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Boston Hall of Fame inductee Johnny A. is a Gibson and now Epiphone signature guitarist (the Johnny A. Gibson is one of their most popular selling signature models) is a spectacular performer guaranteed to mesmerize an audience with the 1st riff! Johnny has shared the stage with artists from BB King to Steve Vai and everybody in between and has performed at such prestigious festivals as Eric Clapton’s Crossroads, the Montreal Jazz Festival, and Tokyo’s Fuji Rock Festival. Coming back to his roots, Johnny has developed an intimate solo performance celebrating some of the greatest, and most influential, guitar work in history.

Caitlin Canty is an American singer/songwriter whose music carves a line through folk, blues, and country ballads. Her voice was called “casually devastating” by the San Francisco Chronicle and NPR Music describes her songs as having a “haunting urgency.”

Motel Bouquet, Canty’s third record, features ten original songs that hold her darkly radiant voice firmly in the spotlight. Produced by Grammy-nominated Noam Pikelny (Punch Brothers) and recorded live over three days in Nashville, the album boasts a band of some of finest musicians in roots music, including fiddler Stuart Duncan and vocalist Aoife O’Donovan. Rolling Stone hails Motel Bouquet as “dreamy and daring” with “poetic lyrics and haunting melodies.”

Since the release of her critically-acclaimed Reckless Skyline in 2015, Canty has put thousands of miles on her songs, circling through the U.S. and Europe. She warmed up stages for The Milk Carton Kids and Gregory Alan Isakov and recorded with longtime collaborators Darlingside and with Down Like Silver, her duo with Peter Bradley Adams. She won the Troubadour songwriting competition at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and her song, “Get Up,” was nominated for Song of the Year in the Folk Alliance International Music Awards. Canty’s original recordings have recently appeared on CBS’s Code Black and on the Netflix original series House of Cards.

Raised in small-town Vermont, the daughter of a school teacher and a house painter, Canty earned her degree in biology in the Berkshires and subsequently moved to New York City. She spent her days in the city working as an environmental sustainability consultant and her nights making music at Lower East Side music halls and bars. In 2009, she quit her job and set out to make music full time. In 2015, she packed up her house plants and her 1939 Recording King guitar and drove to Nashville, TN, which she now calls home.

For Immediate Release – "I'm definitely taking more chances now," Danielle Nicole says of Cry No More, her second solo album and the follow-up to her widely acclaimed 2015 solo debut Wolf Den. "I grew up playing the blues, and the blues is still a big part of what I do. But now I'm reaching out more and trying different things. It still sounds like me, but I'm stretching out a lot more than I have previously."

Indeed, while Wolf Den served as a powerful intro to the young singer-bassist-songwriter's funky, blues-steeped songcraft, Cry No More, set for release on February 23rd, 2018 via Concord Records, takes the artist into fresh new creative territory, delivering 14 emotion-charged new songs whose rootsy musical edge is matched by their air of hard-won personal experience.

Danielle Nicole's expansive approach yields deeply compelling musical results throughout Cry No More. With seasoned veteran Tony Braunagel (Taj Mahal, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Burdon) producing, such heartfelt, groove-intensive new tunes as "Crawl," "How Come You Don't Call Me Anymore," the Bill Withers-penned "Hot Spell" and the heart-tugging title track find Danielle cutting loose and focusing on the storytelling and character-development aspects of her songwriting.

"I wanted to open up more about myself, and I think it shows in the songs," Danielle asserts. "I thought really hard about the stories I wanted to tell in these songs. I really dug into my personal experience, and worked to be more open and expose more of myself than I have in the past.

"There's a song there about my father, 'Bobby,' who passed away a long time ago," she continues. "That was a big one for me, because I'd never gone there before. And I've had lots of changes going on in my life, so the title track, 'Cry No More,' is about moving on and letting go, and about getting over things and moving past them. There are a lot of songs on this album about moving on, although that wasn't a conscious direction. Every song is a different story, and every song has a purpose and a perspective."

While Danielle wrote or co-wrote nine of Cry No More's 14 songs, the seductive "Hot Spell" was given to Danielle by its author, long-retired R&B legend Bill Withers. Withers was a surprise visitor to the album's recording sessions at L.A.'s Ultratone Studios, and was so impressed with Danielle's singing that he dug into his archives and offered her the song, which he wrote back in the '70s, but which had gone unrecorded since then.

