Genre: Folk

Goldfeather with Damon Daunno, Sullivann

Goldfeather

Damon Daunno

Damon Daunno is a composer and actor, known for Fairy Job (2018), The Last Day of August (2012) and iChannel (2006).

Spotify – IMDB

Sullivann

Sullivann is the project of Brooklyn-based performer and composer, Catherine Brookman. Her debut EP, Elements, will be released in Summer of 2021. Along with making her own work, Brookman is an active performer in experimental music and theatre projects, including recent appearances in Meredith Monk’s ATLAS with the LA Philharmonic, with jazz and pop acts Esperanza Spalding and Lorde, in Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 off-Broadway and Hair on Broadway. She composes music for theatre, film, and opera and her work has been seen at Lincoln Center, The Public, Ars Nova, Nitehawk Cinema, and HERE Arts. Upcoming projects include a new multi-disciplinary work with choreographer, Lisa Fagan, called GIVE IT A GO and a new collaboration with experimental pop artist, Eliza Bagg (Lisel).

Website – Instagram – Facebook

Motherfolk with Texas King

Motherfolk

no one knows if god exists. but motherfolk exists, and for some of us that’s enough.

Texas King

Texas King is Your Ride Home; it’s what you listen to when you get on the bus, when you get off work and you’re driving home listening to the radio. Texas King are a live band that create a safe space for everyone to have a good time – a rock band that sweats charisma, the life of the party – but it’s not about Texas King, they’re not the hero – it’s about the fan – this is about their journey, what Texas King offer is the soundtrack to finding their way through life, their way home..

Circa 2013; Jordan, Phil, Colin, and Melvin came together in London, Ontario to start putting together the hooks and high-kicks of what would eventually become their 2017 debut release Circles. Independently released, the lead single Boomerang quickly became a fan favourite at shows and debuted on the Canadian rock charts at #14. The band toured relentlessly in 2018/19, criss-crossing the country opening for bands like The Sheepdogs or with friends in Royal Tusk, dropping into New York/Los Angeles/Chicago supporting Last Dinosaurs on sold out shows, and eventually finding their way through America and back across Canada with Big Wreck on a 4-month tour at the end of 2019 – all culminating with a sold-out hometown headline show to celebrate. Over that time on the road and into last year the guys shared a series of singles; Greatest Mistake, Giants, and Chandelier – which followed Boomerang onto the rock radio charts, peaking at #39 and currently tracking a half a million streams on Spotify.As we look back at the tread marks on the highway, all roads have led here – where we look out onto the horizon, the fog of Covid-19 slowly starting to clear, and the band midway through a six song EP titled Changes with the first single Not Myself having just cracked top thirty at Canadian radio. With the release date (December 2, 2021) deep in the year – the road ahead to tour and play shows is being paved – the map remains the same, unfolding along the creases, songs ready to claim their place on yourplaylist, on the radio, Texas King is what you listen to, to get you where you need to go.

Squirrel Flower with Mia Joy

Briston Maroney: Sunflower World Tour with Jackie Hayes

The Lighthouse & The Whaler with Cold Weather Company 

The Lighthouse & The Whaler

The story of Cleveland, Ohio’s The Lighthouse And The Whaler is one of perseverance and determination; of personal, cumulative growth and maturity. Formed in 2008, the current trio of Michael LoPresti, Mark Porostosky, and Ryan Walker have released three full-length albums and headlined tours from coast to coast, picking up accolades from the likes of Rolling Stone, NPR, and many more outlets along the way. They’ve been described, at various times over the past decade, as a folk, alternative, and rock band – and the truth is they’ve dabbled in all these areas, and more – but fitting into one box has never been a defining factor for them.

“For me, our sound is more like a concept or an existential experience than it is a specific genre,” LoPresti says. “If you have to boil it down that’s fine, but I want it to be more than that: I want it to be a way of understanding oneself. I can find something about myself that I didn’t realize was there, or I can go and feel emboldened to be the person that I want to be and am trying to be.”

For LoPresti and co, it’s about making a positive impact – of making a difference in people’s lives – and nowhere does that mission come to bear more clearly than on the band’s buoyant and intense long-awaited new single, “Way Back.” “I love that song – it just has this energy,” LoPresti says. For him, it’s a song of returning; of “finding your way back to who you were.” “When we started the band, there was this sense of optimism and a carefree attitude. Sometimes that’s when the best art is made – when you’re not trying to make it for any other purpose than yourself. I thought that really stamped what this record is about: It just hits you in the face. It sets the tone for the whole record.”

