Olivia Wendel is a singer-songwriter from a small town in Massachusetts. Her songs are observational and truthful, with honest experiences from her life woven into a dream-like indie folk pop landscape.

Olivia started writing songs at a very early age. In elementary school, she started her first band “Recess”, named for the only time they could meet to rehearse. She wrote songs about breaking rules and making up with friends after fights in the lunchroom.

When Olivia moved to New York City for college, she boldly sent voice memos of a few original songs to The Bitter End. The late Kenny Gorka booked her for a Monday night slot and approached her after the show, offering her another show if she came with more original material. The rest was history. Olivia has played all throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn since then, but The Bitter End will always be the place she got her start.

Olivia released her debut album “Windthrow” in early 2021 under Woolly Music. The album is a deep dive into Olivia’s upbringing in Massachusetts, exploring themes of family, loss, and change. She got the idea for the album while on a hike with her fiance’s family in upstate New York. After passing a fallen tree in the snow, Olivia started researching this natural phenomena and came across the word windthrow, defined as “the uprooting and overthrowing of trees by the wind”. Olivia recognized much of her experience growing up in this feeling. The songs off the album were born out of this concept, exploring Massachusetts themes with songs like “Stop & Shop” and “Skipping Stones”, a song taking place at Walden Pond.

In her own words, “I hope that people can hear something of their own experience in my album, be it in a melodic line, a lyric, or in the meaning behind the album. I want the listener to know that just like nature has a way of healing itself after destruction, there’s a way for us to do that too. For me a lot of my own healing came from writing this album and I hope for others that listening can provide a comfort to them. Especially in this time where it can feel lonely, I want people to know that I’m there with them and that we don’t actually experience anything in isolation. It’s all part of a cycle.”

More than three decades into his career, singer/songwriter David Wilcox continues to push himself, just as he always has. Wilcox, by so many measures, is a quintessential folk singer, telling stories full of heart, humor, and hope, substance, searching, and style. His innate sense of adventure and authenticity is why critics and colleagues, alike, have always praised not just his artistry, but his humanity, as well.

That’s not by accident; it’s very much by design. It’s the result of a man giving himself over in gratitude and service to something bigger than himself. “I’m grateful to music,” he says. “I have a life that feels deeply good, but when I started playing music, nothing in my life felt that good. I started to write songs because I wanted to find a way to make my life feel as good as I felt when I heard a great song. I don’t think I’d be alive now if it had not been for music.”

An early ’80s move to Warren Wilson College in North Carolina set his wheels in motion, as he started playing guitar and writing songs, processing his own inner workings and accessing his own inner wisdom. In 1987, within a couple of years of graduating, Wilcox had released his first independent album, The Nightshift Watchman. A year later, he won the prestigious Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk Award and, in 1989, he signed with A&M Records, selling more than 100,000 copies of his A&M debut, How Did You Find Me Here.

In the 30 years and more than 20 records since — whether with a major label, an indie company, or his own imprint — Wilcox has continued to hone his craft, pairing thoughtful insights with his warm baritone, open tunings, and deft technique. He’s also kept up a brisk and thorough tour itinerary, performing 80 to 100 shows a year throughout the U.S., and regularly deploying his talents by improvising a “Musical Medicine” song for an audience member in need. In recent years he’s taken that process a step further, carefully writing and recording dozens of his “Custom Songs” for long-time fans who seek his help in commemorating and explaining the key milestones in their lives.

Lest anyone think that he’s lost his touch, Wilcox pulled no punches on his most recent release, 2018’s The View From the Edge. Not only does the song cycle find him delving into mental health, family legacies, spiritual contemplations, and topical concerns, the song “We Make the Way By Walking” also won him the Grand Prize in the 2018 USA Songwriting Contest.

“I think the coolest thing about this kind of music is that, if you listen to a night’s worth of music, you should know that person,” he explains. “If you’re hearing a performer sing all these songs, you should know not only where he gets his joy and what he loves, but you should know what pisses him off and what frightens him and what runs him off the rails, what takes him apart and what puts him back together.”

To attain that level of revelatory honesty, Wilcox follows a song to its deepest truth, even when it haunts him, a practice which demands the strength of vulnerability that he has sought since his teen years. That honesty is why Rolling Stone has written that his “ongoing musical journey is compelling and richly deserving of a listen.” It’s also why Blue Ridge Public Radio has noted that, “The connection people feel with David’s music is also the connection they feel with each other.”

But Wilcox’s unique brand of storytelling doesn’t come easily. And it doesn’t come quickly. “I could always think of a lot of possible ways the song could go, but the trick was recognizing truth amidst all the cleverness,” he confesses. “The more time I took, the more my deep heart could speak to me through the process of songwriting. I could gradually craft a song that felt like it was coming from the place I was going. If you decide to trust heart over cleverness, you not only get a song that moves you, you get a song that moves you toward being who you want to be. The time you spend immersed in the emotion of a song changes you. The song shows you the world through a particular point of view. Once you have seen the world that way, you can’t un-see it.”

The iconic lesbian singer-songwriter, recording artist, activist,  and Americana Music Association Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Cris Williamson releases 33rd album, Harbor Street.

Williamson’s iconic 1974 album, The Changer and the Changed, featuring groundbreaking songs about same-sex love, became one of the best-selling independent releases of all time.  —Ann Powers/NPR Music Critic

Seattle, WA — Born out of the solitude of mandated isolation, women’s music pioneer Cris Williamson emerges with 12 original new songs for her latest album, Harbor Street, out today through Wolf Moon Records. Produced by Williamson, with loving guidance from Windham Hill recording artist Barbara Higbie, these are folk songs, but also pop songs and ballads, all informed by the resident musical language that has long been a part of her repertoire.

Cris explains: “Folk music. I first learned of it when I was but a girl. Such songs as “Silver Dagger” and “Banks of the Ohio” usually involved either a murder of a woman, or a love triangle, or a handsome and faithless gambler, or some such. Always sad… always beautiful. And, there is usually a white dove who mirrors the sadness, and sings of it as she flies.”

Safely placed between now-familiar pandemic surges, Williamson ventured from the safety and solace of her home in Seattle to record with engineer David Luke at Opus Studio in Berkeley CA. Local East Bay musicians Laurie Lewis (violin, vocals) Vicki Randle (acoustic guitar), Scott Amendola (drums), Dewayne Pate(bass), James Deprato (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, mandolin, dobro), Mia Pixley (cello), Julie Wolf (accordion) and Barbara Higbie (violin, piano, vocals) bring friendship, depth and flavor to this sometimes serious, always hopeful — as is Williamson’s signature way — to this collection.

“We are living in critical times. Anxieties ripple through us. Life is precarious. We are at risk. I suppose, in a way, this has always been true. But, our awareness is sharper…there is trouble in the wind. And so, we look for ways to stay alive, to keep hope high in our hearts, to stay together, to somehow find our way to Love… the real reason we are all here.”