"Bill is one of my all-time musical heroes," Danielle notes. "We played him a couple of the songs we'd been working on, and he said 'Come on, let's go out to my car for a minute.' So we were hanging out in his SUV, and he's shuffling through his glovebox and he pulls out this disc and says 'I've got this song; it's a bit risqué, but if you don't mind, I'll play it for you.' It was this demo that he'd done, with his daughter doing the vocals. It was real moody and had a great groove, and it was Bill all the way. He told me that if I liked it, I was welcome to record it."

She didn't have to be told twice. "There was a section on the demo where Bill's scatting where the guitar solo would be. We asked him to do that on my version, but he's retired, so he respectfully declined to sing on it. So I sang the scat line and harmonized to it, in his honor. He dug it!"

Danielle enlisted an old friend, Braunagel, who also produced the last two albums by her old family band, Trampled Under Foot, to record the album. The pair's longstanding creative rapport is apparent throughout Cry No More, on which Braunagel co-wrote five songs with Danielle.

"I really wanted to work with Tony on this record, because I knew that he would get the best out of me," Danielle explains. "We've really developed a great working relationship and we write together really well, and I knew that Tony could help me develop these stories into songs.

"This whole record was like a dream come true," she adds. "I got to do the songs I wanted to do, work with the producer I wanted to work with, and record in the studio I wanted to record in. It was really cool how everything fell into place. All of the songs were what I wanted them to be, and all of the players were perfect for the songs. Every aspect of this album, from the birth of the songs to the mastering, was really free and organic."

In addition to Danielle on bass, producer Braunagel on drums and longtime Bonnie Raitt guitarist Johnnie Lee Schell (who also engineered the sessions), Cry No More features appearances by such notable guitarists as Kenny Wayne Shepherd (on "Save Me"), Luther Dickinson (on "Just Can't Keep From Crying"), Walter Trout (on "Burnin' for You"), Sonny Landreth (on "I'm Going Home"), Danielle's touring guitarist Brandon Miller (on "Baby Eyes"), and her brother and former bandmate Nick Schnebelen (on "Crawl").

The musical expertise and emotional depth of Cry No More reflect of a lifetime's worth of music-making. Born Danielle Nicole Schnebelen, Danielle comes from a long line of singers and musicians, and showed an affinity for singing almost from birth. Growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, she performed in public for the first time at the age of 12, singing Koko Taylor's "Never Trust a Man" as part of a Blues for Schools program at her elementary school. In her early teens, she began singing in local coffeehouses and at open mic events, often jamming with her parents at clubs that would allow minors. At 16, she became lead singer in her father's band, Little Eva and the Works. In 1999, she started her own band, Fresh Brew, with some older local musicians. Fresh Brew performed for four years and represented Kansas City in the prestigious International Blues Challenge.

It was during this time that Danielle and her brothers Nick and Kris launched a family band, Trampled Under Foot, relocating to Philadelphia in the process. To maintain the family concept, Danielle learned to play bass, eventually mastering the instrument. Trampled Under Foot traveled the world and recorded several self-released albums, building a sizable national fan base through years of nonstop roadwork. For their 2013 album Badlands, produced by Braunagel, Trampled Under Foot moved to the Telarc label, a division of Concord Music Group. Badlands debuted at #1 on Billboard's Blues Chart.

As Trampled Under Foot wound down after an eventful 13-year run, Danielle formed her own band and signed with Concord Records, releasing a self-titled EP and the Anders Osborne-produced album Wolf Den in 2015. Those releases established Danielle as a formidable solo artist and bandleader.

"I learned a lot from the last album," Danielle states. "It was the first time I was writing and recording and choosing all of the material on my own, which was a big thing for me. I had been in a band with my brothers for 13 years, but it's a whole different thing when it's your name that's on the line. That aspect feels a lot more comfortable now, and I can make decisions without worrying about what everybody else will think."

