Artist Category: Singer/Songwriter | Page 20

Monique Clare

With only her voice, four strings and a cello bow, Monique Clare carves out a musical landscape to get lost in. Driving rhythms collide with intricate cello lines; heart-tugging harmonies weave through compelling vocals. Her lyrics speak to the ruminations of her generation and dive deep into the universal experiences of love and loss. Live, Monique is mesmerising and cathartic. She draws listeners into her storytelling, sifting through the raw, the imperfect and the unspoken. Always seeking connection, she craves the rush of an intimately honest performance.

Raised by a singer and a pipe organist who shared a mutual love of Bach, Gregorian chant and French Impressionist harmony, Monique grew up in a habitat of choirs, surrounded by layers of individual voices which form an immersive wall of sound. While she was surrounded by music, it took her 13 years to discover Björk, 16 to form a Radiohead obsession, 21 to catch on to The Beatles and 26 to fall in love with Joni Mitchell.

On top of this musical baptism of fire has been an array of experiences as a multi-genre session musician. From touring internationally with Melbourne outfit The Maes, to being a hired gun for world-class artists such as Kate Miller-Heidke, The Whitlams, Katie Noonan and Eminem, to accompanying legendary fiddle player Darol Anger, she’s absorbed a set of entirely divergent genres and approaches to music. Playing on stages like the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Woodford Amphitheatre and the Orkney Folk Festival with these artists has given her an unshakable stage presence that she carries into her own shows.

Monique’s fearless and intrepid nature craves adventure, from teaching cello in war-torn Afghanistan to leading groups of listeners up a mountainside in the dark for a sunrise concert. She jumps into cold water as a ritualistic reminder that anything is possible. Through her songwriting, Monique challenges her listeners to do the same: be vulnerable and courageous.

Stephen Kellogg

A Stephen Kellogg performance is like watching Ted Lasso live.

Whether he’s playing music or doing stand-up, his shows leave people inspired and restored. For more than two decades, this wordsmith, Tedx speaker, stand-up comic, author and troubadour, has delighted audiences around the world. Planet Bluegrass calls him “a first class songwriter with a poet’s gift for fresh imagery,” and Counting Crows frontman Adam Duritz says of Kellogg, “there are few people in rock n’ roll who are just so great.” He has received the Armed Forces Entertainer of the Year award and has had his work nominated for a Grammy. Rolling Stone magazine describes his sound as “John Prine fronting the Heartbreakers.”

The recent “Sit Down & Stand Up” Tour was a one man show that opened to rave reviews from fans and critics alike, culminating in a two-night filming for a forthcoming one-hour comedy special. A mix of music, humor and storytelling, each performance paints a unique canvas that covers the full spectrum of human emotions. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll go home with a full heart.

Grace Pettis

“I thought a lot about what to call this album. I tossed around a lot of different titles, pulled from lines I liked or themes the record seemed to have. But in the end, it really had to be called Working Woman because the album, like the song, is not subtle. It’s about recognizing and honoring the work that women do in every space in our society. It’s about claiming our own power and place in the world. This record is about the work women do and valuing that work,” says Grace Pettis, explaining the title of her new debut album for MPress Records, Working Woman.

Produced by lauded singer-songwriter Mary Bragg, and mixed by 2x Grammy® award winner Shani Gandhi (Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical), the record features an all-female/non-binary band. The rest of the album credits are female/non-binary as well: co-writers, engineers, photographer, and graphic designer included. Guest contributions come from Indigo Girls (“Landon”), Ruthie Foster (“Pick Me Up”), Dar Williams (“Any Kind of Girl”), The Watson Twins (“Never Get It Back”), Gina Chavez (“Mean Something”) and Mary Bragg (“Paper Boat”).

Grace epitomizes the term singer/songwriter. As a singer, her voice is both powerful and beautiful, and she uses it like a fine arts painter to color and craft her songs. American Songwriter Magazine wrote “As a decorated songwriter, Pettis blurs the lines between country, Americana and folk. Her soulful delivery of calculated lyric lines helps her tell stories for all generations.” Her songs have been recorded by many esteemed artists, including Sara Hickman and Ruthie Foster. Grace explains, “The songs that ring the truest often come from my own feelings and memories. People need upbeat songs they can dance to, but they need sad songs, too. Hard songs. The songs that are the hardest and most painful to write seem to be the most healing. I write from wherever I happen to be. If I’m happy, I write a happy song. If I’m sad, I write a sad song. If the world is on fire, so are my songs.”

