It’s nearly impossible to describe this artist’s musicality in a few limiting words. Jeffrey Halford, Americana singer/songwriter, establishes a special connection with fans through his soulful fusion of folk, rock, country and blues. Jeffrey Halford and his band the Healers continue their tour nationwide and internationally in support of their recent record ‘West Towards South’ which was released through Floating Records.
Atmospheric, funky, rustic, and raw this is narrative Americana at its finest; poetic story songs delivered with the voice of authenticity, sitting atop a moody bed of dirty slide guitars, organic drums, and swampy bass. Subtle touches of violin, piano, and lap steel adorn a song cycle that chronicles the westbound adventures of two mythic brothers in an equally mythic America. Jeffrey with co-writer Don Zimmer and Adam Rossi (band member, co-producer) created a genuine Americana concept album that is simultaneously devoid of pretension, and richly authentic. The album already received acclaim by Rolling Stone, LA Music Critic, Middle Tennessee Music and many others.
Over the last 25 years, Jeffrey Halford and the Healers have played shows with some of music’s most acclaimed artists and songwriters, as well as Halford’s influences, such as Taj Mahal, Los Lobos, George Thorogood, Gregg Allman, Etta James, John Hammond, and Texas Greats Augie Meyers, Guy Clark and Robert Earl Keen.
Over the past decade, the New Jersey born, now New Orleans (and seasonal Vermont) resident vocalist/writer/musician/producer has been bestowed with many awards and praises, including being named the Female Songwriter of the Year by the National Academy of Songwriters. Norah Jones and Bonnie Raitt have raved about her in interviews, and she’s performed on such high-profile radio shows as World Cafe, Mountain Stage and NPR’s Morning Edition and Tell Me More. She’s toured and opened for the likes of Elvis Costello, Richard Thompson, Mavis Staples, Rufus Wainwright, B.B. King, Dr. John, Richie Havens, Keren Ann, Chris Whitley, and the Blind Boys of Alabama.
On her work and friendship with Robert Maché (Continental Drifters, Steve Wynn) Kurtz says, “I’ve loved Robert’s playing for such a long time, and we’ve been friends longer than we’ve been touring partners – he was one of the first musicians to befriend me in New Orleans. That we had such undeniable chemistry has been one of the greater recent gifts of my life, and I just wanted to document it somehow, and quite a few people in my life including my label have suggested a live record. I’d been hesitant, only because there’s only a few live records I listen to with the devotion I’d give a beloved studio record. It’s notoriously really difficult to capture the feeling of being there in the dark experiencing it. Then the challenge of it intrigued me.”
Ali McGuirk has never been a church mouse. Her 2022 album, Til It’s Gone, was met with widespread acclaim and praised for its “earthy tenderness and smart introspection” (Boston Herald). She now returns with a new album, Watertop, that elevates her signature soulful and smoldering sound to new heights—this time, the production is richer, and the message is unflinching.
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment that led to the freedom in McGuirk’s songwriting on “Watertop.” Perhaps it was when she began treating social activism—and her care for others—as a spiritual practice. This transformation gave Watertop its raison d’etre, which comes at you quickly with the opening track, “Love Goes First.” With Watertop McGuirk takes a magnifying glass to the complexities of human and societal value, unraveling the meanings of care, empathy, love, and even greed. At first listen, her words aren’t always what they seem. But the richness of McGuirk’s voice, the lucidity of her production, and the power of her delivery guide you to the truth.
With an intercontinental band, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Lee Crosby blends essences of American folk-blues and North Indian raga into meditative songs of impermanence, compassion and joy. Crosby’s music is a pleasing mix of improvised and composed material, performed on traditional and modern instruments. Through his recordings and performances, Crosby hopes to inspire peace, openness and respect – for tradition, for culture, for each other and for one’s self.
River Music, Crosby’s sixth full-length album, will be available on LP and CD on 10/10/18, co-released by Germany’s CosiRecords Schallplatten and Seattle’s Knick Knack Records. The result of years of study and practice, River Music integrates blues from the hill country of North Mississippi with textures of North Indian Hindustani classical raga music. Crosby performs on electric 12-string guitar and chaturangui (the 22-string Indian slide guitar designed by Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya) and is joined by fretless guitar, tabla, harmonica and calabash (West African percussion). The raga influence is heard through the band’s hypnotic, almost trance-like motifs, and the blues seeps through Crosby’s dynamic vocals and masterful, single-line guitar melodies.