Cold Weather Company 

Gathered around the kitchen table of a slate-shingled home in the autumnal forests of Mount Desert Island, Maine sat Brian Curry, Jeff Petescia, Steve Shimchick and their host, Cherie, as they shared chicken stew, port wine and stories. The band was in town on a residency, deep in the writing process of what would become their third album, Find Light. 

On the topic of seizing the opportunities presented in one’s life, Cherie said effortlessly, “If I have the time, I must take the time.” When faced with a chance to pursue a passion, we have a responsibility to ourselves to explore it. While the line became a lyric, the lesson defines the path Cold Weather Company has taken since its start.

Forming in 2013, after a serendipitous meeting on a park bench at Passion Puddle on the Cook Campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the band has always been a shared commitment to the common passions of its three core members. A synthesis of songwriters, Jeff, Steve, and Brian each bring their own inspirations and styles to the project.

Their first two albums, Somewhere New and A Folded Letter, were self-produced in the basements, bedrooms, and rented cabins of the trio, who met up to write and record whenever there was time to spare. Both albums were supported by self-organized tours covering seventeen states. Traveling by micro-bus and Crosstrek—through tornado warnings and snowstorms—the band played small towns and major cities alike, forging lasting bonds and finding inspiration on the road.

Across their first 26 songs, Cold Weather Company explored its sonic potential, building a compositional foundation that would shape the themes and tones of the music to follow. The band’s third album, Find Light, was the first to be recorded in a dedicated studio, allowing each song to come to full instrumental fruition. Following Find Light’s sixteen tracks, and in the middle of recording demos for their upcoming fourth album, the band released an original holiday song, joined in the final chorus by a choir of friends, near and far.

All this because of a random meeting on a bench, and the seizing of an opportunity. The moment arose, and a chance was taken.

Cold Weather Company has been releasing singles throughout the summer of 2020 and is currently working on finishing their fourth album—still writing, recording and performing whenever there is a moment to be taken. There’s so much to look forward to.

Website – Spotify  – Facebook 

Kate Bollinger with Annie Blackman

Kate Bollinger

A word becomes a sound EP (2020)

For Kate Bollinger, knowing how to articulate exactly what she means would take a seemingly unattainable level of communicational prowess. Because of this, her nuanced songwriting gives listeners a framework within which they can project their own experiences. “It is rare that my words represent my thoughts accurately and even in the instances where I feel that they do, I know that I can’t be responsible for the hearing of those words or for the interpretation of them,” she explains. “Sometimes I write in a very specific way, but sometimes it is better to write only the skeleton.”

From a young age, Bollinger turned to songwriting as a way of testing out ideas and stringing together words, perfecting them until they matched her intentions. Memories of her childhood in Charlottesville evoke melodies emanating from the stereo and experimental sounds leaking out of the basement, where her two older brothers recorded with their bands. Bollinger’s mother, a music therapist, released a handful of children’s albums, and she welcomed her daughter into the accompanying choir. Being a small part of an ensemble was freeing, and Bollinger went on to perform in local opera productions when she was still in elementary school. “I was shy when I was little and didn’t want a speaking role, I just wanted to sing and be on stage,” she recalls, laughing. “I still feel that way.”

In adolescence, Bollinger absorbed a spectrum of genres that came to influence her future songwriting. On the family’s CD rack it may have been possible to find pop icons of the early aughts stacked up against classics of her parents’ generations. Feist soundtracked drives with dad, and Bollinger marvelled at the dexterity of those albums, the way they would move from a dance track to R&B to something spare and wholly unexpected. Taking inspiration from her siblings’ musical projects, Bollinger began writing songs, and at 14, her brother Will helped her record one at home for the very first time.

From there, Bollinger started gigging around Charlottesville and eventually won free studio time in a local songwriting competition, but put off studio recording until years later when she had a backing band in place. Bollinger met her primary collaborator, John Trainum, while working on her cinematography degree at UVA. Once Bollinger had a collection she felt especially confident in, she booked her free day of recording and knocked out the songs that made up her EP, I Don’t Wanna Lose, in a single day. The self-released collection presented Bollinger with new opportunities, like opening for Soccer Mommy in Richmond and hitting the road with Wild Nothing while she was still finishing her degree.

