Artist Category: Singer/Songwriter | Page 16

Megan Burtt

Megan Burtt is an international touring singer/songwriter decorated with national recognition. She is the winner of the Kerrville NewFolk, Rocky Mountain Folk Festival and Westword Music Award and a finalist in Mountain NewSong, Songwriter Serenade and Great American Song Contest.

In 2010 she released “It Ain’t Love”, a 12-song collection she made with bandmates, among them, Louis Cato (of Jon Batiste and Stay Human, house band for Stephen Colbert, Marcus Miller, Snarky Puppy, and Bobby McFerrin). She worked with the same group for her 2015 release “The Bargain” which charts her recovery from a serious illness with songs that move from darkness to light. In 2013 she released “In Good Company: The Colorado Sessions” a collaborative album of co-writes with Colorado bands including SHEL and Covenhoven.

December 2019 marked the 10th year Megan performed throughout the Pennsylvania state maximum security prison system with her band.

Megan has toured as a headlining artist, and as support for acts including Gregory Alan Isakov, Marc Cohn, Brett Dennen, Glenn Phillips of Toad The Wet Sprocket, Lissie, Stephen Kellogg and Leanne Rimes. In 2015 she collaborated with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra as a featured artist.

Megan is also a member of an Americana-Roots band called Gingerbomb made up of five redheads. In addition, she is currently in the studio working on her third solo full -length record slated to release early 2021.

Cris Williamson

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.”

Willi Carlisle

Willi Carlisle is a poet and a folk singer for the people. Like his hero Utah Phillips, Carlisle’s extraordinary gift for turning a phrase isn’t about high falutin’ pontificatin’; it’s about looking out for one another and connecting through our shared human condition. On his anticipated second album, the magnum opus Peculiar, Missouri, Carlisle makes the case across twelve epic tracks that love truly can conquer all.

Born and raised on the Midwestern plains, Carlisle is a product of the punk to folk music pipeline that’s long fueled frustrated young men looking to resist. After falling for the rich ballads and tunes of the Ozarks, where he now lives, he began examining the full spectrum of American musical history. This insatiable stylistic diversity is obvious on Peculiar, Missouri which was produced by Grammy-winning engineer and Cajun musician Joel Savoy in rural Louisiana. The songs range from sardonic trucker songs like “Vanlife” to the heartbreaking queer waltz “Life on the Fence.” The album also imbues class consciousness in songs like “Este Mundo,” a cowboy border ballad about water rights, and the title track’s existential talkin’ blues about a surreal panic attack in Walmart’s aisle five. Though Carlisle’s poetic words evoke the mystical American storytelling of Whitman, Sandburg, and e e cummings, ultimately this is bonafide populist folk music in the tradition of cowboys, frontier fiddlers, and tall-tale tellers. Carlisle recognizes that the only thing holding us back from greatness is each other. With Peculiar, Missouri, he brings us one step closer to breaking down our divides.

Mark Lipman

Mark Lipman is a powerfully honest singer-songwriter who has been performing the local circuit for decades. In 2022 he released his first full-length album The Glimmer which he co-produced with Dave Brophy. The album brings Mark’s own mental health journey of self-discovery and healing to the art of song. It has received acclaim from other local premier artists and has helped to cement Mark’s presence on the folk scene.

The Clements Brothers

The Clements Brothers are George and Charles Clements, identical twins from New England. They’ve been playing and writing music together for as long as they can remember and ‘The Clements Brothers’ marks their first project together since playing in the internationally touring grass-roots band, ‘The Lonely Heartstring Band’ with whom they put out two albums on Rounder Records. With roots, rock, bluegrass, jazz, and classical influences, George (on guitar) and Charles (on bass) aim to capture their singer-songwriter sensibilities in a unique blended voice, at once enthralling and intimate, groovy and serene. They are joined by drummer Mike Harmon, who joined the band after an impromptu late night set at the Ossipee Music festival, and adds his unique roots-conscious musicality to the group’s evolving sound. The trio is a fusion of each member’s unique musical journey, and the result is music all its own, filled with vocal harmonies, instrumental virtuosity, and a genuine love of song.

