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Turning on the radio, computer, or television can seem like a gamble, at best. Each new tuning offers a deluge of anxieties to greet us. In the face of this 21st century tumult, Humming House is on a quest. They do not want to wish away the pain and fear all too real in our lives, but to put those elements in conversation with the elements that sustain us: hope, partnership, even joy. And so, their newest album begins with Tam's unmistakable voice intoning, "I want to be your companion." It's an appropriate beginning for a band who has built itself on complex musicianship and careful collaboration. They know the value of hard work and compromise. Their music is evidence of the thrill of creativity.

Humming House is Justin Wade Tam, Bobby Chase, Joshua Wolak, and Benjamin Jones. The band formed organically out of jam sessions that Tam held in his living room in East Nashville-evidence that some of the best projects come from spontaneous collaboration and the subsequent seeing it through. Now, three albums and six years later, Humming House continues to embody what is best about the Nashville each transplant chooses to call home.

What Humming House does so well is paint sonic landscapes that are at once compelling and honest, even in the most rollicking of songs. Revelries, Humming House's second full-length album released in 2015, was largely influenced by the band's history of touring. Its songs revealed the power and revelations that come from travel. Companion, to be released by Soundly on the 6th of October 2017, continues to pursue that which transforms. In part, it is still movement, movement that comes easily to the body as well as movement driven by the unease we daily brush up against. What's most powerful about Humming House is their ability to be present with you, to take those moments in life that seem mundane and shift the lens so that they are rendered extraordinary. Theirs is a music of presence.

Humming House maintains that sense of intimacy that derives from making music with friends altogether in the same room. It is fun combined with substance. With Tam's sincerity, Jones' groove, and Chase and Wolak's charm, their live shows extend the invitation to participate. As Dustin Ogdin observes in No Depression, "Humming House exudes restraint and a wily intelligence. They never pander to their crowd, but do respect them. They also seem to understand that the best music comes from an exchange between artist and audience rather than simply one giving and the other receiving."

These essential traits of Humming House are evident in Companion. The story of the album mirrors the story of the band: it's one of collaboration, experimentation, and showing up for each other over and again. There are songs of hope and of desperation so that the prevailing mood is one of exchange and balance. In the spirit of experimentation, the band threw out the constraining rule that they would only write with acoustic instruments. While those sounds still center the creative impulses of the songs, the added electric experimentation and expanded instrumentation imbue the new songs with a dynamism that is irresistible. Tam notes that the "extremes of the record in emotion are wider on this album. There's more desperation, but there's also fun and an upbeat aspect that's more joyous." The first half of the album is infused with Indie Rock, especially in songs such as "Can't Stay Away," "Takin' Over," and "Make it Through." The influence of quirky 90s rock, a la Cake, is there too. "Takin' Over" adheres to the Humming House desire to move you and is emblematic of those moments in our lives where the rhythm of the things that we love: music, friends, family commandeer our bodies until we're compelled to move in joy.

"Sign Me Up" and "Companion" nod to Paul Simon, while "Silver Lining," "Find What Waits," and "London" gesture to Humming House's long engagement with classical composition and songwriter driven melodies so strong in the realm of Americana. The album isn't all hip swinging bravado; halfway through, "Silver Lining" will stop and compel you to attend to the broken things that shape us. "Make it Through" and "Hope in My Head" are prisms to transform difficult days into livable ones. "I Want It All" does justice to the nostalgia and influence of a favorite album, while "Sign Me Up" conveys the increasing distance between our digital, urban lives and the ecosystems that sustain us.

"Wishing Well" is a late album gem. It opens with the observation, "Be patient with the ones you love / because we're not here for long enough / to judge," and so the song is an invitation to come to terms with our collective humanity, a difficult enough feat in the current torrid climate of politics, environmental concerns, and general unease. Thankfully, Humming House is dedicated to honest songwriting, attending to the complex interactions that shape us, and is committed to being present with us in their albums and live shows. What choice do we have but to respond? Theirs is a music that places us.

Crystal Bowersox, a northwest Ohio native currently calling Nashville home, has built her life around music. Crystal’s love for music developed at an early age from a need to find peace in a chaotic world. Through art and creation, Crystal was able to direct her energy and emotion, finding a way to mend a mind in turmoil. For her, music was always the most effective form of catharsis, and she would play for anyone, anywhere. In her own words, “my guitar was an appendage. I couldn’t live without it.”

Dead set on a career in music, Crystal moved to Chicago as a teenager, where she spent her days performing underground on subway platforms in between working odd jobs. While in the big city, she broadened her musical horizons and shared her talents with a variety of venues, ultimately auditioning for the ninth season of American Idol. Crystal’s time on the show proved to be well spent, as she immediately left the the soundstage for the recording studio. Since her introduction to the world through television, Crystal has released two LP’s, two EPs, and several singles. Additionally, she has used her talents to benefit several causes close to her heart, and has become an advocate and inspiration for people living with Type 1 Diabetes.

