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The Midnight Hour is Black excellence: an ode to the cultural sophistication that the Harlem Renaissance established for its people. The Midnight Hour is comprised of Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge, alongside a tight rhythm section and a full orchestra.

Last June, 2018, The Midnight Hour debuted their self-titled album to great reviews and toured the US extensively. “It was during that tour last year that we decided to record a live album, capturing this new experience. The music you hear in our studio album is how we mean it to sound. But it’s something totally different when we have an audience in front of us. This recording is us wanting to give people a chance to hear what they can expect when they see us live.” On February 22 nd, 2019, The Midnight Hour performed in front of a live studio audience at Linear Labs. This was a direct-to-analog tape recording that 200 very lucky fans were a part of.

Adrian and Ali began working on the debut Midnight Hour album in 2013, but put the project aside as they would score the hit Netflix series Marvel’s Luke Cage. The Midnight Hour is a soul/jazz/hip hop album which continues the conversations started by yesterday’s jazz and funk pioneers; those that created the bedrock of samples for hip hop producers in the 80s/90s. The Midnight Hour is sophisticated hip hop that fans will enjoy, capturing their jazz rhythm section, and a full orchestra reminiscent of the maestros such as David Axelrod and Quincy Jones.

Nashville, TN: CHARLIE PARR is the eponymous new album by the Minnesota-based folk blues artist the same name. The album is a collection of new songs and new studio versions of classics/audience favorites from throughout Parr’s career and will be released September 27 on Red House Records. Recorded at Pachyderm Studio in Canon Falls, MN, CHARLIE PARR features Charlie’s trademark resonator guitar and 12-string with co-producer Liz Draper on bass, longtime collaborator Mikkel Beckmen on percussion, Jeff Mitchell on electric guitar, accordion, organ, backing vocals, and Dave Hundrieser on harmonica. The album is an honest and raw recording of Parr reflecting on himself and his career up to this point. It’s a musical reckoning that came after a freak accident less than a year ago that forced him to relearn how to play guitar, causing him to take stock of the songs he’s written over his lifetime. CHARLIE PARR is a stunning folk record that will surely stand the test of time, just like the man himself.

The accident on August 3, 2018 could have put an end to Parr’s career. Only a month earlier he had made his first appearance at the Newport Folk Festival, bookending a summer year of touring and career highpoints. Then, while skateboarding with his daughter along Lake Superior, he hit pavement. His right shoulder was busted into pieces and his ability to play guitar on stage again was suddenly in question. But, when playing the guitar is intertwined with who you are, not playing really isn’t an option.

He underwent surgery that left him with a metal plate and eight pins holding his reconstructed shoulder together. Within days, as soon as he could tabletop his guitar across his lap, Parr was playing again. Three weeks later he made a pain-filled return to the stage with an appearance on the Live from Big Top Chautauqua radio show.

“It’s the defining thing in my life,” Parr says. “When you think about yourself, you think, ‘That’s what I am. I’m the guy that plays guitar.’ So what happens when that gets stripped out? If there’s any way you can keep doing it, you’re going to keep on.”

But not everything returned to the way it was; his outlook had been altered.

“I’m not really that interested in careerism,” Parr says. “Part of the effect of the accident was a reaffirming of what’s really important to me. That’s not a music career, it’s just making music. That’s what counts the most — having pure motives and loving intention.”

By the time Parr hit the road again, he was reinvigorated to play music in a way he had not been for some time. He started digging out songs from early in his career.

“I can revisit any of them I want and meditate on what it was like to be seven years old again, curious about the guitar, obsessed with music and hoarding bike parts,” he says. “I can relive all the joyful times I had with my friends and family. I can grieve all over again my Dad’s passing; I can feel my stomach turn at the mountains of regret that I’ve amassed and the people I’ve hurt when I’ve been too self-absorbed to take better care of my actions, but I can’t change it.

“Songs are a different kind of history though, they’re not subject to the rules of time, they never died and they never will, and they grow and evolve right along with the rest of me.”

Parr had never really stopped playing those songs completely and, along the way, they had matured along with him. He wanted a chance to record them again to capture what they had become.

