Upcoming Artists
Maura O’Connell, Two time Grammy nominee
“A lot of people think every singer is someone’s puppet,” explains Maura O’Connell from her home in Nashville. “That they are not fully invested in the song – that they are at the whim of a producer or a songwriter or a band. Singing has been denigrated like that for too long.” Widely acclaimed throughout her career as a vocalist and interpreter of utmost grace and insight, O’Connell’s latest album is a defiant, boldly undiluted statement on art of singing. Naked With Friends consists of thirteen tracks of singing – and nothing more – and is decisive evidence that singing is more than enough.
The Alison Brown Quartet
An internationally recognized musician with a wide-reaching and loyal fan base, banjoist Alison Brown first came to national prominence when she was asked by Alison Krauss to join her band Union Station in 1989. Brown had already made a name for herself prior to that by performing extensively with fiddler Stuart Duncan, amongst others and an occasional pick-up session, which included Vince Gill, Byron Berline, John Hickman and others.
The Chapmans
The Chapmans continue to enlarge their fan base to include Americana, bluegrass and acoustic country genres. Albeit a young band, they have been touring professionally for almost two decades, while fans and peers alike have nominated and honored them with numerous awards for their songwriting, instrumental, vocal and entertaining talents. Having played thousands of shows, they’ve evolved into a band with a great artistic formula which reaches any size and aged audience, crossing several genres of music.
Aly Sutton
Vietti Chili’s own brand ambassador, Aly Sutton, is a Country Music Artist who can really rock your boots off!
Shannon Quinn
Shannon Quinn is the latest young musician making her mark on Canada through performance. At 20 years of age, Shannon Quinn is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, dancer and composer. Having been performing with her father Tony for 12 years, she has been featured among many successful recording artists, and in turn has become one herself. She was born and raised in beautiful Halifax, Nova Scotia; a place full of musical talent.
Big Daddy Love
BIG DADDY LOVE brings a natural blend of grass, roots and rock to the emerging North Carolina music scene. With fiery vocals, sweet-sugary harmonies, authentic song-craft, and undeniable musicianship, the quintet delivers high-energy performances comprised of their own brand of good-time music. It is the startling power of these live shows that resonate with their audience. Genuine and intensely personal lyrics captivate and connect. Be captivated. Get connected. Feel the love.
Jill Andrews
Jill Andrews has been a musician all her life: from her first original tune in kindergarten – a ditty about the letter P – to the stage at Fillmore East. And this year, the heart-stopping voice and June-apple face of the everybodyfield’s embarks on an exciting new solo project. Jill picked up a guitar for the first time when she was 19 and a camp counselor in East Tennessee. Armed with only three chords, she had all she needed to create deep and soulful songs with lonesome melodies and haunting lyrics.
Blue Mother Tupelo
Ricky and Micol Davis, shortly after marrying in 1994, began their musical life together at an open mic night in Knoxville, Tennessee. Their latest CD, Heaven & Earth, has made waves across Americana and Roots Rock Radio stations worldwide. It debuted at #2, behind Kris Kristofferson, on the EuroAmericana Charts for November of 2009.
18 South
18 South's music is created by a wide array of influences. The organic and earthy quality of their sound rings with overtones of Blues, Bluegrass, Jazz and Gospel that lends itself perfectly to their stripped down acoustic approach that is truly "Americana". The Band members resume's read like a Encyclopedia of Musical History and once you see them live you'll know why they are individually some the most well respected musicians on the scene today.
Gary Nicholson
Whether you are looking for a hit song, a cool guitar groove, a great record production or a top entertainer, Gary Nicholson is your "go-to" guy in Music City, U.S.A. A 2006 nominee for the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Nicholson has had more than 350 of his songs recorded, has won 26 ASCAP songwriting awards and is responsible for more than a dozen major hits. Unlike most tunesmiths, he is not bound by musical genre. His songs routinely top the country hit parade. But rock bands, blues artists, folk stars and bluegrass acts have also embraced him as a songwriter.
Seth Walker
“The first time I heard Seth Walker at a small club in Nashville I was impressed like I haven't been impressed in 30 years, with performance, presence, and great songs.” - Delbert McClinton It would seem to those previously unfamiliar with Seth Walker that he emerged practically overnight as one of the fastest rising stars in blues and roots music. Prior to his recent move to Nashville, the 37year old singer and guitarist hung his hat in Austin for 15 years and has been finetuning his songwriting and soulful croon since his late teens.