On August 21st, Bollinger will release her new EP A word becomes a sound. “I’m really happy with the way that I Don’t Wanna Lose turned out, but everything was so new to me, so I didn’t take things where they could have gone. Every song you hear is a live take and I was so excited to record the songs as I had written them, so there wasn’t much in the way of production after the fact,” Bollinger says. “When we recorded A word becomes a sound, I really pushed myself to actualize what I heard in my head.” Recording the EP was hard-fought; the COVID-19 crisis hit before the band was able to finish, so Bollinger and Trainum were forced to complete the project under unprecedented circumstances. The resulting collection comprises five songs, all of which flit between sonic sensibilities, never once settling on a single sustained mood. Taking inspiration from pop, folk, jazz, and beat-driven experimentation, A word becomes a sound grounds itself in Bollinger’s nimble voice, which fits a torrent of emotion inside of it. “My music has a really soft center and when I write I am finding a balance between something delicate and the darker feelings surrounding it,” Bollinger says. “Many of my songs are about childhood, because I am lucky to have had a pretty idyllic one.”

But what happens when childhood ends and the anxieties of adulthood come to dominate a once-carefree mind? “My songs, and the sadness in them, comes from reflecting on an easier time.” You can hear that sentiment especially well on lead single “A Couple Things,” which is the oldest song on the EP and has been a part of Bollinger’s live repertoire since 2018. It finds Bollinger steeped in shifting familial and interpersonal dynamics over a bed of breezy instrumentation. “You always took care of all my baggage/ It’s hard now it’s somethin’ I gotta do,” she sings. Bollinger describes “Feel Like Doing Nothing” as a dream pop song, one that was written in close collaboration with Trainum and is unlike anything she’s recorded before. Its lyrics yearn for a respite from the weight of responsibility, coalescing with the moody, R&B imbued “Grey Skies,” a song that provokes a sense of ease though it contemplates the inevitability of oncoming sorrow.

“I try to write in a way that leaves each song open to interpretation because I want people to hear their own relationships reflected back at them when they listen to my music,” Bollinger says. She has described it as a collaborative coloring book, a series of outlines waiting to be filled in by a listener’s experiences. To that end, the EP’s title track, “A word becomes a sound” produces a lens to read the collection through. It was inspired by Vladimir Nabokov’s short story “Terror,” in which a man slowly begins to disassociate from his surroundings. Eventually, words lose their meaning entirely. A house is no longer a “house.” A tree is no longer a “tree.” The “self” becomes something spectral and impossible to define, deferential to the porous boundaries of the world. On A word becomes a sound, Bollinger harnesses that sensation of terrifying and enlivening free-fall.

Parker Millsap with Special Guest Molly Parden

Parker Millsap

The fifth album from Oklahoma-bred singer/songwriter Parker Millsap, Be Here Instead emerged from a wild alchemy of instinct, ingenuity, and joyfully determined rule-breaking. In a departure from the guitar-and-notebook-based approach to songwriting that shaped his earlier work, the Nashville-based artist followed his curiosity to countless other modes of expression, experimenting with everything from piano to effects pedals to old-school drum machines (a fascination partly inspired by the early-’70s innovations of Sly Stone and J.J. Cale). As those explorations deepened and broadened his musical vision, Millsap soon arrived at a body of work touched with both unbridled imagination and lucid insight into the search for presence in a chaotic world.

Produced by John Agnello (Kurt Vile, Sonic Youth, Waxahatchee) and mainly recorded live with Millsap’s full band, Be Here Instead marks a stylistic shift from the gritty and high-energy folk of his previous output, including 2018’s acclaimed Other Arrangements and 2016’s The Very Last Day (an Americana Music Association Awards nominee for Album of the Year). With its adventurous yet immaculately detailed sonic palette, the album warps genres to glorious effect, at one point offering up what Millsap aptly refers to as a “disco-Americana showtune.” In another creative breakthrough, Be Here Instead forgoes the character-driven storytelling of his past in favor of a more introspective and endlessly revelatory form of lyricism, an element he traces back to the charmed nature of his songwriting process. “Because the lyrics were appearing seemingly out of nowhere and with no prior intent, some of them started to feel like transmissions from my subconscious, rather than the preconceived linear stories or waking thoughts of my earlier songs,” says Millsap. “They feel like words I needed to hear from myself, and not just things I wanted to say to someone else.”

