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.
NPR Music calls Laura Heaberlin and Taylor Smith of Cricket Blue “master storytellers”, and the All Scene Eye says Cricket Blue “sets a new standard for fiction-folk.” In 2019, the duo released their first full-length album, Serotinalia, to widespread praise, and were voted “Best Folk Group” in Vermont’s Seven Daysie Awards. As a response to the interruption of live music in 2020, the duo spearheaded a series of elaborately-arranged covers of songs from the Over the Garden Wall soundtrack, which have since earned a small but enthusiastic international following. Heaberlin’s songwriting has been featured on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and Cricket Blue has been featured as a formal showcase artist at NERFA multiple times. They have played stages and festivals around the United States and Canada and are working on their second full-length album.
Greg Klyma is a road-tested troubadour and relentless songwriter. He was an Iguana Fund grantee in 2017. With the release of Never Knew Caroline a couple summers ago, Greg had an epiphany about all the unrecorded songs still in his notebooks. He has challenged himself to release 3 albums in 2019. He also printed his first book of lyrics as a companion piece to FAKE SONGS – his first exclusively digital album. On July 25th, we’ll hear songs from Caroline, FAKE SONGS, Maybe the Ocean, as well as a sampling of what’s to follow.
Nickel&Rose is an American folk-music duo made up of Upright Bassist Johanna Rose and Guitarist Carl Nichols. They formed in the summer of 2016 and spent their first winter and the following spring traveling Europe, playing dozens of shows in France, Czech Republic, Germany, Romania, Poland, and Ukraine. While in Berlin they recorded their EP, Oh Sweet Love, released in April 2017. Oh Sweet Love, is a sweet-sounding auditory souvenir of Nichols’ and Rose’s four month European journey and a recorded testament to the two-piece’s ability to turn tough times into something vibrant with help from a traveling companion.
Nickel&Rose have influences that span the spectrum of American music. Carl’s background brings elements of West African music and Blues while Johanna brings her experience playing Bluegrass, Folk and Jazz. From loss to heart break to love, Nickel&Rose address the human experience with gentle harmonies and soul stirring cries. With a shared appreciation for traditional music and a desire to break rules, the two have have created a unique sound that embodies Americana’s past and future.
The Ladles have three part female harmony perfected – but their sound is more than that… They are an amalgamation of their respective histories and influences. With sophisticated arrangements, they create a dreamy otherworldly atmosphere that draws audiences in and demands attention. They quiet noisy bars and liven up staid concert halls. The Ladles are Katie Martucci, Caroline Kuhn, and Lucia Pontoniere.
Americana duo Kate Lee & Forrest O’Connor have earned national recognition as co-lead singers and primary songwriters of the O’Connor Band, a bluegrass group they co-founded along with O’Connor’s father, seven-time CMA Award-winning violinist Mark O’Connor. They wrote the majority of the band’s debut album, Coming Home, which debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Top Bluegrass Albums Chart and won a GRAMMY Award in 2017.
Both independently and as part of the O’Connor Band, Lee and O’Connor have collaborated with Paul Simon, Zac Brown, Kenny Loggins, Clint Black, Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Dan Tyminski, and many others. Their music has accumulated more than half a million streams on Spotify, and they have performed at the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman Auditorium, and Fenway Park, as well as some of the most prominent festivals and performing arts centers around the country.
Lee and O’Connor were introduced in 2014 by Nashville-based arranger Kris Wilkinson (Tim McGraw, Lady Antebellum, Brandi Carlile), who believed their powerful, expressive vocals and writing sensibilities would align. O’Connor, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard and former Tennessee State Mandolin Champion, shared a love of ‘60s classic rock, ‘70s folk rock, ‘90s country, bluegrass, and modern pop music with Lee, a Belmont graduate and violinist who frequently backed up stars ranging from John Legend and Kelly Clarkson to Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood at the CMA Awards and CMA Country Christmas shows. They soon began performing together as a duo, and their first EP, The Demonstration, reached #13 on the iTunes Singer-Songwriter chart with no label or promotion campaign. After performing for three years with the O’Connor Band, they’re excited to focus again on their duo project with the help of a backing band featuring two-time national mandolin champion Isaac Eicher, GRAMMY Award-winning bassist (and Doctor of Music) Geoff Saunders, and country vocalist Mallory Eagle.
A powerhouse duo consisting of Berklee College of Music students AC Muench and Oliver Esposito, playing poignant originals and funky fun covers.
Oliver Esposito, on mandolin, guitar, piano, and vocals, has played with Amos Lee, Langhorne Slim, Chris Thile, Mary Gauthier, and as a solo artist, has released a CD of all original music produced by Neilson Hubbard. Says Langhorne Slim, “Rarely have I come across one who is both virtuosic and profoundly raw and soulful at the same time. Oliver’s got it. It’s mind blowing to watch, spiritually elevating to play along with, and damn exciting to see what this incredible human has in store for us all.”
AC Muench, on bass and vocals, has played as many styles as you can name, some things of note being their work at Berklee as a session musician for the Berklee Film Scoring Orchestra, a member of the house band for the Perfect Pitch Competition, and as the principal bassist of the Berklee Motion Picture Orchestra. They also played Jenni Rudolph’s Momentum Album Release Concert and are featured on her upcoming album.
Rainbow Girls are an eclectic folk trio hailing from the golden countryside just north of California’s Bay Area. Vanessa May, Erin Chapin, and Caitlin Gowdey seamlessly combine soul-touching harmonies, varitextured instrumentals, and poignant lyrical content into a beautiful sonic tapestry. Throughout their performance, voices are paired with an ever-changing amalgamation of acoustic and slide guitar, keys, upright bass, harmonica, and an array of vocal techniques creating an engaging and often emotionally moving live show.
Their music delves deeply into themes of the human experience: hopeful love, honest self-reflection, and pursuits of social justice. Their latest album, “American Dream,” crystallizes these ideas in acoustic amber, encapsulating a beautiful new direction for their ever-evolving sound.
Originally formed in Santa Barbara, CA in 2010, the Rainbow Girls have spread their musical wings both internationally and domestically, from busking on the streets of Europe to playing pubs and theaters in the UK, to house concerts, festivals, and shows in the US.
“A gang of sweet angels punching you in the heart”
Hailing from opposite ends of the Appalachian mountains, Zoe & Cloyd is renowned fiddler and vocalist Natalya Zoe Weinstein and award-winning songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist John Cloyd Miller. Performing their unique blend of original bluegrass and klezmer music with evocative songwriting and soaring harmonies, they are sure to delight audiences of all ages. Zoe & Cloyd will be joined by master musicians Bennett Sullivan on banjo/guitar and Nate Sabat on bass.
Descending from a lineage of klezmer and jazz musicians, Natalya trained classically in her home state of Massachusetts before moving to Asheville, NC in 2004. John, a twelfth generation North Carolinian and grandson of pioneering bluegrass fiddler, Jim Shumate, is a 1st place winner of the prestigious Chris Austin Songwriting Contest and the Hazel Dickens Songwriting Contest, as well as an Artist Fellowship recipient for songwriting from the NC Arts Council. Long-time fixtures of the Asheville music scene, Zoe & Cloyd appeared in Season 5 of the nationally syndicated PBS show, David Holt’s State of Music in 2021. Their fourth studio album, Rebuild, produced by Jon Weisberger, was released on Organic Records in October 2021.
Nels Andrews was born near some water, and then, for a long time lived in a desert near some chile peppers. In between he planted trees. Then he was in a tall city. Now he’s back near the sea. He likes the way stories sound when they’re sung.