Barry and Holly Tashian
Barry and Holly Tashian are established touring musicians and duet singers based out of Nashville. They have written songs for Kenny Rogers, Solomon Burke, Ty England, Daniel O’Donnell and others, and recorded with Emmylou Harris, Tom Paxton, Nancy Griffith and Iris DeMent.
Marshall Chapman
Marshall Chapman was born and raised in Spartanburg, South Carolina. To date she has released ten critically acclaimed albums, and her songs have been recorded by a variety of artists including Emmylou Harris, John Hiatt, Wynonna, Joe Cocker, Irma Thomas, Jimmy Buffett, Jessi Colter, Dion, Tanya Tucker, Russ Taff, Olivia Newton-John, Sawyer Brown, Mindy McCready, Conway Twitty, Greg "Fingers" Taylor, Crystal Gayle, Ronnie Milsap, and The Uppity Blues Women. She has toured extensively on her own and opened shows for everybody from John Prine and Jimmy Buffett to Jerry Lee Lewis and The Ramones.
Minton Sparks
Fusing music, poetry and her intoxicating gift for storytelling, wildly original spoken word artist Minton Sparks releases her latest triumph, Open Casket. Her debut live show DVD is yet another ground breaking performance that further proves Sparks is in a category all her own. Sparks peeks over the edge into the warm spot where most would prefer sleeping relatives lie. Open Casket is a raucous, provocative, brilliant one-woman show featuring Minton alongside world-class musicians: guitarist John Jackson, blues pianist Steve Conn, guitar and mandolin virtuoso Pat Flynn and special guest, Irish singing sensation, Maura O'Connell.
Red Molly
"Everything Red Molly sings is delivered with tick-tight arrangements, crystalline vocals, and caramel harmonies. But what is most striking is the ardor they bring to everything they do, whether snuggling into the sweet parochialism of an old spiritual, or the gritty pathos of a Gillian Welch tune. They come on less like stars strutting for their minions than pals sharing their favorite songs. In the friendly world of the coffeehouse, that remains a starmaking quality." -Scott Alarik, The Boston Globe
Harpeth Rising
“Harpeth Rising, warm, honest and true music by four exquisite musicians.” Peter van Zeijl, Folk en Zo Harpeth Rising met at Indiana University, each individually pursuing degrees in classical performance. Four years later they all graduated, still entirely enmeshed in the classical world. Then, one beautiful summer weekend in June of 2006, a trip to a bluegrass festival inspired Jordana and Rebecca to take a big chance. Rebecca took up the banjo for the very first time, and she and Jordana hit the road. They busked their way across the western United States and ended up in Hawaii (in a round-about sorta way.)
David Olney & Sergio Webb
Mark "Sergio" Webb is a talented Texas born Nasville based guitarist who played with Pinto Bennett and The Famous Motel Cowboys, Gail Davies and currently partners David Olney for his live gigs. He also releases solo albums "Long Green Hour" and occasional collaborative band projects like "Poet, Soldier, Wiseman, King". Over an impressive professional career spanning four decades, David Olney has built a reputation not as a kind-hearted troubadour, but rather as a performing songwriter with a sharp literary mind that often cuts to the bone of the human condition. Whether the subject matter is heartbreak or armed robbery, Olney’s cinematic style and fearless approach to lyric writing have won him a reputation as a kind of musical outlaw. Listening to his new CD, One Tough Town, is like watching a Sergio Leone western: it’s gritty, smart and dangerous and you can’t take your eyes off the screen.
Elizabeth Cook
In contemporary country music, it's a rare performer who will dare to take on the industry on her own hogs-and-kisses terms. But for the artist whom Nanci Griffith has called "this generation's Loretta Lynn," it takes a certain tenacity to meld smart attitude with classic tradition, the credibility of a life lived with genuine hillbilly passion, and the integrity to write an acclaimed cache of uncommonly cool songs. In other words, for Elizabeth Cook, it takes balls.
Jon Byrd
Jon Byrd lived his formative years in small town America in the piney woods of south Alabama, one county over from the birthplace of legendary country artist Hank Williams. When Jon was eight years old, his dad was diagnosed with TB and began singing Jimmie Rogers' "TB Blues" around the house. That same year Jon saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, and his obsession with the musical tension between country and rock was born. The very next year he was conscripted into the drum corps of his tiny school's marching band and played Booker T. and the MG's "Green Onions" while the majorettes held the cymbals and danced. There was no turning back.
Kevin Gordon
Over the course of twenty years of writing, recording and touring, Kevin Gordon has built an impressively consistent catalog of songs, a critically acclaimed stack of albums, and a reputation for dynamic live performances that make first-time listeners life-long fans. He is currently completing his next full-length album, to be released later this year. Among the new material is a 7-minute piece titled “Colfax”. The song has already generated some great press.
