Grammy-winning fiddle virtuoso Bronwyn Keith-Hynes is stepping into the spotlight. After several years of wowing audiences as the fiddler for Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, the 2x IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year is striking out on her own – fronting a band for the first time and bringing her voice to the forefront. Known for her fiery fiddle playing and pure, rootsy singing, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes’ debut vocal album ‘I Built A World’ earned her a Grammy nomination this past February, and American Songwriter calls her “a world-class fiddler with a golden voice.”
Now, as her own entry in bluegrass history expands from celebrated instrumentalist to bandleader and front woman, Bronwyn isn’t just crafting a career in the image of genre greats like Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas; she’s bringing them along for the ride. Both Bush and Douglas are featured as players on I Built a World, and they’re not the only of Bronwyn’s musically-inclined pals and heroes to make an appearance on this star studded album. Keith-Hynes’ music blends high octane bluegrass sensibilities with the soul of country and American Roots music. Backed by a powerhouse group of Nashville musicians hand picked from her tight-knit community, Keith-Hynes represents the next generation of top tier bluegrass musicians, who will be appreciated for generations to come.
With a career that has already spanned collaborations with some of the biggest names in acoustic music, Bronwyn is now forging her own path—bringing her undeniable talent to audiences in a whole new way.
Brooks Hubbard is a national touring independent artist from the mountains of rural New England. Since the age of three, his connection with music has led him on a path of continuous growth, both as an artist and human being. From writing songs about the Iraq war at age fifteen to recording with members of Jackson Browne & James Taylors’ bands, countless house shows and concert venues , to opening for artists like KT Tunstall, Robert Cray, Reckless Kelly, Matt Mays, and Stephen Kellogg. Brooks has put in his 10,000 hours and then some to become a powerful singer, songwriter, and entertainer.
Vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Anna Moss hails from the verdant forests and lush limestone of the Ozarks; yet her musical personality oozes New Orleans, the artist’s adopted hometown for many years. Anna’s new found brand of sultry stripped-down-soul is steeped in Southern R&B, Americana, porch jazz; apocalyptic love songs, gritty hymns of humanity, abolition, and compassion busked to fruition in the historic French Quarter streets. She is also one-half of the popular duo Handmade Moments.
“Folky soul gems with plenty of dark humor to spare. Think John Prine meets Grace Slick” – The Bluegrass Situation
K.C. Jones moves so effortlessly between genres, traditions, and musical concepts that it’s clear she was born with an insatiable artistic curiosity. As a teenager, she emerged from a deeply musical Appalachian family to become one of the foremost singers, guitarists, and dancers in old-time music. Moving to Southwest Louisiana, she quickly learned Cajun French and began writing preternaturally gifted original songs in dual languages with progressive Cajun bands like GRAMMY-nominated Feufollet and T’Monde.
Both of these jumping off points, what she casually refers to as “obsessions,” have fueled the music on her debut solo record, Queen of the In Between, due out June 18, 2021, but she also seamlessly references so much more, everything from classic country to psychedelic rock to contemporary indie roots singer-songwriters. Jones is a fearless bandleader, weaving together an opus that sounds remarkably cohesive. She’s roaming the halls of 20th century Americana synthesizing a century’s worth of music with ease. It’s not simply a meld of seemingly disparate influences; Queen of the in Between dazzles in its ability to speak to the universality of human emotion.
Though New Orleans is lauded as America’s great musical crucible, 100 miles west as the crow flies lies another key Louisiana musical microcosm (and K.C. Jones’ home of 15 years): the city parish of Lafayette. Though well known as the epicenter of Cajun and Creole music, there’s another world bubbling below the surface in Lafayette: a community of young, master musicians—many influenced by the traditional music of the area and the South more generally—defiantly looking ahead and beyond. With fashion shoots in the streets, packed bars pre-COVID, and trail rides into the countryside, Lafayette’s become a defining force in modern Louisiana roots music and K.C. Jones is an integral part of this scene. She’s drawing from Lafayette’s best to make up the band on the new record, from Chris Stafford (pedal steel, guitars, keys, vocals), Trey Boudreaux (bass), and Jim Kolacek (drums, percussion), to notable Cajun musician and producer Joel Savoy (guitars, vocals), who recorded and produced the album at his GRAMMY-winning studio.