Nicole's distinctive, inventive bass work—which resulted in her becoming the first woman to win the Blues Foundation's 2014 Blues Music Award for Best Instrumentalist, Bass—is the product of years of intensive roadwork. Although she had no experience with the instrument when she became Trampled Under Foot's bassist, now she can't imagine life without it.

"Playing the bass definitely influences the way I sing, the way I write and the way I approach music," she says. "As I've progressed more, the bass lines have been getting a lot more intricate. It's still a challenge to sing while playing bass, because it's very rare that the bass line and the vocal go together. I still get tripped up sometimes, but at this point I'd never give up the bass.

"When I started doing my solo thing," she continues, "someone asked me if I was gonna hire a bass player. No, of course not! I originally picked up the bass to keep Trampled Under Foot a family band, but I really fell in love with it. It was a huge challenge, and it still is. But I really love being part of the groove and getting to sing on top of that. I had learned some stuff on acoustic guitar before I started playing bass, but I never really felt connected to it the way I do with the bass. It's empowering, walking onto a stage full of grown men who can play their asses off, and it's 'OK, I'm gonna play this bass, we're gonna do this, and it's gonna rock.'"

With Cry No More marking a substantial creative step forward, Danielle Nicole is ready to reap her musical destiny.

"I think that it's a good time for the kind of thing I'm doing," she states. "From my years of playing blues festivals, I've seen that younger and younger audiences are getting into the blues. I think that people want to hear authentic music again."

"This record is definitely looser than our last one," says Suuns singer/guitarist Ben Shemie. "It's not as clinical. There's more swagger."
You can hear this freedom flowing through the 11 tracks on Felt, from Look No Further's dramatically loping, surrender-to-the-soil skeletal rock - "Our minimalist overture," notes Shemie - to the climactic bleep 'n' bliss-out of pocket symphony Materials, which finds his vocoder-treated voice floating deliriously amid cavernous inner space. It's both a continuation and rebirth, the Montreal quartet returning to beloved local facility Breakglass Studios (where they cut their first two albums with Jace Lasek of The Besnard Lakes) but this time recording themselves at their own pace, over five fertile sessions spanning several months. A simultaneous stretching out and honing in, mixed to audiophile perfection by St Vincent producer John Congleton (helmer of Suuns' previous full-length Hold/Still), who flew up especially from Dallas to deploy his award-winning skills in situ.

While maintaining a pleasing economy - the closest thing to a ‘jam' here is an otherworldly two-minute instrumental, aptly titled Moonbeams - the informality of self-production has enabled Suuns to explore bright new vistas. "It was different and exciting," declares drummer Liam O'Neill. "In the past there was a more concerted effort on my part to drum in a controlled and genre-specific way. Self-consciously approaching things stylistically. Us doing it ourselves, that process was like a very receptive, limitless workshop to just try out ideas."

Hence the hypnotic future-pop percolations of X-ALT, where guitarist Joseph Yarmush's delicate precision is engulfed by squalls of giddy saxophone. Or the way Watch You, Watch Me's organic/synthetic rush builds and and builds atop O'Neill's elevatory rhythm and the ecstatic, Harmonia-meets-Game Boy patterns unleashed by electronics mastermind Max Henry. As befits a band who cite Andy Stott and My Bloody Valentine as touchstones yet don't sound like either, Suuns have always seamlessly blended the programmed and played. Never mere fusionists, it's now pointless trying to decode their sonic signature as ‘dance music that rocks' or vice versa.

Eschewing presets, Henry devised fresh sounds for each song while also becoming a default musical director, orchestrating patches and oscillations. Quietly enthusing about "freaky post-techno" and Frank Ocean's use of space, he's among your more modest studio desk jockeys: "Yeah, I sat in the control room while the others played - hitting ‘record' and ‘stop'. It also gave me the flexibility to move parts around and play with effects. I do have a sweet tooth for pop music. So if there's a more straightforward option on the table, I tend to push for it. Of course, interesting pop music isn't always about being straightforward, so it's a good thing I don't always get my way."

Said sweetness is amplified by Ben Shemie's newfound vocal range and buoyant melodies, showcased in such wholly unexpected delights as the yearning lilt of Make It Real and sax-smoothed Peace And Love, which sincerely comes on like a post-punk Sade. There's a previously unheard confidence to the singer and lyricist, perhaps best exemplified by centre-piece Control, where his hushed tones are complemented by a bilingual voice musing on dreams and reality, sampled from an old Montreal social art project.