Asked about her conscious choice to work with an all-female/non-binary creative team for Working Woman, Grace explains, “As a feminist, I can’t complain that the industry is unfair to women if I’m not actively working on whatever level I’m at to change it for others. I don’t feel the need to cloak my own feminism in metaphors anymore or sidle up to it with a wink so I don’t offend anyone. Here in the US, women make up something like 22% of chart-topping artists, across all genres. We are 2% of the producers credited on those charts, and just about 12% of the songwriters. Less than 1% of chart-topping songs are written without men. Meaning, we are literally not hearing women. The fact is, women like me work our tails off. We have to, to carve out our place in the world. It’s past time to recognize and honor women’s contributions. This is our time and we will make the rules. We are not asking for respect anymore. Now, we are demanding it.”

From an early age, Grace was encouraged to speak her mind and to express herself musically. Words and music were the family heirlooms she inherited from her parents, a traveling songwriter (Pierce Pettis) and poetry scholar (Dr. Margaret Mills Harper), who were divorced by the time she was a small child. As a result of that separation, she was raised in two very different parts of the “Deep South”: the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, and the backwoods of Mentone, Alabama. Grace’s musical influences run the gamut of Southern sounds: from mountain music and gospel to country and folk to R&B and hip hop. Pierce was on the road a lot, and the albums he left for her to listen to while he was touring the country and sending paychecks home were both a way to be closer to him and a driving influence in her writing from an early age. She was writing songs as soon as she could talk and enlisting help from her mom to get them down on paper by the time she was five.

An award-winning singer-songwriter from Austin via Alabama, this isn’t Pettis’ first rodeo. For Grace, who has been characterized as “a little bit folk, a little bit country/Americana, and a whole lot of soul,” 2020 had many silver linings. She signed with MPress Records, released three critically acclaimed singles – “Landon”, White Noise”, and “Drop Another Pin” (with “Landon” landing at #10 on The Bluegrass Situation’s year-end “The Women Who Wrote Our 2020 Soundtrack”), and recorded Working Woman in Nashville.

Grace is the winner of many of the nation’s most prestigious songwriting contests, including NPR’s Mountain Stage New Song Contest, and has received grants from the Buddy Holly Educational Foundation. Her highly acclaimed independently released records, Grace Pettis (2009) and Two Birds (2012) (both produced by Billy Crockett and recorded at Blue Rock Studio) and the acoustic EP, Blue Star in a Red Sky (2018) (written and recorded with her longtime guitar player Calloway Ritch), have garnered praise from top-notch magazines, newspapers, and radio. She also holds down duties as a member (along with Rebecca Loebe and BettySoo) of the Americana/folk-pop trio Nobody’s Girl.

Leigh Nash

Growing up in the Texas Hill Country of New Braunfels, Leigh Nash officially started her music career singing country music and learning old country songs on the guitar when she was just 12 years old.

With a desire to be on the stage, she started calling clubs on her own to book herself to perform. Before long, the young teen was singing Loretta Lynn and Tanya Tucker songs, such as “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man” and “Texas When I Die,” on open mic Sunday nights while being backed by a middle-aged band of town locals. It was in the early 90’s when she met guitarist and songwriter Matt Slocum and together they formed the band Sixpence None The Richer, a famed pop group that went on to win numerous awards and accolades, including two GRAMMY® Award nominations.

In their career, Sixpence None The Richer recorded four full-length albums. Their debut, which released when Nash was just 16, was 1994’s critically acclaimed LP The Fatherless & The Widow. In the years that followed, the band released numerous timeless songs and huge radio hits, from the GRAMMY-nominated “Kiss Me” to “There She Goes,” among many others.

Leigh Nash also recorded the song “Need to Be Next to You,” written by famed songwriter Diane Warren, for the 2000 movie Bounce, which became Nash’s first solo single. She also made guest appearances on albums from bands such as Los Straightjackets and Delerium. Nash eventually pursued a solo career and debuted her first album, Blue On Blue, in 2006 (One Son/ Nettwerk). She also became a member of Fauxliage and Movement Nashville.

Today, Nash is based in Nashville working as a touring solo artist and songwriter, and she continues to tour with Sixpence None The Richer. “Get Happy” is Nash’s latest release (2.14.20) and features the 20th Anniversary Edition of “Kiss Me” and a tapestry are new songs “God Gave Me Horses” (Leigh Nash/Connie Harrington), “My Love My Drug” (Leigh Nash/ Aaron Espe), “Something Worth Leaving Behind” (Leigh Nash/ Jaida Dryer/ Park Chisolm), and “Don’t Let Me Die In Dallas” (Leigh Nash/Tom Douglas).

Scott Cook

Alberta’s Scott Cook has been living out of a van or a backpack for a dozen years now, touring almost incessantly across Canada, the US, Europe, Asia, Australia and elsewhere, and distilling his experiences into straight-talking, keenly observant verse. His fourth independent release, One More Time Around, was nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award, and its opening track “Pass It Along” won the Folk and Acoustic category in the 2013 UK Songwriting Contest, with UK magazine Maverick Country naming him “one of Canada’s most inspiring and imaginative storytellers”.