Patrick M’Gonigle began playing violin at the age of 7 in Vancouver, British Columbia. He studied classically with Suzuki-trained violin teacher Yasuko Eastman in Victoria, BC and during this time won several awards for his classical music as both a soloist and member of several String Quartets and small ensembles.
After several years of touring in Canada with an acoustic dance band, Patrick moved to Boston in 2008 to study at the Berklee College of Music. Upon graduation in 2013, he immediately began a Masters degree in Music from the New England Conservatory, graduating Summa Cum Lauda in 2015 with a performance degree from the Contemporary Improvisation department. In 2012 Patrick formed the Lonely Heartstring Band, a modern acoustic string-band quintet. Since 2012, the band has released an acclaimed record, “Deep Waters” on Rounder Records with a second album “Smoke and Ashes” released in early winter, 2019. In 2015, the Lonely Heartstring Band was awarded a “Momentum Award” of “Best New Band” by the International Bluegass Music Association (IBMA) and in both 2016 and 2017, the group was nominated for the IBMA award for “Emerging Artist of the Year”.
Sid Griffin is best known for being the ringleader of the Long Ryders, one of the first Americana/alt-country acts on the scene. Starting out as a disciple of The Byrds 12-string Rickenbacker sound Griffin now features bluegrass mandolin and clawhammer banjo in his act.
The Journey From Grape To Raisin, released last September, is Sid’s first solo album in a decade. Its eleven songs include ten Griffin originals and one campfire cover of, get ready, the Velvet Underground’s Femme Fatale. When asked about the sessions and the album as a whole Griffin smiles and calls The Journey From Grape To Raisin “my career highlight, the best work I am ever likely to do. Heaven forbid I should go but if I did I’d die happy”.
Sid Griffin has also written four books and curated and annotated Bob Dylan’s The Basement Tapes box set. Griffin compiled and annotated over forty CDs/LPs for various labels and is seen in over a dozen music documentaries as an authority on roots music. Kentucky born but living in London, England these days he is frequently seen and heard on the BBC.
Elijah Wald started playing guitar at age 7, went to New York at age 17 to study with Dave Van Ronk, and spent much of the next twenty years hitchhiking and performing all over North America and Europe, as well as much of Asia and Africa, including several months studying with the Congolese guitar masters Jean-Bosco Mwenda and Edouard Masengo. He has worked as an accompanist to Van Ronk, Eric Von Schmidt, and the African American string band master Howard Armstrong, and recorded two solo albums: Songster, Fingerpicker, Shirtmaker and Street Corner Cowboys.
In the early 1980s Elijah began writing on roots and world music for the Boston Globe, publishing over a thousand pieces before he left in 2000, and his work has appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines. His dozen previous books include Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues; How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music; Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas; and The Mayor of MacDougal Street, a memoir with Dave Van Ronk that inspired the Coen Brothers’ movie Inside Llewyn Davis. He has won a Grammy Award for his album notes to The Arhoolie Records 40th Anniversary Box, for which he was also nominated as a producer, and his books have won many awards, including an ASCAP-Deems Taylor award and an honorable mention for the American Musicological Society’s Otto Kinkeldey award. He has an interdisciplinary PhD in ethnomusicology and sociolinguistics, and taught for several years in the musicology department at UCLA. He is currently based near Boston, writing, traveling to speaking engagements around the US and abroad, and performing in a duo with his wife, clarinetist Sandrine Sheon.
Tyrone Cotton’s earliest musical revelation was listening to the raspy, inspirational voice of his grandfather, the Reverend Cleveland Roosevelt Williams, at his childhood home in Louisville, KY. Cotton began playing guitar along to the sounds of popular rock and blues artists and draws inspiration for his debut album from influences such as Jerry Garcia, Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, and Mississippi John Hurt, who intrigued Tyrone with his “finger pickin’ and soft, wispy voice.” Cotton’s debut album, Man Like Me, is the result of a lifelong journey of his nearly 30 years of performing in venues and as a beacon of the Louisville music community where he continues to reside today. The collection of songs developed over the past decade and documented on Man Like Me, is a deeply stirring reflection of Cotton’s own experiences which explores connection, loss, hope and resurrection, punctuated by a voice that is hauntingly evocative yet equally warm and alluring.
The title track is a stunner: “Man Like Me” is melancholy, dark and haunting as Cotton’s rich vocal shrouds the opening line. “I understand you’re afraid / And you don’t want to get mixed up / With a man like me / Rumors follow me wherever I go / You better watch your step / You might learn something you don’t want to know”. Producer Josh Kauffman’s production throughout is impeccable in both its restraint and expanse, which is no surprise given Kauffman’s prior production work with artists such as The National, Bob Weir, Anais Mitchell and Josh Ritter.