“I recorded some of those songs almost 20 years ago and, when I think about what my mind was like at that time, it’s not what it is now,” he explains. “In a way, I’ve been re-writing them over and over again for the past two decades.”

“Cheap Wine” is a new recording of a longtime audience favorite, a sinister narrative sung from the point of view of a liquor store owner with a dark secret who’s starting to crack. The plotline came from an idea for a novel that Parr eventually abandoned and mined for song ideas,

“Twenty-five Forty-one” is a cover by the late Grant Hart, one-third of seminal Twin Cities punk rock band Husker Du. Charlie’s poignant take on the track is a moving testament to Hart’s underrated songwriting skills. Another cover finds Parr covering his idol, Minnesota folk blues legend Spider John Koerner, with a blistering version of “Running Jumping Standing Still.”

“John is a true cipher in my mind, a living embodiment of the folk process,” Parr says. “This song has been one of my favorite songs ever since I first heard it.”

“On Stealing a Sailboat” is a new song, a “cautionary tale about choosing your friends wisely,” he deadpans.

By 2019, Parr is back on his grueling international tour schedule, mended and reinvigorated, covering the entire country alone in his car, occasionally cooking his vegan meals on his car manifold. It’s a lonely existence that leaves a lot of time for reflection and reminiscing. Charlie Parr is the first album -- and there are 13 others -- that Parr he felt like putting his name on. It’s a bit of the new, a bit of the old, and a bit of what’s motivated and moved him. Most importantly, it’s an audio tour of his life and career to date and a celebration of more songs and stories to come.

After five years spent rising through the ranks of Nashville’s thriving americana scene, Roanoke has grown from their folksy roots into a seasoned, road-tested rock outfit, retaining an affinity for storytelling and rich vocal harmony that has won over audiences time and again. Roanoke’s robust touring schedule has sharpened the skills with which this quintet crafts their songs, a sound at once timeless and youthful, seamlessly blending a 70’s aesthetic with modern sensibility.

No Depression describes Roanoke’s music as, “… ageless and expressive… so strikingly effusive it practically demands attention,” and Paste magazine ranked their EP ‘Where I Roam’ as one of the Top 10 EPs of 2018. Recent Roanoke highlights include a stint as Nashville independent radio station Lightning 100’s Artist of the Week, in addition to headlining the station’s weekly program Nashville Sunday Night, broadcast live from the stage at the venerable 3rd and Lindsley.

From MerleFest to SunFest, from New York’s Mercury Lounge to Nashville’s historic Exit/In, Roanoke continues to thrill audiences with their captivating live show. Their latest release, “Live at The Amber Sound,” is streaming now, look to see Roanoke on a stage near you.

Former Bass/Lead Vocals Eddy Sill (Originally from Pittsburgh, PA) of the infamous Los Angeles band "The Mutts" has suddenly stumbled upon a few other "fellow fun-seekers" to surprisingly form this frolicking band with California twang in the heart of Santa Monica, CA. The Popravinas specialize in extremely catchy songs and follow through with melody after melody. John Adair (Guitar, Harmonica, Mandolin, Vocals (Originally from Albany, NY), Dean Lyons (Rhythm Guitar, Back up Vocals) and David Rodgers (Drums) comprise "The Popravinas!" The "funnest" party you ever went to---The party after the party! That would quickly describe "The Popravinas" who are known to combine lyrics & sounds that are reminiscent of The Replacements, evolving guitar nuances in the vein of The Rolling Stones, and interesting touches of artists such as Whiskeytown, Wilco & The Old 97's. When you mix it all up...you come out with "The Popravinas." Already known for their fun live shows....The band has recently released their third CD "Willy Nilly" which is quickly becoming an international ear-shaker on many radio (and internet radio) programs. Their first CD "Everybody's Fault But Ours" and second "California Sonic" are still popular choices. Both are available at: CDBaby, iTunes, Amazon, etc. If you wanna experience a good time and hear some memorable tunes...You're in the right place!....You're in "Popravinaburgh!"