Crosby describes himself as a ‘seeker’ within the music: producer and listener, performer and enthusiast, teacher and student. Crosby’s music-making is an inward process: creativity through meditation, devotion and discipline, but it is also oriented around community-building. As a bandleader, Crosby is guided by the potential of music to connect the internal to the external, the individual to the group, and to bridge seemingly disparate cultures and traditions.
Ryan Lee Crosby has been nominated for two Boston Music Awards and was named “Best Singer/Songwriter” in the 2006 Boston Phoenix/WFNX Radio Music Poll. He composed and performed the film score for the award-winning documentary Racing the Rez (2012, broadcast nationally on PBS). Crosby tours Europe annually and select US regions. He currently lives in Medford, Massachusetts and performs regularly in the greater Boston area.
An exhilarating blast of blues, soul and funk, Music!Music!Music! marks the recorded debut of the musical partnership between guitarist Charlie Hunter and vocalist Lucy Woodward. The duo first performed together in January 2018, when Woodward — fresh off supporting her fourth solo album, 2016’s Til They Bang on the Door — joined forces with Hunter as a lastminute fill-in on a tour he’d originally booked with Mexican singer-songwriter Silvana Estrada (whose visa application had been denied by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security).
Bonded by their shared love of blues, Hunter and Woodward quickly constructed a setlist of favorite songs and hit the road. Within less than a week of playing shows together, they realized that they’d hit upon something very special, indeed. Recorded in November 2018 at Stephen Lee Price’s studio in High Point, NC, with longtime Hunter collaborator Derrek Phillips on the drums, Music!Music!Music! features eleven radically reworked covers of songs by artists ranging from Blind Willie Johnson and Bessie Smith to Nina Simone and Terence Trent D’Arby. Soulful, spacious and deliciously in the pocket, Music!Music!Music! showcases the dazzling interplay between Hunter’s funky guitar and Woodward’s powerful voice, while also reflecting the spontaneity and good vibes of the duo’s live performances.
Hunter and Woodward will return to the road this spring to take Music!Music!Music! to the people. The tour for the album will stretch over much of 2019, with the duo going to Europe and Japan as well as all over North America.
Paul Rishell was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1950, descended from a long line of Methodist preachers and Norwegian painters. At the age of ten, he discovered that he could keep time on the drums, though his feet didn’t reach the pedals. He started a band a few years later, playing surf music and rock ‘n roll, until a friend turned him on to the country blues records of Son House, Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. He immediately took up the guitar and in the early 70’s Paul moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts and had the chance to play with many of the first and second generation of blues masters — including Son House, Johnny Shines, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and Howlin’ Wolf. Paul Rishell’s debut recording, BLUES ON A HOLIDAY (Tone-Cool) was released in 1990 to resounding critical acclaim. The album was half acoustic, half electric, and established Paul as a masterful, versatile blues player and as well as a deeply soulful singer and songwriter. He followed that with SWEAR TO TELL THE TRUTH in 1993, which featured heart-stopping solo performances as well as guest artists Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters and “Little”Annie Raines. Paul’s original music has been used in plays, films, and countless television shows including Friends, Oprah, and A&E’s Biography. He has built up a stellar reputation over 40 years as a performer, teacher, and torchbearer of the country blues tradition. His former students include Susan Tedeschi and Michael Tarbox. Dirt Road Blues, Paul’s instructional video/CD-Rom for Truefire.com, was released in 2008 with detailed demonstrations and transcriptions of his original songs and songs by Scrapper Blackwell, Blind Boy Fuller, and many others. He has served for 11 years as a visiting artist at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
“…Rishell is a master of country/blues styles, particularly slide played on a National steel guitar. Raines, a rare female ace blues harmonica blower, shows that she is as strong an acoustic country harp accompanist as she is a harder-edged, electrified Chicago-style lead player à la the great Little Walter…” -Billboard
“Wow. . . . Lyrically, he’s going to knock you flat with one punch. Killer stuff throughout, this is the work of an undeniable talent taking it to the next level of the game. You just might not hear Americana the same way again after you take a byte of this. Easily one of the best ‘folk’ albums to come out this year. . . . Check it out.” –Chris Spector, Midwest Record
Ernest Troost is an Emmy award-winning composer of scores for films and television, including the cult-classic TREMORS and HBO’s award-winning LESSON BEFORE DYING. He is also a recipient of the Kerrville New Folk award for his songwriting. His evocative style combines folk and Piedmont-blues-style guitar picking with timeless stories and colorful character portrayals drawn from the American past and present. His new album, O LOVE, has been a hit with fans and critics alike. “Troost is a brilliant Americana songwriter . . . making pensive, sometimes snarling, Steve Earle-ish, lyrically-driven Americana . . . with inspired playing and smartly judicious arrangements. Fans of Steve Earle and Jeffrey Foucault will find an awful lot to like in Troost’s brooding, intense songcraft.” –Delarue, New York Music Daily
In addition, he has composed and produced two critically praised albums of songs for Judy Collins, setting the words of poets like Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, and Gertrude Stein.