The Wrights
In 1998, I was living with a couple of guys in a rundown little house back in my hometown of Newnan, Georgia. I worked at a bar and grill during the day and would set up and play there on the weekends--sometimes by myself, sometimes with a little blues trio. We'd do lots of J.J. Cale, Jimmy Reed, Howlin' Wolf...some Dylan, Willie Nelson. Anything really. Things were kind of on cruise control for me then. I worked, came home, and wrote songs or played guitar. I didn't really hang out with a lot of people. I pretty much kept to myself. Even on the nights that we were playing, I'd go outside between sets and just walk up and down the sidewalk. Music wasn't my only friend, but in those days it was probably my closest.
Jim Lauderdale
Jim Lauderdale is a multi-talented performer and songwriter, with successes in both country and bluegrass music. His roots stem from the Carolinas, yet his career has taken him all over the United States and abroad, making him an international recording artist with an ever-growing fan base. Jim won "Artist of the Year" and "Song of the Year" at the first "Honors and Awards Show" held by the Americana Music Association in 2002. Subsequently, he has hosted this same show for the last seven years.
Dana Cooper
“I’ve always considered myself an outsider as far as the music industry goes,” Dana Cooper says. “I focused on a grassroots career by making albums I liked and that I took to people by playing live. Now that’s what everyone says is the new music model, that you build a sustaining career by playing live and sticking to your own vision. If that’s the case, then I figure I’m ahead of the game, because I’ve been doing it that way for more than 30 years.” With his newest release, The Conjurer Cooper strikes a powerful balance between a lived-in, natural artistry and a passionate desire to speak one’s truth. Finding that balance between craft and art takes experience, and this is where Cooper’s lifelong commitment to his work shows: Having started performing more than 40 years ago at age 16, he owns an expert craftsman’s skilled hand and a dedicated artist’s constant desire to tap deeper into his own experience.
Ray Wiley Hubbard
When F. Scott Fitzgerald issued his classic conclusion that ‘There are no second acts in American lives,' he failed to envision the career of legendary Texas troubadour Ray Wylie Hubbard. A willing conspirator in the late seventies Cosmic Cowboy revolt that ushered in the mythical Outlaw era, Hubbard was a catalyst in the cultural upheaval that led to the peaceful coexistence of Lone Star music enthusiasts who comprised each end of the social and political spectrum of that troubled time. In the stellar company of iconic colleagues like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Doug Sahm and Jerry Jeff Walker, Ray Wylie Hubbard was an architect of the musical legacy that continues to inspire subsequent generations of up-and-coming Texas talent.
Two Man Gentleman Band
The Two Man Gentlemen Band’s original brand of raucous, retro vaudevillian swing is fast becoming an underground sensation. Three short years ago, The Gentlemen were playing marathon sets for tips in New York City’s parks and subways. These days, they traverse the country incessantly, playing hundreds of shows per year for legions of dedicated fans and even catching the attention of big-names like Bob Dylan & Willie Nelson, for whom The Gents opened a handful of shows last summer.
Monte Montgomery
Monte Montgomery has taken the acoustic guitar beyond anyone's expectations. With his amazing fretwork, unique combination finger and pick style playing through trailblazing "chordal" thoroughfares often baffling even the most accomplished players. While Monte remains a huge enigma in the guitar universe, his legendary reputation has spread like wildfire since he appeared on Austin City Limits. In 2004 Monte was named on Guitar Player Magazine's list of "Top 50 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time" and in 2005 he was featured the Covers of "Frets" and "Acoustic Guitar" magazines. Countless articles have been written about Monte describing him "The Evel Knievel of Guitar", "Six Strings Attached To Dynamite", "The Answer To The Fermi Paradox" and "The Acoustic Shred Master" just to name a few. Monte's fretwork has become the benchmark for acoustic guitar players. "An American Original", there is no doubt Monte Montgomery is destined to become An American Legend.