"The sample of that man speaking has a serendipitous story behind it. It's a bit of audio I copied from a series of interviews of people living on the streets of Montreal called The Dream Listener. It was recorded by an artist 10 years ago at the St-James Drop-In Center to raise money for the clinic and asked them to talk about their dreams. I always thought it was a compelling sample, but didn't realize until after we used it that the man in the recording was a family friend, a respected poet, whose struggled with mental illness. It makes the song the true centre piece of the album."

Suuns are proud of their roots in Canada's most socialist province, whilst not sounding quite like anything else the city has produced. "Conditions are great for musicians, but not so much if you want to be a high powered investment banker," laughs Ben. "If I could compare Montreal to anywhere I'd say it's kind of like Berlin, in the sense that there isn't a huge industry, so there isn't that much money. Plus you have to speak French if you want a career, so that stops too many people moving here. It's gentrifying at a slower rate than other cities."

Quebecois natives Shemie and Yarmush founded the group just over a decade ago, the latter having moved to Montreal from a nearby village: "Ben's from the city but I grew up in the mountains - in the forest with nothing!" The only member not to be formally schooled in jazz, guitarist Yarmush studied photography and utilized his visual training to help realize Shemie's novel concept for the eye-catching album artwork.

"I was at a barbecue last summer and there were balloons everywhere," recalls the singer. "I like this idea of pressure, resistance, and pushing against something just before it brakes. And there is something strangely subversive about a finger pushing into a balloon. It seemed to fit the vibe of the record we were making. We made plaster casts of our hands, going for a non-denominational statue vibe. Joe came up with the colour scheme, the sickly green background, and shot the whole cover in an hour."

It's a suitably outré image for Felt, which breaks with Suuns' earlier darkness for a more optimistic ambience. The record's playful atmosphere is echoed by its double meaning title. "Some people might think of the material," muses Ben. "I like that that could be misconstrued. Also it's to have felt and not to feel - a little introspective, but that feeling's in the past."

Lillie Mae has been singing and playing on stages across the country since she could stand on her own two feet. FOREVER AND THEN SOME, her much anticipated Third Man Records debut, sees the Nashville-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist weaving her own extraordinary experiences with the myriad strains of Americana to create a breathtaking song cycle of romance and struggle, solitude and adventure. Songs like "Wash Me Clean" and the plaintive first single, "Over The Hill and Through The Woods," stand out as snapshots of intimacies, encounters, and moments that matter, reverberating with earnest emotion and restless creative energy. Produced by multiple GRAMMY® Award-winner Jack White III at Third Man Studio in Nashville, FOREVER AND THEN SOME affirms Lillie Mae as a remarkably gifted musical storyteller, a bright new star that's been here all along.

Born in Illinois but raised on the road, Lillie Mae first started singing when she was but three years old, picking up the fiddle at the age of seven. Her dad, Forrest Carter Rische, taught all five of his children to sing and play alongside him in his Forrest Carter Family Band. The family traveled America in an old motor home, busking country, gospel, and bluegrass from the Branson Mall to RV parks in Texas' Rio Grande Valley. Though they spent most of their time among other well-traveled musicians, the Risches led a cloistered life, intensely religious with boundaries against anything deemed "too worldly."

With few friends and limited access to the outside world, Lillie Mae and her siblings forged a special bond that remains to this day, a deeply ingrained familial link that fueled their own original musical approach. In 2000, the family was invited by country music legend Cowboy Jack Clement to visit Nashville for an audition. Clement saw tremendous potential in the young musicians, especially the pre-teen Lillie Mae, who he declared "a major voice" at the tender age of nine.

"Cowboy was closer to me than any grandparent I ever had," she says. "His influence on me is still strong. He always pushed me to play different instruments; he saw how I would pick up everything in the studio. He was a good friend to me and we remained close until he passed away."

By now all in their teens and beyond, Lillie Mae, brother Frank, and sisters Scarlett, Amber-Dawn, and McKenna Grace, next formed their own group, known around Nashville as simply The Risches. The band's extraordinary live sets at the famed Lower
Broadway honky tonk, Layla's Bluegrass Inn, made them into local heroes, acclaimed for
their electrifying musicianship and groundbreaking bluegrass/country/pop fusion.