Eliot Chang has recorded 2 Comedy Central Half Hour specials, and is known for his outrageous videos where he destroys hecklers. No stranger to TV, he has also been on E!'s Chelsea Lately, AXS TV’s Gotham Comedy Live, and has appeared on both Showtime and HBO.

Eliot has toured his stand-up across America, Europe, and Asia. His Youtube channel, “EliotChangOfficial,” has millions of views and has spawned multiple viral videos.

Based in Los Angeles but originally from New York City, he studied improv at UCB in NY and at the Magnet Theater with the legendary Armando Diaz.

A true “chameleon of song”, Michael blends genres and creates something uniquely his own.

Few songwriters can say they have had a $1.5 million showroom built for their music. Michael’s Wyoming based band has packed the house every Tuesday night in Jackson Hole’s Historic Silver Dollar Bar for over 10 years and the owners enthusiastically accommodated the demand. Fewer songwriters can say they have dedicated 15 years of their life to serving at-risk youth in a Wilderness Therapeutic Program. Mix this all in with the landscape of Wyoming’s western Mountains and you get a snapshot of Michael’s unique muse.

Sometimes people have an obvious purpose in life that is pursued even as a youth. Michael Batdorf received his first guitar at age 12 and started, immediately, writing his own songs. After a few years, he began recording his creations in his own little studio, which had a huge impact on his craft in allowing him to explore the depths of a song beyond just a guitar and a voice. Even before he acquired any musical equipment, Michael had taken an interest in lyrical study and writing. His interest in poetry through early childhood led him to write words for his own songs.

As a young man growing up in the Midwest United States, Batdorf listened to Rock and Roll. WIth an analytical and inquisitive nature, he traced the roots of this music he came to admire. Michael discovered a world and history of American Folk Music. (Blues, Bluegrass, Jazz, etc.) A deeper study would reveal a world history and evolution of music. (West African, Irish Celtic, Native American, etc.) Of course, as Michael discovered, one can’t study a music without understanding the people from which it comes. (History, Philosophy, Stories, etc.) This is quite an endeavor and mixing these genres and experiences to form one’s own style has become Batdorf’s life work.

Finding new musical direction, something that hasn’t been done, is not an easy task. Michael studied music recording and music business at Middle Tennessee State University. After leaving the Nashville area, he settled into the Tetons of western Wyoming and has committed to his songwriting craft. He has released over a half dozen solo albums and several albums with other musicians. Again, attaching himself to the stories of the people and the land around him, he has found a voice that is uniquely his own. Add civic aim, philosophy, and environmentalism to a deep understanding of roots music and you come close the the experience of listening to one of Michael Batdorf’s songs.

Michael currently plays with 3 different bands that continually push him as a songwriter. One Ton Pig, is a Bluegrass-Rock 6 piece based out of Jackson Hole, Wyoming and can be seen Tuesday nights at the Historic Wort Hotel Silverdollar Showroom. Brother Wolf is Michael’s answer to his deep love for Jimi Hendrix and is a Blues-Rock Power-Quartet that plays through the inner Mountain West. Easy Chair Trio is a Folk-World Sound trio that is based out of Southeast Ohio.

Pierce Edens:
As those who have seen him live can attest, Pierce Edens absorbed the songwriting, storytelling and musical styling of the surrounding Appalachian Mountains, where he spent his childhood. This history takes the form of old time, folk and bluegrass music as well as spoken words of storytellers from his North Carolina home; this has earned him the moniker of “Appalachicana.”

Over the last ten years, Edens has been drawing on those roots and blending them with the grungy rock and roll sounds that took him in his teenage years. The result is a haunting and fiery mixture that is notoriously hard to pin down. Allmusic.com classifies Edens as both “Folk-Rock” and “psychedelic-grunge,” and No Depression writer Bill Kopp says “[He] could just as easily- and accurately- be tagged with the singer/songwriter label; He’s a gritty troubadour who takes what he needs from each style, blending and bending it to suit the needs of his songs.”