However, it is what’s in front of her, not what’s behind her, that will define Crystal’s personal and professional evolution. The accomplished singer-songwriter is set to release a new project – a live album, recorded at the Kitchen Sink Studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico, cleverly titled Alive. Not only is the title a play on words, representing the rawness of the tracks, but it pertains to the place where Crystal currently is in her life. That place is one of joy, fulfillment, and stability for Crystal and her eight year old son, Tony.

To create her newest project, Crystal called on her “chosen family” of musicians. The combination of keeping those she cherishes close to her and taking an honest look at life has resulted in the truest music she has released to date. Crystal has drawn on her various influences — across folk-pop, classic rock, soul, blues and country — to make the kind of music that resonates with her spirit. It is both tender and tough, rough yet polished, and it encompasses many genres without falling neatly into one category. As one of her songwriting partners describes it, Crystal has “a voice like dirt and diamonds.” Her music is intended to bring a positive message of love and light to the world – things that folks will be able to take with them on their own journey, so that they, too, can feel truly alive.

Similar to her beginnings, Crystal intends to make music that has healing power, but at this point, she sees far beyond her own troubles. Her live show is a safe space for concertgoers. Attend a Crystal Bowersox show, and you just might see a grown man cry and a child dance simultaneously. You’ll also likely get the chance to meet her personally; Crystal is typically the first one to arrive and the last one to leave the venue. Meeting with the fans and hearing their personal stories is something Crystal considers a blessing in her life.

By reliving her own painful moments in song, Crystal hopes to transcend that pain, lifting herself and her audience to a higher place. In the opening lines of “A Broken Wing” she sings, “I know there’s beauty in the burden / And even on my darkest day that sun will shine.” Crystal’s story is one of resilience and perseverance, and it’s evident in every note of her newest release, Alive.

Play just the first 10 seconds of “The Mountain,” which opens Geronimo, the latest and most ambitious release from Shane Smith & The Saints. Robust a cappella, four-part harmonies set the stage for a saga of family tragedy, a young son’s revenge and a blaze burning eternally in a Pennsylvania mine. The vivid lyrics, powerful vocals and thumping four-beat drums throughout this song are reason enough for lovers of creative roots music to celebrate.

From their home base in Austin through performances across the country (17 states) and abroad (Ireland), these five gentlemen have not just stuck stubbornly to their musical and lyrical convictions. They’ve defied audience expectations by delivering incendiary shows, each one ignited by the band’s ability to unleash, feed from and feed back the energy of the crowd — in spite of the fact that they don’t fit easily into any musical category.

With Geronimo, they’ve dared themselves to exceed their own expectations.

Each song begins with Smith creating its “bones,” in the form of chords and lyrics. He then joins fiddler Bennett Brown, lead guitarist Tim Allen, bassist Chase Satterwhite and drummer Zach Stover to bring those bones to life. Aside from a bit of cello, some horns and a few keyboard parts, the band lays down each note on Geronimo. Their ability to bring songs to life has even earned them opportunities to record instrumental tracks for other artists.

Smith’s ability to draw images from everyday life into poetry goes back to his earliest days in Terrell, Texas, an hour east of Dallas.

“There was an old Catholic church right next to our house,” he recalls. “To this day, I remember those church bells ringing. In fact, I use that reference in a song from Geronimo called ‘Suzannah,’ which is about a guy who’s fighting a war and is thinking of his hometown — and he also remembers being raised with a church bell ringing on the hour every day.”

Before he ever thought of himself as a songwriter, Smith was concerned mainly with tennis. He played for the formidable program at Tyler Junior College before transferring to St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas. Smith soon began getting into music as well, playing solo gigs in local bars. And he began writing, inspired by looking at life as it played out around him.

“I’d be in a restaurant and overhear someone saying something, and I’ll have to excuse myself, walk outside and write a note to myself about it,” he says. “These days, I make little iPhone recordings. The other day I made one about this homeless guy I saw by the side of the road out in the middle of nowhere. He was dirty and worn out but he was picking these gorgeous flowers. I constantly see moments and images and statements, put them in the bank and have them there to reflect on and make into honest lyrics down the road.”

Even when he writes a love song, Smith almost can’t help but turn the mundane into something transcendent. On Geronimo, he does this with “All I See Is You”: “The storm’s running through the Midwest like a bandit on the loose. / All the clouds are black as night and all I see is you. / The rain’s pouring through the window panes and the cracks of this roof. / Tea’s boiling from the spout of the pot, but all I see is you.”