His sixth studio album Further Down the Line won him his second CFMA nomination (English Songwriter of the Year), and comes packaged in a 132-page book containing a look back, in words and pictures, on a decade of full-time travel. He’s currently touring in support of his seventh collection, Tangle of Souls, which comes in a hardcover book of road stories and ruminations, both personal and political. Cook is one of the hardest-working DIY troubadours on the road today, averaging around 150 shows including a dozen festivals every year since 2007. All the hard miles notwithstanding, he still believes that songs can change your life, and your life can change the world.

Sawyer Fredericks

Americana singer-songwriter, Sawyer Fredericks, hailing from his family farm in central New York State, cut his teeth at the age of 13, playing local farmers markets, open mics, and iconic New York venues like Caffe Lena, the Towne Crier Cafe, and The Bitter End. With his deep, beyond-his-years original lyrics and melodies, raw, soulful vocals, and powerful live performances, Sawyer seemed an unlikely match for reality tv, but having been scouted by casting directors at 15, he quickly won over broad audiences with his genuine delivery and unique arrangements of classic songs, going on to win season 8 of NBC’s The Voice.

Fresh from that whirlwind, Fredericks went forward with the release of his major label debut, A Good Storm, with Republic Records, an impressive blend of soulful Folk, blues, and rock, entirely written or co-written by Sawyer. Choosing to go independent, for more creative freedom, his 2018 Hide Your Ghost, fully written and produced by Fredericks, sheds the high gloss major label treatment, and stays true to Fredericks’s honest and elegantly stripped down style, a self-described “free range folk”, incorporating elements of blues, roots rock, and jazz with live instrumental arrangements throughout. In writing about his top ten Americana albums of 2018 in No Depression and AXS Magazine, Chris Griffy recommends Hide Your Ghost as “a bluesy folk rocker with a no-frills production that relies on Fredericks’ raw voice to carry the emotional weight.”

With song premieres in People Magazine and American Songwriter and an album preview in Billboard Magazine, on May 1, 2020 Fredericks released his 4th album, Flowers For You. “With his second independent album, Flowers For You, Fredericks is expanding his sound even more, moving from bluesy folk into more expansive Americana, rock, and tinges of jazz,” remarks Chris Griffy in Concert Hopper. Two songs from Flowers For You won top awards from the 18th annual Independent Music Awards, “Born” won in the Folk/Singer-Songwriter category and “Amen” won the Vox Pop award in the Social Action Song category. “Born” was recently officially added to SiriusXM’s Coffee House channel.

Throughout his career, Sawyer has played many festivals and prestigious venues like the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival with 2019 touring highlights including official showcases at SXSW, AmericanaFest, Folk Alliance International, and BMI’s Island Hopper Songwriter Fest.

Mary-Elaine Jenkins

Mary-Elaine Jenkins is a Brooklyn-based songwriter, singer, and guitarist. She has been named among “5 Up-And-Coming Women Musicians You Should Know About” (Bust Magazine), described as “standing righteously above other young pretenders” (Glide Magazine), and her voice has been called “a mix of cloves, sage, ash, thorns, and honey” (The Deli NYC). Her full-length debut, “Hold Still”, was produced and engineered by Thom Beemer and released in September 2018 via Good Child Music. She is currently working on a new record.

Rachel Baiman

Originally from Chicago, Rachel Baiman moved to Nashville at eighteen, and has spent the last decade working as a musician in a wide variety of roles, from session musician (Molly Tuttle, Kelsey Waldon, Caroline Spence), to live sidewoman (Kacey Musgraves, Amy Ray), to bandmate and producer. Fiddle music was her first love, and she is known in the bluegrass and old time world for her work with progressive acoustic duo 10 String Symphony with fiddle player Christian Sedelmyer. Her first solo album Shame, was produced by Andrew Marlin of Mandolin Orange, and established her role as part of a new generation of political songwriters. Since 2017, Baiman has toured her solo project internationally with appearances at the Kilkenny Roots Festival in Ireland, the Mullum Music Festival in Australia, and the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage in Washington, DC. She has also released a variety of small scale projects; her 2018 Free Dirt EP Thanksgiving, which read as a sort of epilogue to Shame, a duet project with singer Mike Wheeler, which is a more stripped down nod to her acoustic roots. Her follow up, Cycles, further pushed her musical spirit, finding a grittier musical medium for her signature unabashed and defiant songwriting, employing a majority-female team.