Through relentless touring, independently producing 4 albums (with one on the way), one full length concert film, and sharing the stage with musical heroes such as: Jim Lauderdale, Todd Snider, Will Kimbrough, and Sturgill Simpson, Edens has garnered a dedicated following of fans across the nation. And as Fred Mills of Blurt magazine says… “Edens is the R.F.D. (Real effin’ Deal), and when he and his band have their collective back against the wall, there’s trouble in store.”

Smooth Hound Smith is a foot stompin' American roots and rock band founded by Zack Smith (guitars/vocals/foot drums/harmonicas/banjo) and Caitlin Doyle-Smith (vocals/percussion). Established in 2012, and based in East Nashville, TN, they record and perform a varied and unique style of folky, garage-infused rhythm & blues. Using primal foot percussion, complex, fuzzed-out, finger-picked guitar patterns, warbled harmonicas, tasty harmonies and syncopated tambourine, they are able to create something rugged and visceral: a modern interpretation of early blues, soul, and rock 'n' roll music that harkens back to the traditions of hazy front porch folk songs as well as raucous back-alley juke joints.

SHS has traveled over 150,000 road miles, playing over 800 shows in their tenure, across America, Europe, and Canada, all in the last five years. In addition to their own headlining shows, they have toured as support for bands such as the Dixie Chicks (25 dates in the US and Canada in 2016/2017), The Record Company, The Secret Sisters, Lindi Ortega, Anders Osborne, and Jamestown Revival.

Their eponymous debut album garnered attention from media outlets such as Nashville's independent radio, WRLT Lightning 100, as well as publications like American Songwriter and RELIX Magazine. They were also selected over thousands of other bands to perform at the 2015 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, TN. In addition, the music of Smooth Hound Smith has been featured on CMT’s Nashville, MTV’s The Real World and the Esquire Network.

Smooth Hound Smith's second full-length album, Sweet Tennessee Honey, was released in 2016, and features appearances by Natalie Maines (Dixie Chicks), Sarah Jarosz, and Jano Rix (The Wood Brothers). They continue to tour heavily while working on new material for a third full-length album, to be released in 2019.

“…you’re a huntress and a healer and a holder of hands and your heart is the Avalon that I seek for my end.”
—David Lamb, 1977-2014

When, a week before her 28th birthday, MorganEve Swain lost her husband and musical partner, Dave Lamb, to leukemia, the world did not stand still. April continued into May, breath continued its rhythm through the bodies of the living and in their studio in Warren, Rhode Island, MorganEve continued to record bass, strings and vocals into a laptop because it’s what she’d always done.
For the previous six years, she and Lamb had existed professionally as the duo Brown Bird, gaining a loyal international following through intensive touring and the original music they created, praised for its honesty and expression of the human condition. Without Dave, and in honor of him, MorganEve became The Huntress and Holder of Hands: a young widow pursuing the white stag of grief through a foreign wilderness, intent on maintaining the sense of wonder and compassion with which her partner lived his life.
In 2016, with the ambition to perform live, The Huntress and Holder of Hands expanded into a 5-musician entity, employing cello, bowed string bass, electric bass and drums with MorganEve primarily on five-string viola and guitar. As a band, The Huntress and Holder of Hands builds harmony, strings and bass-driven pieces influenced by Post-Metal, Blues and Americana and offers an intense musical and lyrical experience that explores love, loss, power and strength.
MorganEve self-released The Water Street Demos EP in November 2015. The band’s first full-length album, Avalon, was released on September 15 2017. The Huntress and Holder of Hands will be touring in the approaching new year, and plans on releasing their second full-length album in 2019.

Like only the most insightful songwriters, Austin Plaine draws intense emotion from the subtlest moments. On his sophomore album Stratford, the Minnesota-bred, Nashville based musician shapes his lyrical storytelling with both precision and pure feeling, capturing every nuance of lost love and longing and fractured innocence. And while Stratford is steeped in a warm nostalgia, Plaine instills each song with a quiet optimism that speaks to bravely moving forward, even in troubled times.