Recorded and self-produced while on the road throughout Austin, Dallas and Nashville, Geronimo weaves these images into story lines, each enhancing the other, together coming alive. “I love trying to tell stories through songs,” Smith observes. “There’s something that fascinates me about echoing old tales in songs to carry them on for years and years, like old folk songs.”

And so we travel with a newly freed slave in the nineteenth century, hearing the music and feeling the exuberance of dancing in Congo Square on “New Orleans.” We feel the rueful reflection from a sinner who “spent time on the wrong side of the church door” on “Right Side of the Ground.” We stand shoulder to shoulder with the Alamo’s doomed heroes as their final seconds near on “Crockett’s Prayer.” And the title track serves a dual purpose, taking us to a heroic time and place while making a broader statement about this project.

“On one end, it is an attempt to pay tribute to the life of Geronimo, the Apache warrior,” says Smith. “I’ve always been fascinated by Geronimo and the principles he stood for. This also presented the perfect opportunity to relate the term ‘Geronimo’ with our intensions of this album and the ‘jumping from a cliff’ idea that it symbolizes. If we are going to attempt a career in music, this album is our commitment to give it everything we’ve got.”

“Our goal with this album was never to put out a bunch of catchy singles and be all over the radio,” explains Smith. “It was to set us apart, with meaningful lyrics, huge harmonies and the sound of a hard-working band that has played some crappy gigs and come out stronger for it. We always had the options to either make a ‘safe’ record or put something out that sounds like us and no one else.”

“We took that second option and named it Geronimo.”

Grammy nominated NY-based stand-up comedian Wyatt Cenac is also an Emmy and WGA Award winning performer, writer, and producer. Armed with an "attentive, inquisitive perspective" (AV Club) and an "hilariously understated style" (Paste Magazine), he has become a favorite of audiences and critics alike.

On June 30th, 2016, Night Train with Wyatt Cenac premiered on NBCUniversal's comedy-focused subscription-video service SeeSo. The digital series, based on the popular long-running weekly Brooklyn stage show, is a freewheeling mix of stand-up, music and other surprises, where anything can happen and anything is welcome. Night Train with Wyatt Cenac captures the amazing talent and spontaneity that has made the live show a staple of the New York comedy scene for the past three years. Wyatt hosts and executive produces the show.

On February 26th, 2016, A Special Thing Records released Wyatt’s third comedy album Furry Dumb Fighter. Wyatt's second hour standup special, Brooklyn, which he also directed, premiered on Netflix in October 2014. The special was also released as a limited edition vinyl-only album of the same title on Other Music, which was nominated for a 2015 Grammy for Best Comedy Album. The TV hour was listed as one of the "11Best Standup Specials of 2014" by Vulture and was praised as "some of his best, funniest insights" by The AV Club. Wyatt's first hour special Comedy Person premiered
on Comedy Central in May 2011, earning him a spot on Paste Magazine's "Best
Comedians" list of that year. The album of the special was named one of the "Best
Comedy Albums of 2011" by Huffington Post.

Wyatt stars in the TBS ensemble alien abduction comedy series, People of Earth, alongside Alice Wetterlund and Ana Gasteyer. People of Earth is directed by Greg Daniels (The Office, Parks and Recreation) and produced by Conaco in association with Warner Horizon Television.

From 2008 to 2012, Wyatt was a writer and popular correspondent on the hit latenight Comedy Central series The Daily Show with Jon Stewart where he earned 3 Emmy Awards and one WGA award. He also spent three seasons writing for FOX’s King of the Hill. On the big screen, Wyatt has appeared in the mockumentary Jacqueline (Argentine), which screened at Sundance in early 2016, Mike Birbiglia's acclaimed film Sleepwalk With Me, David Cross' feature Hits, Darren Grodsky's independent film Growing Up (and Other Lies) and Barry Jenkins' Medicine for Melancholy, which was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards. He also served as Executive Producer alongside Jay-Z on the feature An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, which screened at Sundance in 2012 to rave reviews, with The New York Times describing the film as "a most lovely and meticulously handmade hodgepodge of art and feeling."

Grammy nominated NY-based stand-up comedian Wyatt Cenac is also an Emmy and WGA Award winning performer, writer, and producer. Armed with an "attentive, inquisitive perspective" (AV Club) and an "hilariously understated style" (Paste Magazine), he has become a favorite of audiences and critics alike.

On June 30th, 2016, Night Train with Wyatt Cenac premiered on NBCUniversal's comedy-focused subscription-video service SeeSo. The digital series, based on the popular long-running weekly Brooklyn stage show, is a freewheeling mix of stand-up, music and other surprises, where anything can happen and anything is welcome. Night Train with Wyatt Cenac captures the amazing talent and spontaneity that has made the live show a staple of the New York comedy scene for the past three years. Wyatt hosts and executive produces the show.

