Raised musically in a corner of Boston’s DIY music scene, C.J. Red Mouth is a singer-songwriter who makes folk music to tell herself the truths she needs to hear. Her raw, torrential performances are marked by dynamic vocals and blooming instrumental climaxes, inspired by artists like Adrianne Lenker and Mitski.
Artist Category: Indie Folk
Sam Weber
Sam Weber is a musician known for his distinctive style that blends elements of folk, rock, and Americana. He is a Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist who has gained recognition for his emotive vocals and intricate guitar playing. Weber’s music often features thoughtful lyrics and a blend of contemporary and traditional musical influences, making him a unique figure in the indie music scene.
His career is marked by a series of album releases, live performances, and collaborations with other artists. Weber’s work has been appreciated for its craftsmanship and the emotional depth of his songwriting. As with many musicians in the indie genre, his music tends to evolve over time, reflecting personal experiences and artistic growth.
Louisa Stancioff
Born and raised in rural Maine, Louisa has emerged as a gifted writer with a cinematic eye for richly detailed, emotionally-charged character studies that grapple with the complexities of loneliness and desire, freedom and regret, guilt and forgiveness. A nomadic soul who spent stints living in Alaska, California, New York, and North Carolina before returning home, she grew up learning traditional Bulgarian music from her paternal grandfather’s side of the family and reveled in singing American folk and roots tunes with her friends.
Louisa has toured extensively, playing shows with Izaak Opatz, Indigo de Souza, The Dead Tongues, Darlingside, Micaela Davis, Pokey Lafarge and many more. She will be on tour this winter with Eliza Edens and Molly Parden.
Gentle Temper
With their ever-expanding instrumentation and dynamically rich live performance, Ryan Meier and Marion Earley make up Gentle Temper, the Indie Folk duo from Boston. Formed in 2016, Meier and Earley dipped their toes into the vast realm of Folk and have molded their own unique sound by constantly pushing the boundaries of what a duo is capable of. They draw inspiration from their surroundings, bringing forth music and lyrics that are steeped in observances of travel, mental health, and love.
Gentle Temper have opened for Ballroom Thieves, The Family Crest, Bombadil, Julie Rhodes, and more. They are set to play at Levitate’s Pop-Up Music Fest in Marshfield, MA in August 2021. GT have played the Common Folk Showcase at Fresh Grass Fest in North Adams, MA (2019). They have been nominated for New Artist of the Year (2018) and Folk Artist of the Year (2019 & 2020) at the Boston Music Awards.
Same Blood EP — out now.
Gabriella Simpkins
Gabriella Simpkins is an award-winning singer-songwriter, composer, and musician hailing from Cape Cod, MA. Informed by her experiences across genres and performance settings, her music exists at the intersections of folk, classical, jazz, and indie rock. While simultaneously independently managing her career, Simpkins currently attends Salem State University in the BA Music program and focuses specifically on classical composition. She regularly performs her singer-songwriter material in and around Boston and hopes to establish herself as a freelance composer in the coming years.
High Tea
High Tea, the indie folk-rock duo hailing from Massachusetts, is a concoction of sweepingly soulful harmonies, guitar riffs to knock your socks off, and a refreshing blend of old blues and new rock. Isabella DeHerdt and Isaac Eliot have come together to fill spaces with homegrown storytelling and Lumineers-esque vocals. Their songs are ripe with americana heartbreak, and tell tales of growing up, going wild, and always coming back to the ones you love.
Their previous releases, Old Cowboy and The Wick And The Flame were featured on playlists, radio shows, and publications like The Boston Globe, The Greenfield Recorder (among others). The title track of Old Cowboy led them to be chosen as one of WBUR’s top 4 Massachusetts Tiny Desk entries of 2022. They toured The Wick And The Flame on the West Coast, in New England, and throughout other US States and received write ups from Atwood’s Magazine, The Boston Herald, and more.
Their new EP, Scuba Diving, dives – literally and figuratively – into four very different worlds on each unique song. Listeners are led through an exhilarating and dangerous love story, a struggle for independence from a lineage of harsh repression, and an internal struggle against the feeling of hopelessness brought on by quick-fix culture, all accompanied by dynamic guitar, thumping drums, and echoing harmonies. This journey of lyrical storytelling and compelling sound culminates in the title track and single from the album, a personal and intimate story of hospitalization, a search for mental health, fear for a friend who is facing down demons, and the fight for understanding an ally’s role within that story. Without a doubt, Scuba Diving is some of High Tea’s most honest and eye-opening work yet.