Produced by Jay Foote and mixed by Steve Vealey (M. Ward, Phoenix, Hurray for the Riff Raff) at the legendary Electric Lady Studios, Stratford arrives as the follow-up to Plaine’s self-titled debut—a 2015 release that earned comparisons to Bob Dylan and Conor Oberst from Baeble Music. In a departure from that more stripped-down effort, Plaine assembled a full-fledged band who recorded in an apartment in Brooklyn, infusing Stratford with a homegrown feel and loose yet kinetic energy.

Taking its title from the Flatbush street where the album came to life, Stratford offers a classically arranged take on folk-rock that illuminates the intimacy of Plaine’s vocal work and the graceful candor of his lyrics. From track to track, the 27-year-old singer/guitarist reveals a refined sense of songcraft that he partly credits to moving to Nashville from his hometown of Minneapolis in early 2017. “Being part of a whole community of songwriters, you realize there’s a lot of different directions you can take a song,” he says. “It’s really opened me up as a writer, and it’s also helped me to hone in on every word of every line that I write.”

With its abundance of indelible images—night trains and the Northern Lights, backyard camping and drive-in romance—Stratford also bears a richness of detail that hints at the literary and cinematic influence behind Plaine’s songwriting. “People tend to think my songs are personal because I sing in the first person, but often it’s very observational for me,” says Plaine, who names Alexandre Dumas and Henry Miller among his inspirations. “I’m learning to understand new philosophies of life, love, and death”, attributing his passion for reading has helped him attain a better sense of his surroundings.

Proving the emotional depth of Plaine’s artistry, Stratford opens with the wistful reminiscence of “Something More” (a steel-guitar-laced track “like a movie I’ve seen before / way back when / we were something more” sings Plaine in the chorus), then slips into the bittersweet, burned-but-not-broken ache of “What Kind of Fool” (a rollicking, country-tinged number co-written with Sixpence None the Richer’s Leigh Nash and Stephen Wilson). Later, on “Lucky Ones”, Plaine presents a more hopeful portrait unconditional love, with singer/songwriter Soren Bryce lending her vocals to the chorus’s bright and beautiful harmonies.

While there’s no shortage of delicately rendered love songs on Stratford, Plaine also brings social commentary to tracks like “Rise Above It” (a soulfully understated anthem woven with intricate guitar lines, dreamy mellotron tones, and luminous organ melodies). And on “If Tomorrow Never Comes,” Stratford closes out with a powerful missive featuring the album’s most urgent vocal delivery (sample lyric: “I wake up every morning and I see the reddest sun/They’re shooting guns and sending bombs in a war that isn’t won/And through the lies I do disguise my heart inside my lungs/I live life today as if tomorrow never comes”). “That song is me showing my frustration with this modern world, and how we’re so consumed with social media that we tune out what’s happening right in front of us,” says Plaine. “We get so lost on the screens of our phones instead of seeing the world for what it is. I’m guilty. I love my iPhone”

Born in Fargo and raised in Minnesota, Plaine had his first foray into making music upon finding an old guitar of his grandfather’s in a family closet. By high school he’d started writing songs, tapping into the timeless sensibilities that still inform in his music today. “My first influences were anything my dad was playing in the pickup truck when I’d go out on rides with him,” he says. “He’d play Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison and Neil Young, and that’s what I dug into. Then highschool came and Bright Eyes changed my life.” During his junior year at the University of Minnesota, Plaine began dedicating himself more fully to songwriting and playing guitar. After posting several of his songs online, he headed down to Nashville to record a few tracks with Jordan Schmidt (a producer/songwriter/engineer known for his work with Florida Georgia Line and Motion City Soundtrack). A major creative turning point for Plaine, his time in Nashville led to the making of his debut album and release of “Never Come Back Again”—a breakthrough single that’s now amassed over 10 million streams on Spotify.

Although Plaine notes that gaining more life experience in recent years has shifted his songwriting perspective, his music maintains an unaffected quality that’s deeply refreshing. “I try really hard not to force songs” he says. “But I am always songbanking and hopefully one finds the finish line”. As a result of that instinct-driven approach, Stratford emerges as an emotionally raw album that’s cathartic for both listener and artist. “It will always be therapy for me,” Plaine points out. “If I get through a whole day without singing or playing guitar, the day just feels really strange. I don’t think that will ever change for me.”