On February 26th, 2016, A Special Thing Records released Wyatt’s third comedy album Furry Dumb Fighter. Wyatt's second hour standup special, Brooklyn, which he also directed, premiered on Netflix in October 2014. The special was also released as a limited edition vinyl-only album of the same title on Other Music, which was nominated for a 2015 Grammy for Best Comedy Album. The TV hour was listed as one of the "11Best Standup Specials of 2014" by Vulture and was praised as "some of his best, funniest insights" by The AV Club. Wyatt's first hour special Comedy Person premiered
on Comedy Central in May 2011, earning him a spot on Paste Magazine's "Best
Comedians" list of that year. The album of the special was named one of the "Best
Comedy Albums of 2011" by Huffington Post.

Wyatt stars in the TBS ensemble alien abduction comedy series, People of Earth, alongside Alice Wetterlund and Ana Gasteyer. People of Earth is directed by Greg Daniels (The Office, Parks and Recreation) and produced by Conaco in association with Warner Horizon Television.

From 2008 to 2012, Wyatt was a writer and popular correspondent on the hit latenight Comedy Central series The Daily Show with Jon Stewart where he earned 3 Emmy Awards and one WGA award. He also spent three seasons writing for FOX’s King of the Hill. On the big screen, Wyatt has appeared in the mockumentary Jacqueline (Argentine), which screened at Sundance in early 2016, Mike Birbiglia's acclaimed film Sleepwalk With Me, David Cross' feature Hits, Darren Grodsky's independent film Growing Up (and Other Lies) and Barry Jenkins' Medicine for Melancholy, which was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards. He also served as Executive Producer alongside Jay-Z on the feature An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, which screened at Sundance in 2012 to rave reviews, with The New York Times describing the film as "a most lovely and meticulously handmade hodgepodge of art and feeling."

It's only a matter of time until Hollywood snaps up the story of how singer-songwriter Bonnie Bishop connected with Dave Cobb, one of the hottest producers in the business, to unlock her inner soul singer and record the best album of her career: "Ain't Who I Was" (May 27; Thirty Tigers/RED).

Even though Bishop can barely believe it herself, it's a story that will need no dramatic embellishment, because every twist of fate - and faith - is absolutely true.

Before landing with Cobb, whose credits include Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson, Bishop had thrown in the towel on her country-leaning career, too frustrated, beat-up and broke to go on after 13 years, five albums and one failed marriage. It landed on the rag pile despite monogramming by her idol, Bonnie Raitt, who recorded a Bishop/Big Al Anderson co-write on her comeback album, "Slipstream." The song, "Not Cause I Wanted To," topped the New York Times' year-end best-of list, then "Slipstream" won 2012's Best Americana Album Grammy. Bishop also popped onto iTunes' country chart in 2013 with a song delivered by Connie Britton, the star of ABC-TV's hit series "Nashville."

But a girl can only live so long on accolades and exposure. After spending 200 nights a year on the road - loading her own gear, running her own sound and sleeping in her van - and still not earning enough to afford Christmas presents for her family, Bishop knew she'd hit a dead end.

"I started to break down mentally and physically from the stress," she confesses. When a panic attack sent her to a Nashville emergency room, she was told to take a rest. So Texas-raised Bishop, who'd moved to Nashville in the hopes of writing Raitt-worthy songs, retreated to her parents' ranch in Wimberley, outside of Austin. Feelings of failure and despair gnawed at her psyche; she went into mourning for the death of her dream.

"I spent three months crying and feeling sorry for myself, then decided I had to figure out what to do," explains Bishop, her voice bright and cheerful. "I had all these amazing stories from the road, and I started writing them down as a way of healing. Then stories from childhood started coming out, and I started seeing these threads in my stories in a way that allowed me to celebrate what I had done, instead of beating myself up for having failed. I thought maybe I could make a career doing that. So I applied to graduate school."

But before leaving Nashville, she called Thirty Tigers co-founder David Macias, whose multi-faceted entertainment company handles Lucinda Williams, Patty Griffin, Simpson and Isbell - whose Cobb-produced release won 2015's Best Americana Album Grammy.

"David always believed in me," Bishop says. "I told him what was going on in my life, and he said, 'I don't think your music career is over. You just need to make a great record with a real producer.'"

He sent Cobb some demos. Cobb invited her to lunch. At the time, he was working with Stapleton, recording what would become 2015's Best Country Album Grammy winner and 2016's ACM Album of the Year.

Bishop flew to Nashville to meet him. Cobb told her she should be singing soul, not country, and that he'd been wanting to record a soul album.