Phil Lee
If Phil Lee was as good at knife-throwing as he is at songwriting he would be on the David Letterman show three times a week. He may very well be that good at it – he practices enough - but listening to any one of his excellent CDs, including this new one, has great rewards and fewer risks - at least for the audience. Phil has never feared, personally or lyrically, to scamper out on a limb with a gleam in his eye and a hacksaw in his hand. Sometimes a club owner or promoter will “suggest” that certain of his songs might ruffle a local feather or two but danged if he won’t have those very birds squarely in his corner before the night is done. Charm, guts and great material can get you a long way. Like Wile E. Coyote, he has a knack for recovering from the most explosive circumstances but unlike that hapless canine he usually ends up on top and grinning. This has been of immense help in his previous incarnations as a truck driver, roadie, huckster and bon vivant. Phil Lee likes to say that “at a hundred, my age, weight and IQ have all averaged out.” Maybe so but if that’s true he’s sure getting maximum output in all three areas. He writes constantly, eats a sensible diet and, peripatetic as hell, he won’t hesitate to haul out of his Nashville habitations in his pickup for a gig in Wisconsin on a Friday, cannonball from there to Missouri on Saturday and hit Indiana on Sunday - after church of course.
Rob Ickes & Robinella
Rob Ickes : A Northern California native, Rob Ickes moved to Nashville in 1992 and joined Blue Highway, the highly esteemed bluegrass band, as a founding member in 1994. He is recognized as one of the most innovative Dobro players on the scene today, contributing signature technique and greatly expanding the boundaries of the instrument's sonic and stylistic territory. He won the International Bluegrass Music Association's Dobro Player of the Year award for a record-setting eleventh time in 2009; IBMA notes that he is the most awarded instrumentalist in the history of the IBMA awards. Robinella : Robinella’s career began with a sort of luck that rarely comes to most artists within their lifetime. What started out as a simple husband-and-wife duo fresh out of college quickly grew to a full-fledged band that blended Bluegrass, Country and Jazz. The combination of Robinella's honey-sweet vocals with violin, mandolin, bass, drums and piano captivated audiences, thus creating the ever popular Robinella & the CC Stringband.
Doug and Telisha Williams
Doug and Telisha Williams hail from Martinsville, Virginia, where boarded up factories stand as monuments to how fast the world can change. When they write and sing songs about dying small towns, they know what they’re talking about. The unemployment rate where they live is 20.2 %. When you hear them sing songs about a couple of hard luck kids who made some bad decisions and wound up in jail, you’ve got to remember that Doug & Telisha are still good friends with those kid’s family. The songs for their latest record, Ghost of the Knoxville Girl, weren’t written by people who like to imagine what it’s like “out there,” instead they came from stories told across kitchen tables or between friends after a couple of pitchers at the Ten Pin. “Seems like everybody we know is living what you read about in the papers,” says Doug. “The unemployment is 20.2%, and we’re all feeling a little desperate and pushed against the wall. This record couldn’t help but echo what we’re seeing and hearing. ”
Sue Foley & Peter Karp
Peter Karp : Peter Karp is a gifted American troubadour, a master songsmith with an art for spinning true-to-life emotions, humor, and candor. With an upbringing that was equal parts southern Alabama and the swamps of New Jersey, Karp's music is fueled by the Yankee-Rebel juxtaposition. Sue Foley: Sue Foley is considered to be one of the finest blues/roots artists working today. Born to a working class family Sue spent her early childhood moving from Canadian town to town with her mother. At 16 she embarked on her professional career. By 21 she was living in Austin TX and recording for legendary blues label Antone's Records.
The Black Lillies
Born in the rumbling cab of a stone truck and aged in the oak of Tennessee’s smoky night haunts, The Black Lillies have come to the forefront of the region's Americana scene in little more than a year. Founded by multi instrumentalist and vocalist Cruz Contreras, co-founder of Robinella and the CCstringband, and singer-guitarist Leah Gardner (Maid Rite String Band), The Black Lillies have created their own unique brand of country, roots, rock and blues via Appalachia. The group, formed in 2008, also includes bassist Taylor Coker (Robinella and the CCstringband), electric guitar and pedal steel whiz Tom Pryor (the everybodyfields), and drummer Jamie Cook (the everybodyfields).
The Dixie Bee-Liners
Known equally for her golden pipes and lead foot, the dulcet-throated BRANDI HART is a native of the Bluegrass State. She grew up singing and playing music in Southern Baptist church choirs, where she got her start at the tender age of 2. Her thoughtfully penned originals cover a surprisingly broad range, from hard-driving bluesy scorchers to ancient-toned instrumentals. A prolific songwriter, Brandi is currently at work on three distinct bluegrass concept albums. She was featured in the OFFICIAL ASCAP/IBMA SONGWRITERS' SHOWCASE at World of Bluegrass 2006 in Nashville. She plays rhythm guitar, Nashville guitar, fiddle, and mountain dulcimer... and has been known to moonlight in theater, dance, and voiceover acting!
