Michelle Shocked. Angela has had radio play and appeared live across America, opening for such legendary artists as Ray Price, Radney Foster, Suzy Bogguss and the Oak Ridge Boys. Several of her songs were picked up by the Animal Planet reality series “Horse Power”. In addition, Earning Her Wings was named the top pick of the year by Smart Choice Music, a popular source of Americana music in Europe and the U.K.
Having established a recognizable name in the vibrant West Coast country music scene, Angela says she hopes to bring her music to an even wider audience. She has recently returned to the Carolinas, but plans on spending most of 2007 on the road, with shows booked from Atlanta to Montreal. As a special honor, Angela appeared this fall at the Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion, celebrating the 80th anniversary of the birth of country music in Bristol TN/VA. “I want to be a part of the musical traditions of the artists that came before me, but filter them through my voice and my experiences as a young woman. I want to uplift people. Music has the ability to do that and that is my ultimate goal.”

On Stage 9/7 – Miche Fambro

admin — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 08:05:18 +0000

While there are a number of “guitar greats” to choose from and plenty of vocalists filling the stages, it is a rare performer who combines both. Rolling Stone Magazine dubbed Miché, “…a quiet storm,” and his shows combine that intensity with a playful spontaneity that engages both the senses and the hearts of those who listen. In his most recent review from ListenersGeneration.com, the author writes, “This guy is not only a classical guitar virtuoso; he’s got a set of vocal pipes that are unbelievable.” He goes onto describe “a fantastic performance unlike any I’ve ever heard.”

Miché has toured the U.S. and Canada during the past several years, finding enthusiastic audiences in both major cities and tiny towns. He brings a professional attitude, a light-hearted sense of humor, and a musical show that is often called “a breath of fresh air” to festivals, concert halls, house concerts, coffeehouses and colleges everywhere and anywhere.

Miché performs both as a soloist and with a band – you can watch videos of both at www.miche.com. He also produces a video series titled, “Guitar Lessons” which captures experiences and characters and lessons learned while making a life as a guitarist.

On Stage 8/31 – McClain

admin — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 08:00:41 +0000

A perfect blend of folk, pop and Americana, there is a uniqueness to the sound of McClain that sets it apart from the pack, and yet at the same time their music conjures up a familiarity that recalls something close and personal to the listener.

Pop-Americana act McClain moved to Nashville less than a year ago to further pursue a career that was birthed in a kitchen. Songs sung into a microphone held up by two water glasses and recorded on a simple eight-track recorder emerged as a 12 song LP after the request of intrigued individuals from all across the country. Within two months time all three-hundred handmade albums had been sold, and as a result the long time couple begin to explore the option of pursuing music on a larger scale.

The decision was made to make the traditional move to “Music City,” and soon after their arrival in Nashville McClain joined forces with Producer Mike Odmark (Tyler James, Aron Wright, Daniel Ellsworth). After several night sessions their latest CD “The Ivy EP” emerged. The EP is a complete songwriting experience, shifting effortlessly between Americana and Folk originality.