She was thrilled. As a child in Houston, she'd heard her surgeon father, a former musician, playing blues piano, and her cellist mother spinning Motown singles. After they split, her mother married football coach Jackie Sherrill, who took a coaching job at Mississippi State.

"I am from Texas, but there's a lot of Mississippi in me," Bishop offers. "I definitely got my soul from hanging with all the black girls in choir there. That's how I learned to sing."

She credits her late songwriter friend Tim Krekel with helping her rediscover her "bluesy voice." Krekel had also written with Stapleton, and when Cobb mentioned to Stapleton and his wife, Morgane, that he was meeting Bishop, Morgane said, "I love Bonnie Bishop's voice! You have to do this record!"

Bishop didn't even know Stapleton had co-authored her favorite Krekel song, "Be With You," when she added it to her setlist after singing it at his funeral (he passed away from cancer in 2010). It's one of several standout tracks on the album. But before she recorded it - or any others - she had to face another series of panic-inducing challenges.

"It was very scary for me to make the mental space for hope to live again, because I was so afraid of getting my heart broken by music," she admits. "I had doubts about whether or not I could still even sing. I was nervous as hell."

Plus, she had no idea what Cobb actually had in mind. "I just had to trust this person," Bishop notes. "At the same time, I'm having this huge mental battle because I'd worked so hard to kill this dream, and then here I am … it required complete faith that there was a purpose to this."

She also had debt from the semester she'd just completed in the graduate creative writing program at Sewanee University of the South, outside of Nashville. (Bishop earned her undergraduate degree in sociology and musical theater from the University of Texas.) When her album investor bailed at the last minute, her friend and manager, Dave Claassen, had to talk her down from another freak-out, reassuring her that it would somehow work out. (His motto, she says, is "just show up.")

Cobb picked six songs from her list of 36, including six she co-wrote, and they found two more. One is "Done Died," a spiritual he discovered on YouTube, sung by an old Mississippi bluesman named Boyd Rivers. Cobb had been saving it for someone special; when she heard it, she cried.

"That's totally how I feel, like I died and I'm coming back to life," she explains. "I'd already had that spiritual transformation years before, but now I'm having it again musically." In Bishop's version, which slinks like a full-bellied crocodile from gutbucket blues to raw, unfettered soul, her sandstone voice captures the frenzy of a born-again believer as it rises to the heavens.

"[Cobb] knew that I had a deep story that I wanted to tell and he really helped me do that," Bishop says. It's a story of transformation, expressed in lyrics of longing, loss, loneliness and finally, resurrection.

"The record is called 'Ain't Who I Was' because I'm not the same person I was, personally or musically," says Bishop. "I was at a point where I just didn't know anymore. I didn't even have a vision, and this amazing producer came alongside me and believed in me and pulled my voice back out and made me get back up and sing."

She chokes up while describing the experience, but one thing is clear: Her vocal prowess was never an issue. She just hadn't worked with someone who knew how to unleash its full power. On this release, she gets right to it with the funky opener, "Mercy" (recorded as "Have A Little Mercy" by Ann Sexton), answering wah-wah guitar licks with a gritty groove. Then she gets soft and whispery on "Be With You," creating a sound so intimate, its almost as if the listener becomes the lover she's singing to.

On "Not Cause I Wanted To," she confesses to her ex how much pain she carries after leaving him; if the ballad, which takes us to church with a Wurlitzer-filled bridge, somehow sounds even more soulful than Raitt's version, it's because this writer lived it.

Bishop again laments that hurt, but with a completely different approach, on "Too Late," a co-write with Ford Thurston. Here, she conjures Dusty and the Supremes while dancing through a storm of needle-sharp guitar notes.

"It was simple arrangements and cool grooves, and I loved the sounds I was hearing as we recorded," Bishop says. "It's the record I always wanted to make and didn't know how. And Dave did. Without having ever seen me live, just hearing three acoustic demos, he pulled it out of me when I thought was dead. It was such an incredible thing."

But she really gets to the heart of the matter with "Broken," one of three she penned with keyboardist Jimmy Wallace. It's a sweeping, emotion-filled ballad, tailor-made for playing over a movie's closing credits. When Bishop lets loose on the chorus, singing, "I don't wanna be /Broken anymore/Don't wanna see pieces of me/Shattered on the floor," you can hear every tear she spilled while writing those lines. It truly is a knockout performance.

When Macias heard it, along with the other tracks they'd done, he announced Thirty Tigers would pay for the album and help get it heard.

"All these Davids believed in me and brought me back to life," says Bishop. "I feel like I'm truly living a fairy tale. All I do on a daily basis now is get up and say thank-you, Jesus that this is all going on and show me how to show up today. Show me how to show up and not think too hard about it and not beat myself up and not allow what happened in the past to affect what I do today. … That is the gift that Dave Cobb gave me. And I'm so grateful and so excited."