Eventually dubbed Jypsi, Lillie Mae and her siblings signed to a major label and in 2008, released their self-titled debut album. The group scored a top 40 country hit with "I Don't Love You Like That" but their multi-hued Americana proved to be a bit more "far out" than the country world was yet ready to handle.

Lillie Mae continued on, writing original songs inspired by her own uncommon worldview and experience. In 2012, she joined Jack White's crack touring and recording combo, The Peacocks, playing fiddle and mandolin while also lending vocals to such tracks as "Temporary Ground," from 2014's LAZARETTO. The two musicians formed an immediate kinship, both being the youngest children of large families and instrumental polymaths. White was similarly appreciative of Lillie Mae's songwriting, producing her
2014 Third Man debut single, "Nobody's" b/w "The Same Eyes."

Lillie Mae officially set to work recording FOREVER AND THEN SOME at Third Man Studios in March 2016, with White producing and GRAMMY® Award-nominated engineer Joshua V. Smith behind the board. Initially planned as "a trial run" for the album, it quickly became plain that Lillie Mae had come fully armed with chops, ambition, and songs to spare.

"We went in there thinking we would start with three songs," Lillie Mae says, "see how they turned out. We finished the third song and Jack said, ‘You got another?' It just became this steady flow from then on. We just kept churning them out."

Her unique upbringing and lifelong immersion in music has led Lillie Mae to create an authentically original sound all her own. With FOREVER AND THEN SOME, she has forged a kind of Pop Americana, born and raised on country, bluegrass, folk, and blues but imbued with modernist energy and a willingness to push her songs into new shapes and directions. "Honest and True" begins as a heartland heartbreaker but eventually veers into baroque pop terrain while the quirky "Dance To The Beat Of My Own Drum" is as fiercely self-possessed and rhythmic as its title suggests.

"This has been going on my whole life," Lillie Mae says. "People are always asking me, what kind of music is it? I hear my bluegrass influence and my country influence but there's some stuff on it, I don't know where it comes from. It's probably all my love of melody, of melodies changing, that has to do with where the songs go."

What binds FOREVER AND THEN SOME is Lillie Mae's distinctive songcraft, a frank and utterly direct lyrical voice as warm and intuitive as her honeyed vocals themselves. The album's songs – all penned by Lillie Mae, with arrangement advice and assistance on select tracks by her older sister Scarlett – span much of Lillie Mae's adult life, exploring "the choices one makes" and what she calls "a string of similar events."

"There's not one song on there that's not true," she says. "I just jot it down the way I see it. If it didn't happen, I'm not writing about it. It just doesn't work like that for me. When a song pushes through, it's coming through from somewhere and I've got to write it down. That's my obligation. I appreciate it too."

FOREVER AND THEN SOME features backing throughout by the core combo of Frank Carter Rische on electric and acoustic guitars, Scarlett Rische on mandolin, and the veteran rhythm section of bassist Brian Zonn and drummer Tanner Jacobson, both longtime collaborators with the Risches. Other notables appearing include keyboardist Dean Fertita (The Dead Weather, Queens of the Stone Age), banjo player Ian Craft (The Howlin' Brothers), and Old Crow Medicine Show pianist Cory Younts, with harmony vocals from McKenna Grace Rische and singer-songwriter Carey Kotsonis. Though all involved make vital contributions, make no mistake, this is very much Lillie Mae's album.

"I had the luxury of making the record with people I've played with most of my life," she says, "I brought them in because there aren't any better musicians around that I would rather have play on my record. I was able to really rely on those guys."

The Third Man sessions continued through October, thanks to Lillie Mae's abundant songbook as well as her own and her producer's ever-busy schedules. Lillie Mae admits she would have been perfectly happy to continue, "but Jack finally said, we have a lot of songs to choose from, let's put a cap on it and call it a day."

FOREVER AND THEN SOME stands simultaneously as both grounded and adventurous, an indelibly special collection touched by authenticity, resourcefulness, and passion – a passion that shines through in the music itself and Lillie Mae's live performances. Though she gave her all to craft this remarkable album, Lillie Mae's greatest pleasure remains performing live alongside her beloved siblings and fellow musicians.