E.W. Harris

E.W. Harris is an alt-folk songwriter, producer, and artist based in Brooklyn, NY. A self-styled “Folktronicist” and “Dystopian Romantic,” Harris combines sonic textures, powerful vocals, and memorable melodies to create music he calls “folk tunes from an (im)possible future.” Originally from post-industrial Akron, OH, his musical career flourished in the indie/art rock scene of Athens, GA in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Harris’s reputation grew with his experimental approach to songwriting, recording, and genre. Upon relocating to Brooklyn, NY in 2009, his collaboration with Irish folk singer/songwriter Niall Connolly would lead Harris to focus more heavily on songwriting, to produce Connolly’s first US record, release seven albums of his own, and tour heavily throughout the US and Europe.

Harris’s music is, in a word, eclectic, and his riveting live performances have attracted attention and acclaim. I Am Entertainment Magazine called his first album “uniquely cool and strange … It’s been a while since I’ve heard something so eclectic and interesting.” Bandcamp staff reviewer Alec Spurlock said Harris’s sound “reminds me of a modern-day Neil Young, but the style is more complex in the most beautiful way possible.” The Salisbury Post declared that Harris delivers an electro-pop performance of found sounds and lyricism that combine “to create an experience like no other.”

For the past year, Harris has been working extensively with producers Kia Eshghi (Hanging Moon Records) & Chris Butler (Greedy Dilettante Records), with a laser focus on writing and recording Harris’s songs. The first fruits of this labor, “Bad Ghost,” is scheduled for release on their co-imprint (Hanging Dilettante) July 2021, and future single releases are slated for Fall & Winter 2021. The full album, “Homunculus IV,” is expected by Spring 2022.

Aaron Smith

Aaron Smith is a man on a mission, but he’s no preacher. His songs hold a mirror to the mystery of human experience, searching for the meaning of home, love, family, aging, kindness, doubt, faith, and grace. In vignettes injected with an infectious and persistent sense of hope and humor, the unlikely heroes of his songs — grandmothers and grandfathers, street preachers and neighbors, the forgotten and lonely — find courage, salvation and more than a few laughs in the everyday.

He’s been featured many times on Rich Warren’s Midnight Special radio show, and KUAF Fayetteville’s Ozarks at Large. Aaron’s songcraft has earned him recognition as a winner (2019) in the nationally renowned New Folk songwriting competition at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas. He also won the BMG Songwriter Showcase at the Power of Music Festival in Bentonville Arkansas and was featured in an official showcase at Americanafest in London in 2020. His first album The Way the World Turns was released in 2015. His album The Legend of Sam Davis is due in late 2022 and includes includes a coffee-table book with essays, maps, artwork and family photos.

Justin Farren

Justin Farren was born and raised in Sacramento, where he lives in a house built with his own two hands – or as he likes to refer to it, “a living museum of my own mistakes”. Justin’s twin brother is yellow truck named Yellow. Two round trips from California to Alaska, infinite dead-end, soul sucking jobs and god knows how many miles of touring have forged an unbreakable bond between the two that no number of blown transmissions could ever sever. A wiser man would have driven that piece of junk into the Sacramento River the first time the engine caught fire, but wisdom’s just another word for knowing how to quit and thanks to Justin, Yellow is going to run forever. Still, one gets the feeling that Justin’s songs might just outlast her.

Justin Farren writes multidimensional songs that are both enchanting and seemingly effortless. Songs that are uniquely personal but endlessly inventive and highly relatable. Songs filled with the kind of sudden twists and turns that you never see coming but will never forget. Rich Warren of Folk Stage Chicago said “Justin Farren is an incredibly original artist with a lot of verve and energy and a terrific guitarist. He will absolutely charm you with the strange humor and cleverness of his lyrics.”

“Justin Farren is the avatar of the age and the only true path to enlightenment” says David Wilcox. “If you want to attain total self realization, get to know Justin Farren… and maybe he’ll do you a favor and pull some strings with his cosmic connections”. In the last few years he’s won a bevy of awards including the Kerrville New Folk Competition, Songwriter Serenade, and Wildflower. He’s shared the stage with David Wilcox, Anna Tivel, Sam Baker, Matt Costa, Pierce Pettis, and many other outstanding performers. He is way more likely to toilet paper a house now than he ever was as a kid.