She's also thankful she recorded with Cobb when she did; his work is winning so many awards, he's more in demand than ever.

If Bishop and Cobb should share an award someday, that'll be icing for the movie. But with or without that scene, she knows the message she wants it to convey: That dreams do come true. As long as you keep believing.

"Dreams are lifetime visions," Bishop says wisely. "And life is valleys and mountains. And if you can accept that, you'll be fine."

'Ain't Who I Was' Track Listing:
1. Mercy
2. Be With You
3. Looking For You
4. Done Died
5. Poor Man's Melody
6. Broken
7. Too Late
8. Ain't Who I Was
9. Not Cause I Wanted To
10. You Will Be Loved
Follow Bonnie Bishop here:

Good Man is an original, melody driven, acoustic/electric hard rock band from Pittsburgh, Pa. The band consists of former members of the bands Stache and Stoney Kurtis and was formed in the early part of 2017. Good Man brings a professional edge with top notch musicianship and emphasis on strong vocal harmonies and soaring guitar lines. Their live show brings an energetic and fun atmosphere that anyone can enjoy. They are available for all types of shows including headlining, opening slots, festivals and charity events. Doug, Mike, Jason and Jon have been friends for years, but now together, they are Good Man.

Whether seen on HBO's Treme or at their legendary Tuesday night gig at The Maple Leaf, Grammy-winning Rebirth Brass Band is a true New Orleans institution. Formed in 1983 by the Frazier brothers, the band has evolved from playing the streets of the French Quarter to playing festivals and stages all over the world. While committed to upholding the tradition of brass bands, they have also extended themselves into the realms of funk and hip-hop to create their signature sound. “Rebirth can be precise whenever it wants to,” says The New York Times, “but it’s more like a party than a machine. It’s a working model of the New Orleans musical ethos: as long as everybody knows what they’re doing, anyone can cut loose.” In the wake of the sometimes-stringent competition among New Orleans brass bands, Rebirth is the undisputed leader of the pack, and they show no signs of slowing down.

Following the Grammy-winning Rebirth of New Orleans, Rebirth Brass Band is at it again with Move Your Body, an infectious, groove-laden collection of hip-shakers sure to saturate the dance floor.

Rollicking originals like "Who's Rockin, Who's Rollin'"? and "Take 'Em to the Moon" reaffirm the band's position as head of the brass throne while the rasta-esque "On My Way" and leave-nothing-to-the-imagination lyrics of "HBNS" showcase the unit's talent for penning unabashed party starters.

Boasting a mastery of Rebirth's signature "heavy funk" sound, Move Your Body pushes and swings, leaving behind an 11 track thumbprint, approved by the Frazier brothers themselves, of a sultry Tuesday night spent dancing on their home court at the Maple Leaf Bar in New Orleans.

Doomtree co-founder, punk philosopher and lyrical bomb-thrower Stefon Alexander, aka P.O.S, makes tight, declamatory music that builds on the Minneapolis-bred rapper and producer’s penchant for grinding beats and radical lyrics. Known for welding hip-hop with guitar squalls, screamed vocals, and futuristic beats fit for a Berlin nightclub, P.O.S steps even further into genre-blurring territory with Chill, dummy, his first official release with Doomtree Records since his 2004 debut Ipecac Neat. The album reflects on the past three years since a near-fatal kidney transplant sidelined him from making music and deals with the the difficulties of trying to maintain peace of mind and navigate through a confusing world which is becoming increasingly more alienating. P.O.S’ production fingerprints are all over this one as he maneuvers through a wide range of sprawling beats contributed by himself, usual suspects Lazerbeak and Ryan Olson, and newcomers Cory Grindberg and Makr. Several friends touch down along the way to offer up biting commentary and varying points of view (Allan Kingdom, Astronautalis, Kathleen Hanna, Justin Vernon, Open Mike Eagle, Busdriver, and Lady Midnight to name a few), but the album never suffers from an oversaturation of scattered voices, instead using everyone’s individual ethos and strengths to build a unifying call to arms. The result is P.O.S’ most bold, honest, and daring work to date, so Chill, dummy.

Pere Ubu is a rock band that considers itself to be working within the mainstream of the genre.

Pere Ubu make a music that is a disorienting mix of midwestern groove rock, "found" sound, analog synthesizers, falling-apart song structures and careening vocals. It is a mix that has mesmerized critics, musicians and fans for decades.