"I've been writing these songs my whole life," Lillie Mae says, "I was blessed with someone that believed in me and gave me the opportunity to record them. Now I'll get on the road. That's all I want, I long for it. Touring is where I feel most comfortable in the world. The happiest I could ever be would be to have a gig every day."

A-$ & the Downtown City is an original rock and roll band helmed by songwriter Adam Merulli which incorporates elements of soul, hip-hop, jazz, and pop. Their debut EP "NIght/Vision" is set for release this spring focusing on themes of hope, justice, love and redemption

Garage Space is a collection of friends that have been together since childhood. Zac Burd and Chris Grenade have been in schooling together since pre-school,upon reconvening after college Zac and Chris decided to start something. The sound came naturally and before long the vibe was undeniably there.
We are a group of musicians from McKeesport, Pennsylvania, USA, part of the Greater Pittsburgh Area. The sound is a mixture of rockabilly, surf, folk, with punk and hardcore undertones.

Parker McKay is a soul-bearing, country pop artist. Her wide range of influences spans from Sheryl Crow to Shania Twain to HAIM and John Mayer. This combination has lent to her unique blend of sultry, powerhouse vocals and stirring melodies.

As both an artist and songwriter, Parker‘s name has already made a notable impact on the industry’s community. Her debut music video premiered exclusively with Rolling Stone. Her lyrics bring a fresh perspective to the table and show that it’s a powerful thing to be a vulnerable, confident and honest woman in country music.

Race to the Coffin Comedy presents Comedy Roulette: Comedy with a Catch - a monthly stand up show that will feature everything from fictional character roasts to drunk comedy. With a new theme every month, each night is guaranteed to be different, entertaining and hilarious.

This month's theme: The Roast of Harry Potter. Hosted by John Dick Winters.

Jill Sobule is a Denver-born singer, songwriter, storyteller, guitarist and gypsy. Over seven albums and nearly two decades of recording, Jill has mused on topics such as the death penalty, anorexia, shoplifting, reproduction, the French resistance movement, adolescence and the Christian right.

Her recording career began in 1990 with her debut album Things Here are Different, recorded by Todd Rundgren. Her 1995 self-titled album, Jill Sobule, yielded the hit songs I Kissed A Girl (the original) and Supermodel. Since then, she has continued to record, produce and tour with an ever-growing loyal fan base. Jill is considered a pioneer in crowd sourcing, with her 2009 fan-funded record, California Years. She continues to be at the forefront of exploring and creating new models for artists in an ever-changing changing music industry.

She’s performed with Neil Young, Billy Bragg, Steve Earle, Cyndi Lauper, Tom Morello and Warren Zevon and inducted Neil Diamond into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. She can be seen live as a solo performer as well as the co-star of the Jill & Julia Show, an unusual and mesmerizing combination of song and storytelling in collaboration with comedian/actress Julia Sweeney. She also served as songwriter/composer for the hit Nickelodeon network show Unfabulous during that show's three-season run. She composed the music for the off-Broadway show Prozak and Platypus and her songs have appeared in a multitude of films including Mind the Gap, in which Jill herself co-starred. She has been a political troubadour for NPR stations across America and most recently performed original music at the keynote session for Netroots Nation. Jill is a longtime participant as well as musical contributor at TED.
A veritable gypsy, Jill divides her time between a busy touring schedule and a variety of other projects. The recently released A Day at the Pass finally captures an ongoing collaboration between Jill and John Doe (from the iconic punk band X) and was recorded live at The Pass studio on one fine day in Los Angeles. She is currently recording her next record, Dottie’s Charm’s - a collaboration between her and 11 of her favorite authors, including: Rick Moody, David Hajdu and Jonathon Lathem, Jill is also working with Steve Cossin (The Civillians), Jim Lewis (FELA) and Robin Eaton (a longtime collaborator) on the musical, Times Square.

In the words of New York Times pop music critic Jon Pareles, “Jill Sobule can claim her place among the stellar New York singer-songwriters of the last decade. Topical, funny and more than a little poignant...grown-up music for an adolescent age.”

She’s an American original.