Her most recent release is the critically acclaimed Common Nation of Sorrow. On this record, she tells stories of American capitalism, and the individual and communal devastation it manifests. “The reality is that the vast majority of us are being taken advantage of by the same brutal economic and political systems. Maybe that shared oppression is a place in which we can meet and fightback”, she explains. In contrast with her previous work, Baiman is the sole producer of Common Nation of Sorrow, which she recorded in her hometown of Nashville. She leans heavily into her bluegrass and old-time sensibilities on this new record. “In some ways, this is a homecoming project for me”, she says. “I wanted to explore these songs based on who and where I am right now, with the town and the people who have raised me musically using the music from the place I’m singing about.” On Common Nation of Sorrow, she has found a production style to match her straightforward writing. Baiman displays a certain self-awareness and comfort with the inability to be all things, while simultaneously pushing to new heights with her message, and delivering a heartbreaking, albeit beautiful, assessment of her country.

Matthew Fowler

Florida-based artist, Matthew Fowler, is the perfect storm of all the essential singer-songwriter elements: a flawlessly raw yet organic voice, intricate melodies, compelling musicianship, and an overwhelmingly rich and rootsy sound. He released his homegrown debut album, “Beginning”, comprising of songs written between the ages 14 and 19 years old. The record, which was recorded live in his kitchen back home in Orlando, was first singled out by American Songwriter Magazine who hailed: “Fowler shows the same mastery of earnest, strummy, songcraft as established artists like Damien Rice and Ben Howard.”

Since the album’s release, Fowler’s musicianship has been lauded by notable publications such as The Bluegrass Situation, CMT Edge, Acoustic Guitar Magazine, and Huffington Post.

Fowler’s stage dynamic has formed into a capturing experience; he’s performed live on various NPR affiliates, has an Audiotree session under his belt, and has opened acts like Richard Thompson, Damien Jurado, The Weepies, Sea Wolf, Angel Olsen, and many more.

PBS’ nationally syndicated “Music City Roots” applauded Fowler’s songwriting stating, “He shows poise and command way beyond his years. He delivered his lines over muted, minimal acoustic guitar and then answered those words with explosive chordal bursts, like punctuation”.

Matthew’s fervor for performing live will see him back out on the road, where he’s transitioned into a national touring artist. He continues honing new tunes and has a new record slated for a 2021 release with Signature Sounds.

Heather Maloney

Massachusetts-based “writer song-singer” Heather Maloney found music in the midst of three years at a meditation center, honing a sound moored in days of silent reflection and reverence for storytellers like Joni, Rilke, Ken Burns, and the anonymous authors of Zen parables. While she eventually traded the quiet, structured life as a yogi for the kinetic life a touring musician, the core of her songwriting remains centered around same curiosity about our inner world, and the desire to articulate it through storytelling. She now has eight studio album releases under her belt, each one marked by inspiring collaborations with musicians, songwriters and producers.

With over 1,000 shows in the US & Canada, and 8 studio albums under her belt, she released her first live album, “No Shortcuts: Live at the Academy” in 2022.

On Heather’s 2019 album, Soil In The Sky, her “ability to channel emotion is radical” (PopMatters) and the tracks are stacked with special guests who help her deliver an immense range of sound and sentiment in 12 songs; there’s a duet with Dawes front-man Taylor Goldsmith on the Walt Whitman-inspired love song “We Were Together”, an appearance by Rachael Price on the album’s opening track “Enigma”, and Jay Ungar lends his legendary folk fiddle to “Oklahoma Lullaby”, a song inspired by Ken Burns’ documentary The Dustbowl. (Ungar composed Ashokan Farewell in Burns’ The Civil War). The all-star band includes drummer Griffin Goldsmith (Dawes), and multiple members of the Amos Lee band.

The Bluegrass Situation called her 2015 release, Making Me Break (produced by Band of Horses’ Bill Reynolds) “an intoxicating blend that captures the sonic texture of indie rock, the humanity of folk and the spirituality of a Rumi poem.”

In 2014 she released “Woodstock”, her collaborative effort with Boston quartet Darlingside, which drew praise from the New York Times and Graham Nash.

Heather’s songs have played on NPR stations across the country and her live appearances have aired on syndicated programming like eTown and AudioTree. Her song “Nightstand Drawer” was used in the season finale of the CBS TV series “Elementary”, and her songs have also been featured on a number of editorial Spotify playlists & Starbucks’ in-store nationwide playlists.

As well as a songwriter and performer, Heather is an illustrator and linocut artist who carves and prints visual representations of her songs on a variety of mediums. She considers the integration music and art to be an inspiring new chapter as a creative, and while most of her growing catalog is reserved for her Patreon community, she periodically releases limited-edition prints to accompany albums and singles.

Heather has toured throughout the US & Canada as a headliner and also in support of acts including Lake Street Dive, Shakey Graves, Gary Clark Jr., Rodrigo y Gabriela, Colin Hay (Men at Work), Mary Chapin Carpenter, Shawn Colvin, Dar Williams and many more.

She is currently working on a new studio album (slated for release in early 2025), and touring actively throughout the US. She’ll embark on her first European tour in the fall of 2025.