The Pere Ubu project was supposed to be an end, not a beginning. Assembled in August 1975 to be the Crosby Stills Nash & Young of the Cleveland music underground, the plan was to record one, maybe two singles and exist no more. Within months, however, those first self-produced records were being snapped up in London, Paris, Manchester, New York and Minneapolis. Pere Ubu was changing the face of rock music. Over the next four decades they defined the art of cult; refined the voice of the outsider; and inspired the likes of Joy Division, Pixies, Husker Du, Henry Rollins, REM, Sisters of Mercy, Thomas Dolby, Bauhaus, Julian Cope and countless others.

Singer David Thomas named the band after the protagonist of Ubu Roi, a play by Frenchman Alfred Jarry. The single, "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" b/w "Heart of Darkness," released in 1975, was the first of four independent releases on Hearpen Records and, along with Television's "Little Johnny Jewel," signaled the beginning of the New Wave. In the early to mid-70s the musicians who were to form Pere Ubu were part of a fertile rock scene that also produced 15-60-75, The Mirrors, The Electric Eels, Rocket From The Tombs, Tin Huey, and Devo.

The group's first album, The Modern Dance (1978) was a startling work that influenced an entire generation of bands. Its follow-up, Dub Housing (1978), was the masterpiece, "an incomparable work of American genius." Pere Ubu toured Europe extensively in 1978, supported by the likes of The Pop Group, Nico, Human League, The Soft Boys and Red Crayola. Late in 1979 Tom Herman left and was replaced by Mayo Thompson, the guitarist from 60s Texas psychedelic-rock legends The Red Krayola. The Art Of Walking (1980) followed, a challenging stew of inside-out song structures. Anton Fier (The Feelies, Peter Laughner's Friction, The Golden Palominos) replaced Scott Krauss in the middle of 1981 and recorded Song Of The Bailing Man (1982). At the end of an American tour in December 1981, and after months of growing friction between two members of the group, the band ceased to exist as a functioning unit.

In 1981, Thomas recorded the first of two albums with British folk-rock guitarist Richard Thompson. Three more solo albums featured members of the dormant Ubu. The last of these, 1987's Ubu-like Blame The Messenger (by David Thomas and the Wooden Birds), led to the reanimation of the Pere Ubu projex. The line-up had been Thomas, Allen Ravenstine, Tony Maimone, Chris Cutler and Jim Jones. Jones was a stalwart on the Cleveland scene and a member of nearly every good band to come from it, at one time or another. Cutler, drummer in English prog-rock outfits Henry Cow and Art Bears, was an early advocate of Ubu and subsequently became a friend of the band. At a Wooden Birds appearance in Cleveland, Krauss sat in with the band. The two drummers line-up sounded good. Later, at the beginning of a European tour, in the lobby of a hotel in Ijmuiden, Holland, Pere Ubu was reactivated. Krauss was asked to join as a second drummer. The clattering Tenement Year, recorded for a British label (Fontana) headed by Ubu fanatic Dave Bates, followed in March 1988.

Teamed with another Ubu fan, producer Stephen Hague (Pet Shop Boys, New Order, etc.), Ubu shifted gears for 1989's Cloudland, an epic journey across the landscape of America. Tired of touring and the grind of it all, Ravenstine retired to take up a career as an airline pilot for Northwest Airlines. He was replaced by Eric Drew Feldman (Captain Beefheart, Snakefinger) who appeared on Stereo Review's Record of The Year, Worlds In Collision (1991), produced by Gil Norton (The Pixies). Cutler, unable to juggle all the demands of his many musical projects, had to leave. The Pixies invited Ubu to support them on an extensive tour of America in 1991. Feldman, subsequently, joined The Pixies as a sideman and worked on Frank Black's solo projects. When Feldman was unable to record with Ubu because of these commitments the band decided to record what would be the last Fontana album, Story Of My Life (1993), as a four-piece.

Garo Yellin, playing an electrified cello, and veteran of The Ordinaires and several of Thomas' solo projects, was recruited to fill the "synthesizer" slot. They Might Be Giants invited Ubu to support them on a tour of America in 1993. Subsequently, Maimone left to work in the They Might Be Giants band. He was replaced by Michele Temple who had previously replaced him in the Jones/Krauss 80s side project, Home & Garden.

In January 1994, again without a major label, the band recorded demos for a projected album, Songs From The Lost LP, intended to be a tribute to Smile. Krauss left... again. Yellin, busy with his quartet in NYC, was replaced by Robert Wheeler, organic farmer, Ravenstine-protegé, and president of the Thomas Alva Edison Birthplace Foundation. Thomas announced that he was now ready to become the producer for Pere Ubu and that was what he was going to do. Raygun Suitcase (1995), awarded CD Review's Editors' Choice Award, was recorded to a click track in the hope that Krauss would change his mind. When he didn't, Scott Benedict, the drummer in Temple's group, The Vivians, came in over a weekend, the last weekend of production, and recorded all the drum parts in one of the most magnificent displays of studio-craft the band had ever experienced. The next week he retired to take up landscape gardening. Steve Mehlman, Benedict's replacement in The Vivians, replaced him in Ubu.

