A gambler of wit, Rob Baird spins lyrical luck in his fourth record, After All to find out what happens when you go looking for yourself in someone else. In the 2019 follow-up to his third 2015 record, Wrong Side of the River, Memphis-bred Baird smashes right into heartache, chasing losses just to end up winning back the love he never knew he was looking for.

Recorded straight to tape, at Battletapes, an East Nashville studio under the direction of Jeremy Ferguson (Cage The Elephant, Andrew Combs, Lucie Silvas) — After All combines the known with the unknown applying new processes with familiar relationships. Produced by long time friend and collaborator, Rick Brantley who did time on Music Row as well as in the trenches with the likes of John Hiatt and Brandi Clark; Texas-based musicians’ Austin ‘Woodrow’ Morgan and Z Lynch, After All brings together a depth of sound only musicians playing together for a decade can make. According to Woodrow: “We’ve gone from hating each other to living together to playing together so much that we hated each other all over again. Somewhere along the way we figured out how to grow up and now after so much time spent talking about it, we have finally made a record together.”

Drawing inspiration from Lucinda Williams’ tender melodies to the raw chords of James McMurtry, Rob surrounded himself with the sounds and souls that have known him best to make his latest album. Shaped serendipitously and with the help of friends Burleson Smith, David Beck and Brian Douglas Phillips, the songs were crafted over a couple years at a kitchen table in Austin.

Nashville’s Jess Kerber first picked up a guitar at the age of 12, and her precocious drive to experiment with different tunings and picking styles – influenced by kindred spirits like Joni Mitchell and Susan Tedeschi – led to the development of a unique sonic palette and authentic, personal approach to songwriting. Inspired equally by her upbringing in Louisiana and her studies at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, her compositions highlight the dynamism and depth of her gorgeous voice and thoughtful, humanistic lyrics, as well as the refined intricacy of her guitar playing.
While performing in and around Boston and Cambridge, Kerber encountered fellow songwriter Will Orchard, who quickly became a partner and collaborator. Working together on debut album From Way Down Here, Orchard’s production prowess, intuition, and multi-instrumental talents helped push Kerber’s beautiful compositions to a new level of fullness, while retaining the disarming purity of the core elements. Kerber’s rich, emotive tenor and accomplished writing radiate a profound warmth, while varying arrangements of pedal steel, Wurlitzer, drums, and ambient guitar create the surrounding sparkle. The influence of her musician parents – along with a certain nostalgia for what she lovingly calls the “way apart from the rest of the world feeling” of the Deep South – shines through in the honest, straightforward, and timeless qualities of her composition.

Rod Picott is a former construction worker turned award-winning singer-songwriter who has released eleven albums since 2000.  Picott has written two poetry collections God In His Slippers and Murmuration (Mezcalita Press). His book of short stories titled Out Past The Wires is published by Working Title Farm. Rod Picott was born in New Hampshire, raised in Maine and has lived in Nashville Tennessee for twenty-five years. He is currently touring on his latest album – Tell The Truth & Shame The Devil. Picott types with two fingers as he failed typing class – though excelled in English and Literature.

If life is more about the journey than the destination, Anna Vogelzang has proven herself the emerging musical force behind this age-old belief.

Anna — a melody-driving, songwriting, Boston-born, LA-based multi-instrumentalist — has spent her formative years spread across the country, learning the musical languages of the Midwest, west coast, New England and all that lies in between. Building community from coast to coast, she has traveled with home on her fingertips, her music peppered with flavors of nostalgia and perpetual motion.

In 2012, Anna founded Wintersong, an annual charity show in Madison, WI that has raised over $34,000 for Second Harvest Foodbank of Southwest Wisconsin. For nearly a decade, she has taught at Girls Rock Camps across the country,youth-centered arts and social justice organizations teaching empowerment through music. Upon moving to L.A. in 2016, Anna co-founded the weekly songwriting group, “Song Salon,” with guitarist Adam Levy, which sparked a movement of residencies, live shows, and albums throughout the local musical landscape. Anna has been involved with the International Girls Rock Alliance, and in 2017 joined the LA College of Music’s songwriting faculty. Her efforts and approach to music are rooted in the belief that communal experience heightens the creative process, and that collaboration serves to remind us that the truest sense of home is within ourselves.

Singer/songwriter Noel Paul Stookey has been altering both the musical and ethical landscape of this country and the world for decades — both as the “Paul” of the legendary Peter, Paul and Mary and as an independent musician who passionately believes in bringing the spiritual into the practice of daily life.

Funny, irreverently reverent, thoughtful, compassionately passionate, Stookey’s voice is known all across this land: from the “Wedding Song” to “In These Times.” Most recently Noel’s musical political commentary entitled IMPEACHABLE (based on the familiar melody of UNFORGETTABLE) has reached viral status with the on-line community, yielding over a million facebook/youtube views.

While acknowledging his history and the meaningful association with Peter and Mary – the trio perhaps best known for its blend of modern folk music and social activism, rallying support for safe energy, peace and civil rights at some of the most iconic events in our history—including the 1963 March on Washington with Martin Luther King, Noel Paul has stepped beyond the nostalgia of the folk era.

Nearly $2 million, earned from Noel’s now-classic “Wedding Song,” were used to fund the work of other socially responsible artists, which inspired Noel, along with his daughter Liz Stookey Sunde, to launch MusicToLife in 2001. The nonprofit has introduced groundbreaking ways to bring music to life for social change through technology, entertainment, artist collaboration and education. Whether judged by the subject matter of his current concert and recorded repertoire or by virtue of his active involvement with the MusicToLife initiative (www.musictolife.org) linking music fans to the expression of contemporary concerns via many different artists and musical genres, Stookey’s current musical outlook continues to be fresh, optimistic and encouraging.