On “The Real Thing”—the luminous lead single to Be Here Instead—Millsap presents a brilliant introduction to the album’s kaleidoscopic sound, merging the song’s cascading guitar lines and potent grooves with a tender statement of devotion (e.g., “I been through your roses, honey/I don’t mind the thorns”). Sparked from an experiment in open tuning and featuring guest vocals from Erin Rae, the track gracefully transforms a moment of private longing into a bit of prescient commentary. “I wrote ‘The Real Thing’ when I was touring and missing my wife, and hating how being on FaceTime doesn’t feel anything like being in the same room,” says Millsap. “But then as 2020 happened, the lyrics grew new teeth—now it’s much more of a reflection of how hard it is to experience any spontaneous interaction when everything happens on livestreams and Zoom.”

In its candid meditation on the intricacies of connection, Be Here Instead also delivers standouts like “Vulnerable,” a lushly textured piece of psychedelic soul threaded with elegantly simple wisdom. “I wrote that one when I was newly married,” says Millsap. “Something about standing in front of a room of people and saying ‘This is the one’ gave everything an extra weight, and made me think about how I’m still learning to openly communicate what I’m feeling. Because if you hold back instead of just being honest, eventually it’s going to come out in some other way. So the best practice is just to be vulnerable—it’s never really worth it to try to be tough.”

Another track demonstrating the sheer power of Millsap’s artistic impulse, “Dammit” began as a complex and slow-paced ballad, then evolved into a kinetic two-chord anthem (thanks in part to a failed attempt at creating a U2-like number, as per Agnello’s suggestion). One of the album’s most majestic moments, “Dammit” unfolds as an unlikely epic that perfectly captures the nuances of existential frustration (“It’s hard to be a dancer, baby, when you’re living in your head”) while working up a furious momentum that’s nothing less than exhilarating.

Although Be Here Instead often finds Millsap wandering into new terrain, the album remains firmly grounded in the sophisticated musicianship he began honing as a kid growing up in the small town of Purcell. Raised on Texas singer/songwriters like Townes Van Zandt, he started writing songs on acoustic guitar in his early teens, then made his debut at the age of 19 with the 2012 album Palisade. With his self-titled sophomore effort arriving in 2014, Millsap released both The Very Last Day and Other Arrangements to widespread praise, with famed rock critic Ann Powers dubbing him a “star in the making” and Rolling Stone stating that the latter album “mingle[s] the sacred and profane to rollicking effect.” Through the years, he’s also made his name as a captivating live act, opening for the likes of Jason Isbell, Patty Griffin, and Lucinda Williams and taking the stage at major festivals like Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits, and Newport Folk Fest. And in a particularly memorable turn of events, Millsap joined singer/songwriter Sarah Jarosz for a 2016 show in Atlanta and drew raves from none other than Sir Elton John, who hailed the performance as “one of the best concerts I have ever seen” and noted that the night “restored my faith in music.”

In looking back on the making of Be Here Instead, Millsap points out that his recently discovered love of painting also informed the free-flowing creativity he brought to the album. “My wife’s grandfather was an artist who did watercolor paintings, and a few years ago I decided I wanted to try it,” he says. “I very quickly found out that watercolors are really hard to work with: you have to embrace your mistakes, and then let them guide you along. It’s made me think about how when you mess up, you’re basically revealing your humanity, which is what music’s all about. When I listen to records, I love when Ray Charles’s voice cracks, or when you hear the squeaking of the kick-drum pedal on a Led Zeppelin song. Anything that shows the living, breathing quality of the whole thing—that’s always wonderful. That’s what we’re here for. So don’t be afraid to let it happen.”

Molly Parden

Born and raised in Jonesboro, GA to a family that had little exposure to music apart from a church hymnal, Molly Parden’s career in music is something of a mystery—something that happened to her more than it was ever anything she set out to achieve. When none of her siblings took a particular interest in music at a young age, Molly inherited a violin built by her great uncle—discovering her lifelong love for music through the haunting simplicity of melodies, long before she ever heard pop music, picked up a guitar, or started singing songs of her own.