In August 1995 Jones retired from the road for health reasons. Herman rejoined the group for the Raygun Suitcase tours, and together with Jim Jones recorded Pennsylvania (1998), a highly acclaimed album nominated by one of America's preeminent rock critics, Greil Marcus, as the best of 1998. In 1999 the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame promoted a special event, "55 Years of Pain," honoring Pere Ubu and the grand-daddies of the Cleveland scene, 15-60-75. The event was repeated at the Royal Festival Hall in London later in the year, and at the "Fall of The Magnetic Empire Festival," curated by Thomas and staged at New York City's Knitting Factory, and during which Wayne Kramer of the MC5 joined the group as guitarist for one show.

The release of St Arkansas (2006) was celebrated by The Mighty Road Tour. A "splinter" group within the band, referred to as The Pere Ubu Film Group, premiered a live underscore to a rare 3-D screening of Ray Bradbury's "It Came From Outer Space" at the Royal Festival Hall, London, in October 2002. A highly successful 6-date tour of the underscore in the United Kingdom followed in November 2004. The group premiered its underscore to Roger Corman's "X, the Man With X-Ray Eyes" at 'Celebrate Brooklyn' (New York City) in 2004.

After a decade of perfecting a "hyper-naturalistic" recording method (junk-o-phonics), Thomas produced Why I Hate Women (2006). It was recorded, for the most part, without the use of 'professional' microphones. Instead an array of 'junk-o-phones' designed by long-time engineer Paul Hamann were used. These included an array of speakers salvaged from broken devices, wooden boxes, metal horns, panes of glass, even doors, wired into specialized electronics.

The band's most ambitious project, which would culminate in the release of "Long Live Père Ubu!" (2009), began in July 2007. It was an adaptation of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, recorded, again, using junk-o-phonics in such a way that the acoustic quality of the sound itself becomes a narrative voice. A theatrical production, Bring Me The Head Of Ubu Roi, and a radio play of the theatrical production became part of the project. British singer Sarah Jane Morris joined the group for the project. Cult filmmakers, The Brothers Quay, created animations for the theatrical production. On April 24 and 25, 2008, "Bring Me The Head Of Ubu Roi" premiered at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, and was subsequently staged in its full theatrical state at the Animator Festival in Poznan, Poland, July 11 2009, and at the Festival Scènes d'Europe in Reims, France, on Dec. 16 2009. A concert version called "Long Live Père" toured in Europe and the USA.

Lady From Shanghai (2013) marked the fulfillment of a twenty year project working out the Chinese Whispers methodology. A book of the same name, written by David Thomas, accompanied the release. (It was his second book; the first was called The Book of Hieroglyphs.) In July of 2013, an underscore to the 60s cult film 'Carnival of Souls' was premiered at the East End Film Festival in London. Songs and musical pieces written for the underscore were developed over the course of a tour of the United Kingdom, Italy, Croatia and Ireland, in November 2013, undertaken by a 'shock troops' version of the band. Each night ideas were improvised from scratch. The album Carnival of Souls (release date September 8 2014) resulted. Clarinetist Darryl Boon had contributed to a couple songs on 'Lady From Shanghai.' Over the course of the making of 'Carnival of Souls' he was fully integrated into the group.

In 2014, Pere Ubu renounced its 'US citizenship' and applied for creative asylum in Leeds, England, after a cabal of the American Federation of Musicians and a clique of government clerks in a small town in Vermont determined that Pere Ubu was unworthy of being granted permission to perform in America.

In 2015, with the vinyl box set Elitism For The People, Fire Records began a re-release program that will eventually encompass the entire Pere Uu catalog. Architectre Of Language followed in 2016 and 'Drive, He Said' in March 2017.

The Pere Ubu Film Unit, a subset of the band, continued with live underscores to the 1962 cult classic Carnival Of Souls. Another subset of the band, The Pere Ubu Moon Unit, dedicated to improvised performances, made more appearances.

In 2016, Cleveland guitarist Gary Siperko (who also is a member of Rocket From The Tombs) joined the band and toured in America with the Coed Jail! lineup.

As the recording of 20 Years In A Montana Missile Silo proceeded through the autumn of 2016, Kristof Hahn, from The Swans, became involved. For a number of years he had been a regular visitor to the Ubu dressing room. After hearing early recordings of the material, he wrote to David, "Gives me goosebumps. I would like to be involved in even a small way." He appears on all tracks playing steel guitar.

In 2016, Pere Ubu signed to Cherry Red Records. The Pere Ubu Moon Unit played some European festivals over the summer.