Steel Pannist Jonathan Scales Shares Stories Of Exploratory Duet Project ‘Scales & Friend’ (INTERVIEW)
What do you get when you put a steel pannist in a room with a saxophone player? Or with an accordion player? Or with a rapper, a hammered dulcimer player, a spoken word artist, or a darbuka player? In the case of Jonathan Scales’ video duet series, Scales & Friend, you get an exploration of […]
Time Sawyer Revs Up The Songwriting Machine On ‘Mountain Howdy’ (INTERVIEW/VIDEO PREMIERE)
North Carolina band Time Sawyer is having a whole lot of fun, and it shows on their seventh studio album, Mountain Howdy (out 9/13). The synergy between the five members is palpable, from the commanding rhythm section of Court Wynter on bass and Jordan Nelson on drums, to Luke Mears’ playful and intuitive guitar solos, to Houston […]
Emerging Artist J.S. Ondara Makes Voyage From Kenya to Minnesota & Astounds With ‘Tales of America’ (INTERVIEW)
In Tales of America, his stunning full-length debut album, J.S. Ondara holds a mirror to the promise of his adopted country. His voice, at the same time resonant and fragile, is front and center in the spare arrangement, and the effect is haunting and shattering as he explores the paradox of today’s America from an […]
Dane Page Weaves Modern Textures With Old School Songwriting Via Full Length Debut ‘Selma’ (INTERVIEW)
25-year-old North Carolina songwriter Dane Page grew up wanting to be a lead guitarist. He had no interest in singing or writing songs until about halfway through college when he fell into a rabbit hole of classic literature. Hemingway led to Twain, who led to Steinbeck and to Vonnegut. Spending time surrounded by words, and […]
Gregory Alan Isakov Takes Lifelong Songwriting Skills To The Farm On New Album ‘Evening Machines’
Gregory Alan Isakov’s fourth full-length studio album might be a very different album if he wasn’t also a full-time farmer. On his Colorado farm he grows salad greens for chefs, including arugula and mizuna lettuce, as well as cucumbers, carrots, beets and turnips. On a back field he grows heirloom corn seed and a bean […]
Composer/Steel Pannist Jonathan Scales Talks New Fourchestra Album ‘PILLAR’ & Being A Self Professed Music Nerd(INTERVIEW)
On PILLAR composer and steel pannist Jonathan Scales mines his emotional landscape to create eight songs that are as honest and evocative as they are intricate and complex. With his band, the Jonathan Scales Fourchestra (consisting of himself, bass player E’lon Jordan-Dunlap, and drummer Maison Guidry), along with a host of stellar guest artists including […]
Mipso Ventures Far From Roots On Fourth Album ‘Edges Run’ (INTERVIEW)
Edges Run, Mipso’s fourth full-length album, takes the North Carolina band far from their roots, both geographically and sonically. The quartet (Joseph Terrell on guitar, Jacob Sharp on mandolin, Wood Robinson on bass, Libby Rodenbough on fiddle, all on vocals) formed when the band members were all students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel […]
Ben Sollee Reveals Making of New LP ‘Kentucky Native’ (INTERVIEW)
What do you get when you take a string band and move them into a log cabin in Kentucky for a week and a half to record an album? Probably not what you think. Kentucky Native, the new release from innovative cellist, vocalist and songwriter Ben Sollee, does delve into bluegrass music but it layers […]
The Steel Woods Employ Truth in Fiction Sensibility on ‘Straw in the Wind’ (INTERVIEW)
In their self-produced first full-length album, Straw in the Wind, Southern rockers The Steel Woods employ dark Biblical and rural imagery to set the scene for battles between good and evil, in the most primal of conflicts. The musical terrain is just as gritty. The songs live where the rougher side of country tangles with […]
Introducing David Childers – A Most Unique Creator of Song (INTERVIEW)
Run Skeleton Run, David Childers’ sixth solo album (Ramseur Records, March 5th), starts off with the title track, a raucous warning to a discontented skeleton that refuses to rest in peace, and it ends with “Goodbye to Growing Old,” a declaration of his acceptance of the passage of years. In between, Childers sings about the […]