Some folks are lucky to find what they love to do at an early age and quietly settle in for the long haul expanding and developing their work over the arc of a lifetime. Willy Porter is one of those artists. He has followed his own path to explore the sacred language that music truly is. 30 years after his solo recording debut, he continues to reach further into his guitar & pen while stretching the form of what his own music can be.
Willy Porter continues on a musical and personal odyssey spanning over two decades, 13 albums, and multiple continents. His journey has been defined by an inquisitive love for humanity and the language that describes what we all hold to be true. Porter’s songs weave a universal perspective about the questions, struggles, and triumphs of human existence. His live shows are guitar-driven grit, soul, silence and muscle– at times electrifying, dynamic, and unique in the way that Porter’s voice blends and fuses with his fret work.
Born and raised in Guatemala, Los Angeles based Gaby Moreno grew up inspired by artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and Aretha Franklin. She immersed herself in blues, R&B and 60’s Soul and learned to speak English by singing the songs she loved.
Her original blend of Jazz, Blues and 1960s Rock & Soul has earned her the respect and appreciation of audiences in Latin America, Europe and U.S. In 2013, she received a Latin GRAMMY for Best New Artist. Previously in 2006, she won the Grand Prize at the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. Moreno also co-wrote the theme song for NBC’s hit television show “Parks and Recreation”.
Gaby Moreno has toured across the globe alongside artists like Tracy Chapman, Ani DiFranco, Ricardo Arjona, Van Dyke Parks, The Punch Brothers and Calexico. Most recently she performed at David Byrne’s Meltdown Festival in London and Washington DC’s Kennedy Center.
Gaby released and toured “Ilusion,” all of 2016. Ilusion is produced by Gabriel Roth from Daptone Records and Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings camp. Armed with a warm, soulful horn inflected sound- Moreno creates a unique lane of music that straddles both the English and Spanish speaking world and blazes an intoxicating invitation into her musical world.
Taking listeners to a place where Appalachian music, backwoods blues and rock ‘n’ roll meet in powerful, ever-changing combinations, The Tarbox Ramblers channel the ghosts of Charlie Patton, Bo Diddley and the torch singers of countless long-gone dives and roadhouses. They’re a four-man wrecking crew whose caveman rhythms, hillbilly violin and charismatic barbwire guitar led The Washington Post to call them “a force of nature.”
When they’re not busy tearing down the house the Ramblers can be a surprisingly lyrical band, playing more than a few lushly atmospheric songs. With nuanced lyrics and spiraling instrumental improvisations they’re among The Ramblers’ best work. They also testify to bandleader Michael Tarbox’s growing strength as a writer. His songs reflect a love of not just blues and country but the work of lyricists like Johnny Mercer, whose iconic “One For My Baby (and One More for the Road) ” is a song Tarbox will tell you he wishes he’d written.
Listen to The Tarbox Ramblers and you’ll hear musicians with an abiding sense of all that’s dangerous, dark and fun in American music. Guided by the spirit of Billie Holiday, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Geeshie Wiley and Dock Boggs, to name a few, their work values authentic emotion above all. The band’s rough-hewn sound is the perfect vehicle for getting their message across.
The Tarbox Ramblers are: Michael Tarbox, guitar and vocals; Adam Mujica, drums; Jim Haggerty, bass; Daniel Kellar, violin.