His own writing is deeply personal and pulls from those influences and embodies a vast landscape of soul, folk, blues, jazz, and rock n roll. “I’m working on new angles and approaches to songs. I’m intrigued by the process of having a story already in place and chiseling it into a song; looking outside but still looking in.” says Cotton.
Cotton has toured throughout the United States and overseas but it’s in his hometown where he’s played hundreds, if not thousands of shows at clubs and festivals. He also retains residencies at several senior living centers where his vast knowledge of repertoire is showcased through performance every week which span 70 years of contemporary music. Soon, Man Like Me will have its moment to join the canon of those celebrated contemporary works.
Tall Poppy String Band is a new Old Time trio featuring fiddler George Jackson, guitarist Morgan Harris, and banjoist Cameron DeWhitt. Drawing from the deep well of American string band music, Tall Poppy String Band approaches tradition with playful curiosity; each performance more a discussion than a statement. Whether they’re chasing the elusive downbeat of a source recording, playing with the pronouns in a bluegrass standard, or challenging the assumed roles of their instruments, Tall Poppy String Band endeavours to prove that tradition is still being written.
Cameron DeWhitt is a clawhammer banjoist based in Portland, Oregon, named by R.D. Eno of Banjo Newsletter as being “…among the finest clawhammer banjo players alive.” They are the creator and host of Get Up in the Cool, a weekly old time music and interview podcast featuring conversations and musical collaborations with some of the most influential traditional musicians working today. Cameron also produces PitchforkBanjo.com, an online instructional video series for clawhammer banjo, and teaches private lessons.
George Jackson is a New Zealand-born fiddle player based in Nashville, Tennessee. He is known for Time and Place, his acclaimed 2019 album of original old time fiddle tunes (from which sprang the old time viral hit “Dorrigo”) and now Hair and Hide, his new collection of fiddle/banjo duets with some of the brightest stars of the banjo world. George has toured both as a band leader and with such artists as Jake Blount, Front Country, Peter Rowan, Missy Raines, and many more. He is the three-time winner of the Australian National Bluegrass Championship on fiddle, and the recipient of the 2019 Mike Auldridge composition award from the DC Bluegrass Union.
Morgan Harris is a guitarist based in Fort Collins, Colorado. Originally from Australia, they have made a name for themselves by rethinking the role of the guitar in old time music, developing a style of melodic playing that recreates the droning, driving sound characteristic of old time fiddle and banjo. In 2020 Morgan released their debut album Old Time Guitar, a collection of fifteen solo guitar instrumentals that showcase their groundbreaking approach. Their music has been featured on The Bluegrass Situation and the podcast Relax Your Grid (with Matt Brown).
Internationally acclaimed Artist-Songwriter David G Smith is an acoustic roots solo performer with a lyric-intensive style featuring guitars, resonator, music and a voice that range from dirt-funk to intimate. His music is a blend of Folk, Americana, Country & Blues. David was recently accepted as a Juried Artist by Noel Paul Stookey (Peter, Paul & Mary) Music-To-Life org. He is a 2008 International Song Competition 1st Place Winner, a Robert Oermann DISCovery award recipient, and two-time ISC Semifinalist. He performs at the prestigious Bluebird Cafe/Nashville where his shows are regularly sold out. David has released 11 albums and Mary Gauthier and Keb Mo make appearances on 4 of them to include a duet with Mary called “Shine”. He has three nationwide #1 singles and four nationwide #1 albums to include his latest release, Witness Trees, on the Roots Music Report (RMR) Folk & Alt-Folk Charts. His single “River Gonna Talk”,was a nationwide 2023 #1 add on the NACC chart and reached #1 in the nation on Radio Guitar One’s Top 30 Americana Chart. David has been featured in American Songwriter and his songs have appeared on TNT, Lifetime Network, Travel Channel , several PBS affiliates shows and he has a string of indie & major-indie song-cuts. His last 4 albums have been accepted for Grammy consideration. His Give-Back Series donates time and raises money and awareness for a variety of charitable causes. David, his voice and his songs are authentic.
“I have walked beside David G Smith for many, many years, and I am in awe of his body of work.” —Mary Gauthier