Darlingside
Everything Is Alive, Darlingside’s fourth LP, marks a subtle but remarkable departure for the Boston-based quartet NPR once described as “exquisitely arranged, literary minded, baroque folk-pop.” While the album retains much of the lushness and sophistication of Extralife (2018) and Fish Pond Fish (2020), the band’s latest work decisively exposes and differentiates the individual voices of the four songwriters—a daring reinvention for a group known for ubiquitous vocal harmonies. Grappling with change both personal and universal, with quandaries domestic and existential, Everything Is Alive is an album about loss and the struggle for a semblance of redemption.
Comprised of Don Mitchell, Auyon Mukharji, Harris Paseltiner and David Senft, four likeminded multi-instrumentalists who first met at Williams College in 2009, Darlingside’s career has been defined by the elegance of their compositions and the unity of their four voices. Their talent for harmony and melodic world-building is part of what garnered praise from outlets like NPR, Rolling Stone and The New Yorker, and what has created demand worldwide for their extraordinary live performances. Becoming beautifully unindividualized has, in other words, worked very well for Darlingside in the past. With a vigor and discipline more common to graduate-level writing workshops than to indie rock, Darlingside has, over the years, experimented with all manners of idiosyncratic methods for elevating and upholding a truly democratic process of songwriting—processes that include multiple rounds of group writing and recording exercises—all with the aim of escaping the trap that bands with multiple songwriters often fall into: ego-driven infighting and artistic incoherence.
Sara Gougeon
Sara Gougeon writes contemporary folk songs with heart-wrenching lyrics that she gently tucks into sweet, folky melodies. Sara is a seamstress of words, quilting together songs that you find yourself wrapped up in. Using stories and personal experiences, she crafts songs that are honest and relatable. Sara is primarily a solo act: a vocalist who accompanies herself on acoustic guitar.
Sara’s accomplished writing led her to be selected as a finalist for the well-respected John Lennon Songwriting Contest in 2018, an international contest established by Yoko Ono in 1997.
Sara originates from Sudbury, Ontario, and has moved several times over to pursue music. At 14 years old she packed her bags for Northern Michigan, where she spent her high school career studying songwriting at Interlochen Arts Academy. Following high school, Sara was accepted to the prestigious Berklee College of Music, where she continues her studies in songwriting, music business and music production & engineering.
In the last five years, Sara has written over 300 songs. Working hard for years on the challenge of writing a song a week, she finally exceeded her goal and wrote 82 songs in 2018. Sara expanded this challenge and wrote 100 songs in 2019.
“Home Again”, Sara’s debut EP was released on August 17th, 2018 and was followed by a 10 day tour of Ontario. Sara then released “Invisible Closet” a ‘gay anthem’ for the LGBT community, and a single about respecting personal boundaries on June, 12th, 2019 for pride month.
Sara is in the process of recording her EP “Thank the Pines” which will be released at Club Passim on May,11th, 2020. The “Thank the Pines” EP is a precursor to her upcoming album “The Long Road”.
Moonfruits
Fronted by partners Alex Millaire and Kaitlin Milroy, Ottawa-based Moonfruits are makers of art-folk bilingue. In a forest of guitar, banjo, kalimba and glockenspiel, their voices burrow and soar. Here is a raucous reverie, tender and powerful, beckoning listeners to elevate the stuff of everyday life.
The duo’s first full-length album, Ste-Quequepart (2017) is an elaborate small town fiction that explores the faces of gentrification, isolation and community.
Jason Schnitt
Part poet, part folk singer, part indie-rocker, and part mad-scientist, J. Schnitt is a fearless, inventive, and “one of the most uniquely creative” singer/songwriters in the independent music world today.
His latest release, “A Crooked Line of Birds”, released in January of 2018, finds him returning to a more introspective place, after the acerbic wit and political commentary of his August 2017 release “How to Be Happy About the End of the World”, which was nominated for a SAMMY Award for best singer/songwriter. He also was the first prize winner of the 2018 Unity Hall Songwriters Contest.
At home performing everywhere from mid-size theaters, to intimate coffeehouses, to the corner bar, J. Schnitt has toured throughout the Eastern seaboard, as well as Ireland and Eastern Europe. Known for startling audiences with lyrics that at once are full of wit and humor, while at the same time revealing the heartbreaking truths of being human. His wordplay and artistry with verse will inevitably bring comparisons to Bob Dylan, While others will bring up Bruce Springsteen, Townes Van Zandt, and Tom Petty. A talented multi-instrumentalist, J. Schnitt routinely performs all the parts on his many releases.
At the heart of everything is the song, often giving J. Schnitt the title of a “songwriters songwriter”. Equally adept at telling a story through his music as he is at creating abstract emotions, whether it be a commentary on the days news, an introspective heartbreaker, an upbeat barnburner, or a witty story, this music sticks to you, often revealing itself to you over-time.