In spite of a natural middle-child diffidence and reluctance towards the spotlight, it didn’t take long for Molly to establish herself as a promethean musical force in Nashville’s vibrant underground and beyond. Since relocating to Music City in 2013, Molly has toured the world as a bassist, guitarist, and singer—joining the backing bands of Atlanta’s indie songstress, Faye Webster; west coast troubadour Sam Outlaw; and Austin Texas’s boozily existential poet, David Ramirez. While at home in Nashville, Molly paid her bills as a waitress, and in the studio with her voice—providing her uniquely fragile and captivating harmony vocals on over 50 records in just a few years. Though Molly rarely recorded or performed her own songs since her first album “Time Is Medicine” (2011) that she made with the help of Kickstarter backers and friends, the few songs she did release garnered millions of plays on streaming platforms and a small body of devoted listeners throughout the world. Her growing number of fans and champions encouraged Molly to team up with longtime friends Juan Solorzano and Zachary Dyke, both having made their marks on Nashville’s indie music scene as producers and multi-instrumentalists themselves, to properly release another record of her own.

The result was “Rosemary”—an EP of fragile indie tunes that are as haunting as they are comforting, beautifully raw and yet just out of reach.From the effortless, transcendent melancholy of “Feel Alive Again,” to the flirty pop nostalgia of “Who are We Kiddin’,” each of Molly’s songs enchants the listener with a disarming union of aloofness and intimacy—timeless tunes in a postmodern soundscape. If it weren’t for the persistent reminder of a distressed 808 snare loop, a tune like “These Are The Times” wouldn’t be out of place on one of Chet Baker’s classic records from the 50’s:

I wonder if you think of me

I hardly ever think of you

Only when I use my legs to walk

Only when leaves do somersaults

You know it’s just on days the mail goes through

These are the times I think of you 

These unassuming phrases and searching melodies drift and whirr in your head as you listen—staking their claim on your memories long after her songs have gone silent. But for all its unapproachable beauty, the heart of Molly’s music is humble and profoundly human. They are songs that remind us that heartbreak isn’t simply another marketable human emotion, but is more like a familiar place—a sacred space within all of us. We are all born with a deep sense of loss, and great art has a way of articulating our personal tragedies—both the ones we’re born into, and the ones we write and direct ourselves. It makes listening to “Rosemary” feel like falling into a dream or a distant memory—a beautiful reminder of something we’ve known all along.

Accessible accommodations should purchase a General Admission ticket and will be taken care of at the venue day of event.

An Evening with Steve Gunn & Jeff Parker

Wheelwright (formerly Jared & the Mill) with Ali Awan

Wheelwright

Wheelwright brings a western sound of pop and grunge from the sprawling desert city of Phoenix, AZ.  Blending devil may care spirit commenting with the tumultuous contemporary relationships and existentialism that comes from hope and youth in a world that isn’t kind to either.  None of his songs are idealistic, they capture a rugged wholesomeness that comments on the human experience.  No darkness without light, no laughter without at least some suffering, no thoughtfulness without some recklessness.  Songs of self acceptance and love without the kumbaya bullshit, but rather the idea that we are all beautiful and flawed, stuck here together, whether we like it or not.  His songs are self admitting and allow listeners to meet him where they truthfully are.  Not where they’ve been or where they want to go.  But what is directly in the mirror in front of them.  It’s brash and it’s honest.  The true beauty is that everybody has things about themselves that they don’t like, they have things that they would change about themselves, but they also have spirits, and hopes, and dreams and light inside of them despite the darkness that seems to hang over us as we march into the uncertainty of what’s next.

Spotify – Apple Music – Instagram – Facebook

Ali Awan

Ali Awan was born to an immigrant Pakistani father and first-generation Turkish mother just outside of Philadelphia, spending most of his early life in transit. That upbringing coupled with a love for sound and expression made a life in music natural to him. After his debut release “Citadel Blues”, an eastern cityscape of sampled drums, field recordings, & instrumentation dubbed “ferocious” by WBEZ’s Sound Opinions host and Chicago Tribune writer Jim DeRogatis, Awan formed an alternating live band and has been writing, touring, and recording under his name ever since. To date, he has shared stages with the likes of Natalie Prass, Low Cut Connie, Cherry Glazerr, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, The National Reserve, Ex Hex, Vacationer, and many more.

Awan’s latest material is a six song summation of his emotional state over the past 12 months entitled “Moon Mode” that ranges from reverb drenched swamp rock and roll to dreamy synth meditations. The EP’s title track will be available April 9th, followed by “Climb” on May 7th, with the entire “Moon Mode” EP set for release June 11th via Born Losers Records.

Spotify – Apple Music – Instagram – Twitter