Chicago-based singer-songwriter Jenny Gillespie’s follow up to her 2004 EP Love and Ammunition is the floating, piano driven Light Year.
Like a Joni Mitchell record, it’s filled with delicate piano melodies and non-standard guitar tunings giving the songs a slightly off-kilter sound.
Still, she manages to make the eight songs work, tying them together with her gliding vocals that can jump from nearly spoken to ethereal.
With their special blend of modern honky-tonk, The Sweetback Sisters released their first full-length record, Chicken Ain’t Chicken and have been touring the East Coast.
The morning after a show in Asheville, N.C., lead singer Emily Miller took some time to talk with us about the record, the best song topics and a newly discovered love of rhinestones.
Equipped with his guitar, a pile of songs, a voice that’s a hybrid of Tom Petty and Gram Parsons, and experience from leading The Seed Band while at Illinois State, Ernie Hendrickson started his solo career on the right foot.
His second record, Walking With Angels, has twelve songs of pure and unadulterated Americana pop. And we mean that in the absolute best way possible – it’s bright in spite of the sometimes depressing lyrics and has the perfect twang:classically-styled rock ratio.
If there’s one thing Ricky and Micol Davis (the husband-and-wife team behind Blue Mother Tupelo) know, it’s their harmonies.
Their latest record, Heaven & Earth, showcases the duo’s ability to play off of the other’s voice and their combined skills on everything from piano to banjo.
“I’m so excited to be here in this beautiful room,” Angie Stevens said, taking the stage at Denver’s Swallow Hill Music Center.
With her band, The Beautiful Wreck, and opening support from Canadian singer-songwriter Catherine MacLellan and David Berkeley along with special guests Seth and Josh Larson, she played her first show on the Daniels Hall stage to a hometown Friday-night crowd.
With each new album Brandi Carlile seems to find a new way to impress. Her latest and greatest, Give Up The Ghost touts heartbreaking lyrics, perfect harmonies and spine-tingling vocals delivered as only Brandi can.
Of course, guests like Elton John, Amy Ray and Benmont Tench (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers) and production by Rick Rubin only add to the wonderful sound created by her core band: Josh Neumann (cello) and the twins, Phil (bass) and Tim (guitar) Hanseroth.
Coles Whalen has one of those unique voices that, like a masked bandit in the Wild West, holds your ears captive.
She started singing with the Colorado Children’s Chorale and then sang jazz as a teenager in Denver before embarking on a two-year tour of the country, playing up to 8 shows a week. She’s since moved back home, but still spends most of her time traveling with her band.
The Whistle Stop Road Record, her latest disc, is a musical train ride on a speeding locomotive through folk, rock and blues.
There’s an edge to Johnny Cooper’s music that sets him apart from a lot of the other 20-something musicians: it’s a little southern rock, a bit of blues, a touch country and a little unpredictable, like the red dirt roads that crisscross the area where he grew up.
Having begun his musical career at 16, playing in the nightclubs and bars of Texas and Oklahoma, his second record, Follow is the next step along the pathway to becoming a national act.
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