Justin’s fourth Full Length album, Pretty Free, was released on October 23rd, 2020. It’s a homespun masterpiece featuring 11 original songs crafted and recorded in a shed in Justin’s own backyard. The majority of the songs on the record have won awards In various songwriting competitions around the country, and the album features some of the finest musicians on the planet, Including Brian Chris Rogers, Anna Tivel and Andre Fylling among others.

The Sacramento News & Review described him as “a storyteller with an impeccable voice, a guitar and a head-full of funny, tender and engaging observation”. Justin says, “songwriting is a way of reminding myself what’s important.” He plays a cheap guitar, but everyone always asks him about his tone and how to get it. They don’t know that the sound they’re hearing is in his fingers. It’s in his playing – a combination of unboxed fluidity, unbridled creativity and muted space. The only way to get Justin Farren’s tone or to write songs like him is to be him. He can write a song about anything. Just watch.

Darrell Scott

Multi-Instrumentalist and Singer-Songwriter Darrell Scott mines and cultivates the everyday moment, taking the rote, menial, mundane, and allowing it to be surreal, ever poignant, and candidly honest, lilting, blooming, and resonating. The words he fosters allow us to make sense of the world, what is at stake here, and our place in it. And ultimately, Darrell knows the sole truth of life is that love is all that matters, that we don’t always get it right, but that’s the instinctive and requisite circuitous allure of things, why we forever chase it, and why it is held sacred.

Darrell Scott comes from a musical family with a father who had him smitten with guitars by the age of 4, alongside a brother who played Jerry Reed style as well. From there, things only ramped up with literature and poetry endeavors while a student at Tufts University, along with playing his way through life. This would never change.

After recently touring with Robert Plant and the Zac Brown Band (2 years with each), and producing albums for Malcolm Holcomb and Guy Clark and being named “songwriter of the year” for both ASCAP and NSAI, these days ﬁnd him roaming his Tennessee wilderness acreage hiking along the small river, creating delicious meals with food raised on his property and playing music. He often leads songwriting workshops to help people tell their own truths with their stories, and is as busy as always writing, producing, performing, and just plain fully immersing himself in life.

Sean Hayes

Sean Hayes is a Bay Area singer-songwriter who makes music to dance to or cry to, or maybe both at the same time. He was born in New York City, raised in North Carolina, and honed his earliest musical chops in a band playing Irish and old-time tunes — but his unique style of deeply felt, R&B-inflected folk really matured during his two decades singing and playing in cafes, bars, and night clubs of San Francisco.

His voice layers wonder and heartache upon grit and gravel, sex and soul. His lyrics carry an unpretentious wisdom. He’s dueted with Aimee Mann; been covered by the Be Good Tanyas; and toured with Anais Mitchell (performing songs from Hadestown, before it was an award-winning Broadway show). His songs have appeared on NPR, NBC and HBO.

Be Like Water, out Nov. 19, 2021, is Hayes’ ninth full-length, and his first record in five years — a time period in which, after nearly 20 years in San Francisco, Hayes moved north with his family to Sonoma County. The resulting songs are warm and enveloping, bluesy and lived-in, and have the feel of someone stretching out their legs on a back porch, perhaps a little unused to having the space to do so.

Album opener “Shine” sets the tone — exuberant yet unhurried, it serves as a get-well note and rally cry for his friend Charley Crockett, the acclaimed country-blues singer who underwent heart surgery in 2019. On tour together in 2016, the musicians bonded over their shared history of busking — of singing for the joy of it in the humblest of settings.

“Tell me how you keep believing, is it just a feeling?” asks Hayes over layered, effervescent guitar, before landing on the song’s hymn-like refrain: “You shine when you’re singing; keep shining, keep
singing.”

Other inspirations run the gamut: sly, funky jams like “Bell” and “Gold Tooth” revolve quite literally around a celebration of the bell shape and Hayes’ gold tooth, respectively; while “Joy” is a seductive, slow-burning afternoon love song, and “Invisible Weight” sings the praises of a simple apology, no matter how long overdue. Taken together, these tracks comprise a meditation on balance and acceptance — on learning to see life’s bruises and heartaches as necessary parts of the ride.

“To me, the phrase Be Like Water is about being patient,” says Hayes, of the record he made during a year when such a mantra felt perhaps more necessary than ever. “Rolling with your nature, and trying to stay present. I think of it as James Brown meets the I Ching: You have to get up to get down.”